Hello,

I was wondering about the logistics of building a underground 100 yard rifle range. Anyone ever seen one? If so, what was the construction like, i.e. concrete or block etc.. Also, what was done to eliminate the increased noise from the blast, if anything? Thanks.

The cheapest way is to dig a trench with a backhoe and simply bury a hundred yards of 24" metal culvert in it. Thirty-six inch culvert would be better, but cost goes up considerably. An alternative to metal culvert might be some of the newer large diameter poly sewer pipe, but I don't know what's available or its cost.

Assuming you're doing this in Nebraska, you should be working with reasonably easy-digging and well-drained soil; if I tried it in the Texas Hill Country it would cost tens of thousands just to crunch through the rock, a would likely turn into a spring in wet weather.

Using the small diameter "tunnel" approach, you either have to have some type of target placement/retrieval mechanism geared up on cables and pullies, or have an access hatch at the end of the tunnel from the outside (rather unhandy). A "full height" corridor (say six feet or so) would be nice, but it would have to be lined with concrete or blocks or something similar, and would be much more expensive.

As far as noise, it can be mitigated to some degree by having a rather small opening into the tunnel that the muzzle of the gun is placed through when fired. If this is in the basement of your house, your wife is still gonna give you hell if you use it when she's at home.

in the hill country... why doesn't anyone use acid to burn that limestone?

jeffe

Don't the administrators of this site have something like this off their reloading room?
Pics are on this site.

Might be easier (?) to make a above-ground tunnel using culverts or with 4 x 8 sheets of plywood.

In Bay City, MI there's a shop (Wessels?) set up with 2 100yd and a 300yd tunnel. The 300 uses a camera to moniter the target (I believe acces to the target is through another building) The 100's have the targets mounted on a over head track w/cable retreival.
IIRC all the tunnels are made from concrete sewer pipes, 2' in the 100yd and 3 or 4' in the 300 with sound baffeling at the shooter end. The trick would be geeting your hands on 300feet of sewer pipe "seconds" (chipped ends).

That was the first thought that I had, was a small area on each end and then running a culvert of some type through the middle to connect them. I will have to look and see whether metal, plastic or possibly even concrete would be the cheapest way to get 100 yards or so. How about the backstop on the target end?

Thirty years ago I remember shooting in an underground range 'tunnel'. And I remember that after a few shots the turbulence caused visual problems so it was ok to test a gun but not for accuracy.

I know of a 200 yd under ground range built using used ( free) 48 x 60"oval concrete pipe.

The guy let the state dump the used pipe and dirt on his farm when they put in a new ditch.

quote:

Originally posted by mete:
Thirty years ago I remember shooting in an underground range 'tunnel'. And I remember that after a few shots the turbulence caused visual problems so it was ok to test a gun but not for accuracy.

This was what I first thought when I saw that somebody was shooting through a 12" tunnel. The shock wave would be too close to the edges of the "pipe", it would cause problems with accuracy. A high velocity rifle has a heck of a shock wave associated with it. Why have a 1-2-or 300 yard tunnel if not for testing accuracy?

I would guess that shooting in the middle of a 4 ft. pipe would be plenty of room for a high velocity rifle.

Hill country rifles in san marcos TX. uses an underground 100 yard range to test for function, reliability and accuracy. they basically shoot in it all the time, i have been in it and witnessed shooting, but not acctually shot in it, there were no problems other than the odd echoing of the muzzle blast.

How big of a tube did they have at Hill Country? I wondered if they had something like that, I have had work done by them in the past.

I have day dreamed about the design and construction of a subsurface shooting range.

Putting aside planning permission / the law, my bubble was burst by the cost. And I am none to sure how to estimate it.

A reasonable sized mechanical digger will cost you about £200 a day, including driver. Then there is the cost of the materials for the 'tunnel'.

I thought of using concrete culvert 'seconds' sufficiently tall you could walk through, although some stoop may be needed.

The concept is this:

dig a battered trench of sufficient depth to bury the culvert for half - two thirds of its height

lay a foundation of graded engineering fill with a slope towards the firing point for drainage

construct small access 'houses' or breaks in the 'tunnel' at the 100m, 200m and 300m chainage points to enable a target frame and chronograph sensors to be installed

at the 300m point + xm, a back stop of graded sand to be built. Fortunately, since you are shooting in a confined area, the back stop would not have to be so high as all that. There is not the same danger of elevated shots.

Now, it would be nice to have another measuring point at 250m, but the costs are getting high enough already.

Having laid the culvert and built the 'houses', bury the structure, creating a mound. If funds / materials allow, landscaping could produce a pleasant feature. Plant fast growing shrubs / small trees along the alignment to help baffle the noise, reducing disturbance.

Dream on.

We used the Japanese underground range in Sasebo a couple of times to qualify with the M14. It had a dirt floor and cement blocks with an overhead cement roof. It worked but loud and dusty.

There is an unobvious hazard to this. Unburned powder accumulates. At some point a shot will ignite a flash fire. Occasional cleaning will prevent this, but you have to have access to clean. I don't know about y'all, but I ain't crawling through no 2' tunnels. 30", maybe.

This problem cropped up for a fellow who was using old tires for noise reduction. They worked great for that purpose, but were natural powder collectors.

I'd also want a pretty good ventilation system for such a tunnel. With its small volume, I'd suspect that you could a high concentration of lead fumes and particles in short order. A slight slope and a drain at the target end would also be good features.

Today was an anusual low wind day.
I went to the range to test a new AR15 upper.

But most Saturdays, if I had a friend with an underground range, I would be over there like a teen ager at a LAN party.

Somewhere it was mentioned that someone had old semi trailers lined up for a covered range.
Probably looked like hell, but it would work.
Good Luck!

When I was around 20 or so, I visited a gent name Harry Touby in South Florida where I lived. He was in the construction business and had an underground range exactly as one of you described it. The pipe didn't seem very big (it was a humdred yards long) but probably 2' in diameter. We had no problems shooting for accuracy. The funny thing was his house was in a nieghborhood where the lots were probably no bigger than two acres and the noise didn't seem to bother anybody. jorge

I've seen underground small-arms ranges that were as long as 300 meters in Germany. Underground ranges are necessary there due to the unbelievable urbanization of most European countries. Of course, these were originally built by the German military, so cost was no object. It sure is great to be able to shoot where there is absolutely no wind at all!

I have an acquaintance that has a 100 yard underground range. It is basically a long section extension of his basement.
It has an eight foot ceiling, is about 9 feet wide, but has 'acoustic baffling' glued/nailed to all the walls and ceiling, making it effectively smaller-- and the floor is carpeted with heavy cut pile carpet.
It is a very nice setup, but I would estimate his cost is approximately $60,000-75,000. I do not recall how the bullet stop was constructed, but it was in fact in front of a poured wall at the very end of the range. It did have an access at the end from above ground, where the bullet stop could be remediated occasionally.

Sound was a non-issue as the front end of the range was it's own room which was insulated with sound baffling insulation and had walls sound insulated built with 2x12's with the same acoustic baffling stapled to the walls as was in the range 'tunnel'. If you were outside and someone was shooting you could not hear it unless you were within about 20 or 30 yards, and then it was just a muffled report that you could hear, very mild. This fellows wife didn't even mind shooting going on while she was in the house watching TV or whatever. Having said that, this fellow was divorced about three years after I first met him......

Isn't the range where Don Shearer shoots built from LARGE diameter concrete pipe at least partially buried with a building on each end?

Is anyone aware of any specific environmental issues related to a range, either above or below ground?

I suppose another option is used shipping containers (especially if you are close to a major port). They run about $1,500 per, and 7 would suffice for a pretty decent shooting tunnel. FWIW, Dutch.

Dutch, that's an interesting idea. I wonder what a used train boxcar would cost? How long are the shipping containers used by the airlines. I've often thought I would like to get some type of prefab unit that would be big enough to bury in the ground and then tie it into a future house I would build......

Fish, the airline containers are pretty small, about the size of a pallet (i.e. 40" or so), and made from aluminum ( = EXPENSIVE). The larger ones (like the LD11, which is, I'm guessing, about 15' long) are all curtain sided, which is no good for our purposes.

Most international ocean shippers are now 48' containers, and all you'd have to do is take off the doors, cut out the other end, and butt or weld them up together. FWIW, Dutch.

Duckster,

Ventilation is very important. As "Leftoverdj" pointed out there would be a considerable amout of lead fumes and particles in the air.

A fan blowing away from the shooter would suffice, and I would try to use the largest pipe I could find. I would think 36" would be perfect.

Here some picture from our underground rifle range.





We have 4x 100m and one 50m with movable wild boar from left and right.
We have also five 25m pistol ranges, but I don´t have some pictures.

quote:

Originally posted by duckster:
Is anyone aware of any specific environmental issues related to a range, either above or below ground?

There's a 200 yard underground range in Grand Island just near you.....Steve might even let you see it.....it's called Hornady!!!

Thanks Dutch, I'll file that away, and underground of 100 yards at least sound like an item to put on the dream house list!

Regards--D.

The new Krieger Barrels facility has an underground test tunnel. I believe it is 200 yards and 4' in diameter, but am not positive. I was working with their electrician to develop an electric trolley system for replacing targets and moving the target to different ranges. I also heard they are using the Oehler target system and a computer monitor for bullet impact. I keep bugging the elecrrician to show it to me, but so far, no luck.

Fast Ed

Duckster,

The next best thing I've seen nearby is a guy south of Kearney that has a Morton building that is finished/heated on the inside setup as a reloading room and he has sliding windows with a shelf/bench setup so you can sit on a stool and shoot out the window with your benchrest stuff or just sandbags. He has a backstop setup at 100ds. You still have the wind to contend with and you have to go outside to change targets, but it's sure an awesome setup in the winter/hot summer. You can do load development/adjustment right there.

If you've got the land it's probably a more realistic solution? Let me know if you get serious about this...depending on where you are I'd contribute sweat equity, $$, or "buy" a membership!

I fill your pain, I live about two blocks from Barnes Bullets and my neighbor works there either the prick is just pretending to like me, or he is really a floor sweeper either way I haven't been in there. But I am supposed to help my father-in-law build one this summer, he has 120 YDS of 6' concrete pipe and plenty of ground, so if anyone has some more pics I need some ideas of how the rooms at the start and end of the underground range look.

Depending on how much $$$ you have lying around. New 24" pipe, either metal or concrete is going to run you close to $40 a foot, and 36" pipe will be pushing the $90 a foot mark. Plastic is even more, about 10-15% more... Throw in the cost of digging the hole and backfilling, and you're easily going to be into it over $20,000 for a simple 100 yard 24" set up.

I do know a guy that has one though. He had a 30 yard pistol range and a 100 yard underground 24" pipe range too. If I remember right, the backstop cost him over a grand... He used a piece of 3/4" solid steel plate at about a 15 degree angle, down. It worked pretty slick.

It sounds like a great idea and I'd love to have one too, but the shear cost would be preventative for me.

What would be the ultimate underground range is about 25 miles from me, 4281 feet of abandoned railroad tunnel.

http://www.vtunderground.com/other/blueridge.htm

quote:

Originally posted by hawkins:
Somewhere it was mentioned that someone had old semi trailers lined up for a covered range.
Probably looked like hell, but it would work.
Good Luck!

I see 45' ones at auctions for about $800-1000 each x 7 = 100 yards = $6-7000. Plenty of room too (8' x 8').