TargetTalk

I live in Southeastern Wisconsin in what might be described as a suburban area. The nearest homes from me are 400 yards away. I live on 10 wooded acres. I'm tired of paying range dues and having to travel 25 miles. I pretty much exclusively shoot 308x39 and am not interested in an air rifle or going the suppressor route. I want to know if anyone has any experience in setting up a "shooting box" as I would call it.

My plan is to build a small, oblong hut that is completely enclosed, double walled, and built with some sort of sound absorbing material inside. Of course it would be vented with fans. Think of a 5 foot tall by 4 wide by 8 foot long box with a shooting bench within it. My intention would be to shoot from it, out through a small opening, and into my bullet trap that is 100 yards away. Sonic crack aside, I'm curious as to how much suppression a well-built shooting hut would provide. Do you have any experience with such a set-up?

Thanks for your time,
Brett

Have you thought of shooting out through a concrete pipe attached to the shooting hut? That would limit the risk of flyers leaving the property.

Not a bad idea; shooting through a pipe. I suppose if it's not attached to the muzzle the current administration that now seems to be reading all of our posts won't consider it a suppressor. I suppose I would combine a pipe with a shooting shack.

Brett

Hi Neighbor (SE WI)

I think bdutton meant a 12 or 16" concrete sewer pipe sticking 8' out the back of your hut. I have seen a 36"" pipe used that was lined with fiberglass insulation. The insulation was held in place with "chicken" wire.

Be sure to put windows on the back of the hut so you can have full view of anything within 50 yards (or more) of your impact area while you are shooting through the tube.

At our club we have a 15x15 shed which is insulated w/exhaust fan attached to a 100yd long 5' concrete pipe for "no wind" testing.

Even 100 yds away when you light off a bigbore centerfire rifle in there we can clearly hear it in our rangehouse. Inside, unless you are shooting .22 you really need to be doubled up on the hearing protection. I tested a Garand in there ... one time ... "loud" does not describe it. Very cool flame though.

When shooting 10m AP at home, from my workshop out to the porch, I hear a very significant difference in volume depending on how cluttered it is at the time. When tidy like today, uncluttered with only one or two doublebasses around and my workbench and tools, the PCP pistol is loud enough to merit putting in my Etymotics. When there are 4 or 5 doublebasses and a handful of violins in cases and various other litter the sound drops right off and I don't even think of earplugs. Breaking up percussive reports is what it's all about, and that'd apply to any firearm just on a more painful scale. If you are going to shoot through something as hard and acoustically reflective as a concrete pipe I'd highly recommend building a series of foam rings around the inner surface with big gaps between to absorb the noise. That can get expensive with new foam, but thrift stores and the like can supply old foam rubber mattresses pretty cheaply and you could stick it with a spray-on contact cement or expanding construction foam. Look at how suppressors are made - there are lots of pictures online showing cross-sectional and disassembled views - then just make one a whole lot bigger in whatever kind of tunnel you are shooting through. So long as you get a foot or so of muzzle into it and maybe keep your aiming hole at around a foot diameter, the blast shouldn't be painful at all.

Thanks for the info guys; that's exactly what I was looking for. I'll put together a shed over the summer and report back with my results.

Brett

Do you or someone else close to you have access to a back hoe? Bury it! Dig a hundred yard trench, line it with concrete pipe, build a little basement instead of a shack, line it with concrete blocks.... if you're water table is high, build a pallet to shoot from and install a sump pump.... rig up ventilation in the basement, hang lights down at the end of the tunnel, and rig up a returning target system........ It can double as a survival shelter!

20 years ago I was looking at buying a house in Brookfield WI, the realtor opened a 2’ x 2’ cabinet door that was mounted on the basement wall and revealed a 20’ section of pipe buried under the back yard with a target carrier and a halogen light mounted in it.

The house was said to belong to a husband and wife which both were Olympic smallbore shooters (I forget their name). There was a line on the floor that was 10 meters from the target face that they shot from.

The Mrs. said no to that house.

As bdutton and shooterer have alluded to, a tube range with only the first length of tube could help keep noise inside the hut. However, it does limit your shooting positions unless you definitely only want to shoot bench/standing. The only thing with that is from an indoor room, shooting our through a tube you could be rather cut off from the wind and weather (sure you can plant flags, but you'd be losing the wind on your face, etc).



The other thing is shape - as Gerard says, a square box will bounce sound around.

At my old school, when they rebuilt the music block, they rounded off one corner of the building so that quadrant of the block was a quarter circle.
All the piano and practice rooms were along that outside wall and as a result were not square - the outside wall of each room was obviously curved, as was the inner wall with the door to the corridor (which meant the side walls were convergent - i.e. it was a sector of a circle).
The feedback from the peripatetic instrument teachers was that they usually went home with a headache except when they taught there, because the shape of the rooms made them quieter and had no echo or resonance. Soundwaves couldn't bounce between parallel walls - they always ended up against a curve or a corner where they were dissipated.
Getting a day a week at that school is now a sought-after contract!

To that end, don't worry about building your shooting shed too square, and if you can get some eggshell foam and suchlike to line the walls with then all the better (or bobbled carpet underlay), basically anything bumpy that will increase the surface area of the walls of your shack, and which will scatter and dissipate the sound waves. Smooth walls and straight edges are your enemy!

Of course if you can just bury your shack with soil that will also work as far as your neighbours are concerned, but internal soundproofing will make your life more comfortable as well.

This topic spins old wheels for me. Does anyone know of this application to free pistol? I have a range available but modifications such as buffers will cost and I have wondered if the 6 feet of concrete pipe is a practical solution considering you have to stand up and the pipe therefore has to be stood up also????? And how to suit different height shooters?????

pity about the stutter...
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rickard9 wrote:This topic spins old wheels for me. Does anyone know of this application to free pistol? I have a range available but modifications such as buffers will cost and I have wondered if the 6 feet of concrete pipe is a practical solution considering you have to stand up and the pipe therefore has to be stood up also????? And how to suit different height shooters?????

Putting a section of pipe on the front of your shooting shed is optional, but should help with external noise. Alternatively if you can get some old tyres, then shooting through the middle of them will act much like an actual rifle moderator. As you mention though, these restrict you to a certain height of shooting. Or old 50 gallon drums. If you scroll about halfway down this thread you can see an example in use (for prone rifle - so not ideal for pistol I'll admit, although you could put it on a stand at the right height).

Alternatives might be shooting through a hatch so yourself and the gun are inside the shed, with just the bullet passing out a hatch and thereby retaining as much noise inside as possible. Then you can also have hatches at different heights for different positions or shooters.

The thing to remember with tubes or hatches though is that unless they're especially wide you literally get tunnel vision, so you need to be sure that you're definitely in a private area where no one is going to inadvertently wander onto the range (because you lose your peripheral vision either side of the range).

As for buffers, they don't need to be foam or anything fancy or expensive. Actual egg boxes, angled cardboard, fabric drapes, old carpet, etc stuck to the walls of your shooting shed will all help absorb noise far more effectively than flat wood or concrete, which will just reflect it. Whatever you can find around and about.

Hope I quoted the correct post :)

I think it would be easier to dig deeper for the shed so that you may shoot standing. Then, you could have tables or false floors to do the prone shooting.

Joel

rickard9 wrote:This topic spins old wheels for me. Does anyone know of this application to free pistol? I have a range available but modifications such as buffers will cost and I have wondered if the 6 feet of concrete pipe is a practical solution considering you have to stand up and the pipe therefore has to be stood up also????? And how to suit different height shooters?????