What have you made?

[Adolf Hamster]

v6 maybe?

[RostokMcSpoons]

So this sort of twattery occurs when you have too much time on your hands... turning a pallet into a backstop for my garden test shoots

  

 

The cunning plan was to cut strips of an old yoga mat and suspend them from a bar to absorb the hits and ensure there aren't BB's bouncing noisily off the fence (which might annoy the neighbours).
Also would stop the BB's bouncing back on to the lawn (which might annoy m'wife).   You can see previous evidence of my misdemeanors in the photos

Unfortunately it wasn't all that cunning... the yoga mat wasn't really big enough to provide enough strips to overlap well, so I added the camo netting doubled over, front and back (which was originally intended just for the front, just for effect).  That really didn't do much except tangle up the strips and probably get in the way of them hanging straight.  

So BB's are going all the way through to the last layer of defence, some old under-flooring insulation (a very frangible fibreboard).   Eventually they'll get through that too, given how the concentrated bursts are grouping so nicely.

 

Any good ideas on what else I can do (cheaply!) to improve this?   I could get another cheapo mat and just add extra strips, if you guys think the original plan was good enough?

Edited August 17, 2023 by RostokMcSpoons

[Cannonfodder]

Very nice, I've been looking at doing something similar, even down to using yoga mats for the backstop

[Tackle]

11 minutes ago, Cannonfodder said:

Very nice, I've been looking at doing something similar, even down to using yoga mats for the backstop

But if you use them, what you gonna do your yoga on  ?😜

[RostokMcSpoons]

I think I saw a yoga mat in Asda or Tesco for a tenner a while ago, so I think that's got to be worth a shot - I should be able to ensure a good coverage, and I'll probably cut much wider strips (3-4" ?) to make sure they stay in place better

Edited August 17, 2023 by RostokMcSpoons

[gavinkempsell]

2 hours ago, RostokMcSpoons said:

Any good ideas on what else I can do (cheaply!) to improve this?

I'm currently firing at an old NBC suit, adds cushioning without destroying it.

[Cannonfodder]

2 hours ago, RostokMcSpoons said:

I'll probably cut much wider strips (3-4" ?) to make sure they stay in place better

I would think you'd want the strips as wide as possible to absorb the impact with them moving as little as possible, especially if you're firing bursts

[RostokMcSpoons]

30 minutes ago, Cannonfodder said:

I would think you'd want the strips as wide as possible to absorb the impact with them moving as little as possible, especially if you're firing bursts

 

I'm trying to imagine the physics of it all ... it's hard to think that even a wide strip wouldn't get kicked out of the way by 5-10 BB's hitting it in a decent burst.  Do I hold it place with elastic bands at the bottom?  Or weight them at the bottom of each strip?   If they resist too much the BB's will punch through them.    Arrgghh!

 

Gavin, I can see the sense in an NBC suit, presumably that's a rip-stop material?  I don't have any to hand that I could cannibalize though...

 

Maybe I'll just buy a couple of cheap car mats as the fail-safe backstop.     (You know what's really annoying is that I just replaced my shed roof.   It's covered in rubber membrane.  With quite a bit spare all around... all securely fixed in place now!)

 

Edit:  Astroturf?  It's weatherproof, pretty indestructible, green... and there's a shop near me that might have off-cuts...

Edited August 17, 2023 by RostokMcSpoons

[Cannonfodder]

I was thinking leave the mats hanging loose at the bottom to allow some movement, but the car mats sounds like a better idea. They'll take far more abuse before failing

[concretesnail]

What about some rubber sheet, it could be purchased as a sheet and then hung by the top edge only. Or butchers curtain in two layers, the movement should take some of the bounce out of the bb and allow to to drop, with the second layer there to stop bursts.

Edited August 18, 2023 by concretesnail

[Speedbird_666]

Old carpet works well as a backstop. The Airgun club I'm a member of uses it for their target stands. My local (independant) carpet shop has skips full of the old carpets removed from customer houses. Ask nicely and you have enough for a dozen backstops for free.

 

 

 

 

[Tackle]

To be fair, ALMOST anything will do, even putting a couple of small crocodile clips in a box setup & hanging a newspaper or light magazine up, strong enough to stop & soak the power, but light enough to flex & not allow ricochets. 

If I was planning to build a catcher/target box, I would consider using commercial carpet tiles, the kind usually found in office environments, very hard wearing & quite stiff but with just enough flex that bb's wouldn't break if they hit edges etc, which is an issue with most commercial box catchers. 

 

EDIT : I should add these aren't cheap, far from it so prob not best to Google them 😳lol, but if you or a relative/friend work in an office environment, a friendly chat with the resident building services person should blag half a dozen, most buildings have a basement lockup with stacks of these secondhand for reusing in renovations or partition changes. 

Edited August 18, 2023 by Tackle
Add info

[RostokMcSpoons]

I made a trip out to the wilds this morning and popped in at Halfords, found these...

 

 

£6 each, they're not too thick so retain some flexibility.  Each one can be cut in half to make 'larger than A4' stoppers, so I'll arrange them such that they're dangling by paracord and will stop ~95% of my shots. I'll re-arrange the yoga mat strips as the first line of defence (to quieten the impact, hopefully)   The odd flyer can be caught by everything else.  

 

I wanted something vaguely weatherproof in case the rain blows in on it... but carpet would've been good enough to last for a good long while though, given it's mostly nylon these days.  So that was a good shout.  I could've saved £12!

[Pseudotectonic]

If you have the space, you can make it angled so it sort of works like a real steel bullet trap

 

Some pictures here, they are quite self explanatory:

 

https://vanandelarenagrandrapidsmi.blogspot.com/2022/07/homemade-bullet-trap-design.html

[gavinkempsell]

16 minutes ago, Pseudotectonic said:

If you have the space, you can make it angled so it sort of works like a real steel bullet trap

 

Some pictures here, they are quite self explanatory:

 

https://vanandelarenagrandrapidsmi.blogspot.com/2022/07/homemade-bullet-trap-design.html

That would catch 5.56 too

[RostokMcSpoons]

Ahhhh that's a cool design but my pallet doesn't give me the depth to angle the mats very much!

[Speedbird_666]

Need to dust off my 3D printer - but my next project is a super-minimalist fixed battery stock for G&G receivers (ARP9 Etc).

 

Designed to hold at least a 2200mAh 11.1v LiPo - some smaller 3000mAh packs should also fit.

 

Length is around the same as stubby length M16 fixed stocks - good for the speedybois and/or smaller statures.

 

 

 

[DanBow]

 

 

Not massively brilliant but when I got my RIF, one of the clamp blocks (?) on the front sight was missing. A few minutes in Tinkercad, 24 minutes on the printer and  . . . . . 

 

I need to tweak it a little ang grab a new bolt/nut from work but I'm happy.

[DanBow]

Ok, another make today.

 

I got my hard case very cheap. The foam was a bit wet and the case needed a bit of a clean. So case cleaned, foam towel dried then put in the airing cupboard overnight. Stuck it back in the case and it didnt quite feel dry enough so i printed a couple of vented silica gel holders, grabbed some reusable silical gel out of my filament filament dry box, put them all together and bish bash bosh . . . . after 24 hours, the silica gell had turned brown, meaning it had absorbed as much moisture as it could.

 

Ive just refilled them, so back in they go.

 

[Shamal]

25 minutes ago, DanBow said:

Ok, another make today.

 

I got my hard case very cheap. The foam was a bit wet and the case needed a bit of a clean. So case cleaned, foam towel dried then put in the airing cupboard overnight. Stuck it back in the case and it didnt quite feel dry enough so i printed a couple of vented silica gel holders, grabbed some reusable silical gel out of my filament filament dry box, put them all together and bish bash bosh . . . . after 24 hours, the silica gell had turned brown, meaning it had absorbed as much moisture as it could.

 

Ive just refilled them, so back in they go.

 

That's like our cheese grater.

Nice job though👍

How do you get the metallic looking finish?

 

Regards 

 

[DanBow]

1 hour ago, Shamal said:

How do you get the metallic looking finish?

 

It's a silk matte filament. I got a box of 5 reels, all in different colour combinations, as a present off my daughter. I can ssk her where she got them from if you'd like.

[Rogerborg]

On 18/08/2023 at 20:16, gavinkempsell said:

That would catch 5.56 too

 

I reckon two of them might even stop a BB from Licking Mustard.

[Pseudotectonic]

Noticed the other day these digital target screens from Evike has a protective layer that absorbs the BB very well and dropping it down without much ricochet at all which seems ideal for a target

 

https://youtu.be/rokdTjypBg4?feature=shared&t=95

 

I suspect these are like 3mm thick clear PVC sheets and when held at the edge allowing it to flex it has very good "impedance matching" for airsoft BBs for lack of a better word

 

[Shamal]

7 hours ago, DanBow said:

 

It's a silk matte filament. I got a box of 5 reels, all in different colour combinations, as a present off my daughter. I can ssk her where she got them from if you'd like.

No that's ok thanks. Just interested.

I have trouble printing my name 😂

 Regards 

[DanBow]

ok, here we go again . . . . 

 

After a crappy few days in work I didn't want to do much on my first day off (Sunday), so I found some things to print for my RIF.

 

 

Spoiler

 

Didn't like the small one so printed the bigger one. The bigger one feels much better but there is a bit too much play between the picatinny and the handle 

 

 

So I'm going to have a go at packing it out but I can see that I'll just resize it and print again,  maybe in a funky dual coloured matte filament.

 

 

LInks to the parts . . . . 

 

Small One

 

Bigger One