Making Steel Targets

[Zogotar]

I'm thinking of making some steel falling plates from AR400 steel but need some advice on the base design to avoid ricochet.



Is a 90 degree edge ok or should I bevel it?

[DYA]

Think AR 400 could be to soft. I have had VRN 500 cut by Macsteel and they last , got hammered from 223 right to 375 hanging on a belt tough. Remember welding will destroy the temper an will be prone to cracking.

[BigT]

Get some Zero Down Steel from Dickie. Much easier.

[Freefloat]

Im with bigt on that!!!

[DanZ]

You can also look at Hardox 500 from SSAB.

[A-R]

Any right angles will cause the occasional ricochet. Even the bolt heads on ghongs, hanging on conveyor belting, will case some ricochets.

Are the plates intended for handguns or rifles? For rifles, just keep them at least 100m (150 is better) away from the shooter. Any welding will soften the plate (around the weld), and will eventually crack off.

If intended for handguns, you would be better served, by placing the "feet" at the rear, or just use a seperate base like the IPSC type. If using "feet" on the plate, try to avoid a single stay in the middle, as that tends to make the plate turn on impact, splattering the area to the side of the shooter. Both setups tend to limit the "return to sender" effect. The IPSC setup can be seen on their "rule books" on the web.

[Dylanm]

Armox500 or domex. Keep away from the 90deg angles as A-R says.
Armox500T (5mm plate) at 50m, hit with a .308 FMJ gets a decent dent so if you want a rifle plate, go thicker, maybe round about 8mm or so. Stay away from welding as it destroys the temper.

[bcs]

As folks have said: the temper will not do well with welding. But if you absolutely have to, use low-hydrogen welding rods for vrn500. Apparently the regular rods induce cracking.

[DLRX]

As folks have said: the temper will not do well with welding. But if you absolutely have to, use low-hydrogen welding rods for vrn500. Apparently the regular rods induce cracking.

The failure mode is called " hydrogen induced cracking" . To be honest VRN is quite weldable if compared to other materials. Few factor to consider is to use LH rods. Another point is to ensure a complete dry rod by keeping the welding rods in a hotbox ( oven keeping the rods dry) Therefore indirectly remove moisture that will reduce the hydrogen introduced to the weldseam.

To be honest, VRN 500 " Japanese mill" is perfect as a plate on the range and in my opinion it is the welding that crack not the plate . Probably slag inclusion and or incomplete penetration as compared to parent metal that crack due to heat input in the haz area ( heat affected zone)

The root cause of the cracks in my opinion is due to "poor welding"?

[Trundle]

For a cost effective plate, 12 ga and .22, plate we use precut std mild steel plates from our local steel supplier.

250 x 250 or 300 x 300 plates pre-cut they are avble in 2mm (too thin) 5mm good for 12 ga and .22

They do need to be replaced every few months, but in the ensuing time develop a nice 'houding'. We respray every 2nd or 3rd range trip.

We knock some 10mm steel pegs into the backstop, and then lean the plates facing forward against the pegs. This creates a 10-15 deg forward angle that makes sure any ricochets are downwards into the backstop.

Anything larger caliber-wise, rather look at Dickies stuff, he's done the homework. We used one of his at BigT's shotgun course and it took a real hammering... and stood up to it.