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Shooting House - Down Range Doors

Rum River said:
Yeah, if I had it to do over again I may have built those doors differently.

P.S.
I like your signature - I've used that one a few times.
I think I got it from an old Star Trek Next Gen episode.....
Click to expand...
thanks, i found it on some sticker website years ago and had it on a truck years back. i've always liked it.
 
I think gas struts are the way to go.

Today I put a single vertical prop in the middle of one of the open doors and the other end on a bathroom scale.
Came out to 50 lbs load, but that included the weight of the prop itself.
That's less than I thought it would be but I'm going to figure for a hundred pound load - I always like a bigger margin.

Located an online calculator to configure what struts I need.
At this point it looks like a pair for each door will run around $125.
Want to get lockable models so I can set them at whatever position I want.
 
Rick Richard said:
Good luck and I hope it works out since that is a real nice shooting house you have there.
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Thank you.

In my life, if there was ever a case of: "How did this happen?", the range/shooting house is it.
Tupperware and wire coat hanger collections don't grow this large.

It started so innocently.

The farmer renting cropland at that time was willing to juggle the price in return for dealing with a range pretty much right down the middle of one of the larger fields.

No natural landscape for berms so built our own. First attempt "to just get by for now" was a complete and total disaster.
Tires and piles of dirt are just that - no matter what efforts we made they worked poorly and looked worse.

One fellow said to use the oak lumber from an old corn crib on the place and build berms that would last. I said I didn't think it was practical to tear down a 100 year old structure, turn all the dimensional lumber into a different dimension and then expect it to hold back a couple of cubic yards of the heavy soil we happen to have. He claimed he and his nephew would take on the chore if I was so afraid of it. I told him to go ahead. He got busy with other stuff and had the nephew do it with "other help".

When after only a couple of years and they had pretty much totally collapsed all I could say is that at least I wasn't paying someone to take a bunch of old tires off my hands – again.

We decided enough was enough and started thinking in terms of Sherman tanks. The front of the berm is two stacks (one behind the other) of full-length railroad ties about five feet high which are separated by old cedar power poles. Behind that is a crib formed by 4x6 inch treated timbers supporting vertical corrugated steel which holds a little over three cubic yards of fill. The berms are at 25, 100, 200, 300 and 400.

Once we had the range it made sense to have shooting benches, right? Oh, and covered firing points. If we're going to have that we should have a gravel pad too, right? Hey, it's been gravel for awhile – I wonder what our usual concrete guy would charge? Now that we've gone this far how about if we enclose it for year round use?

Hmm, now about those down range doors…..


End view of berm.
IMG_1787.JPG


25, 100, 200, 300 and 400. Not enough room for another one.
IMG_1786.JPG
 
The online calculator I tried was too clumsy a tool to determine what model gas strut to use. Have been trading emails (complete with pictures) with a supplier to nail it down. The estimated cost (at least so far) is still the same.

Time will tell.....
 
The supplier has been good to deal with. Lots of emails and a couple phone calls resulted in a quote of about $160 per door.
According to said supplier it will take about 15 lbs. effort to push open and pretty much the same to close.

Sweet.

A couple things to work out on shipping etc. and I can get things rolling.
 
After many engineering related emails and phone calls the gas struts are supposedly on the way.

The fellow I am dealing with has a very precise German outlook on things - I know because I'm of German descent myself.
It was humorous at times, but he's a good guy and was doing his very best to help me out.
 
Need to build some big shoot thru silencer tubes....20" perf pipe wrapped in eggcrate foam....then wrapped in tarp to keep water off...i know a guy went so far as to use tires the full 10' length to knock out even more noise....can hardly hear an AR go off....
 
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