On Improvising Respectable Steel Targets

Ian got a good price on his property, it’s said, because everybody else considered it useless. After all, so much of it is dry riverbed you could never build anything on. Why, there’s one 300 yard stretch with absolutely nothing but flat sand. Horrors!It’s been some years since we dragged this old fuel tank stand out to the cliff that serves as a backstop, and at last had something from which to hang steel targets. Ian sprang for some proper armor plates, but everything else was improvisation and experimentation. I’m constantly repairing and/or rearranging chains. Since it’s Ian’s range on Ian’s land and I probably use it more than he does, the least I can do is keep it pieced together.

Most of the chains have just been looped over the crossbeam. It works and it’s simple, but I’ve never been happy with the way the targets hang. So the last time I had to repair a chain I suspended it from a short piece wrapped around the crossbeam and bolted together. That turned out to hang a lot more square. I determined that the next time I came out here for repair I’d do that to all of them.

Of course the only way to make sure you’ve done it right is to test it, right? 🙂

Spent some time in my reloading shack yesterday, re-thinking my .44 loads.

These are 5.0 grains of Unique with a 240 grain cast semiwadcutter. I’ve fired 25 of these now with no issues at all. It’s substantially milder than earlier loads with the same bullets and seems to work better with this gun. Accuracy is good enough to get all five clangers swinging at the same time at about 15 yards, which is all I ask.