Well guys, figured why reinvent the wheel, or metal dinger for that matter? why not ask those of you who have probably done it.

Was thinking about making a metal dinger of some sort for shooting with the 375 and smaller at 100 yds. I have a torch and welder so can play with the thicker metal. I have some 3/8" plate, but somehow don't figure that will be thick enough.

What plate do I need and what design works? I want something that sends them into the dirt after they hit, not the sky. I'm looking for the immediate audible that lets you know you are diong it right, read an article a couple years back about why metal targets help you learn faster. blah blah. anyways, it's fun too. the range i went to for a while had one till I guess enough guys shot at the connectors and busted it and they didn't bother to fix it.

Red

Red, if you do not realy care how long it last and have plenty of plate, 3/8" will do. It will get beat up and holely PDQ. A hard plate like AR400 will hold hup a lot better, 1/2"+ for the size of rifles you are talking about.(2-3X$ over A-36)

Set the top edge leanning towards you. This will send the splatter down and to the sides. If you are making knock-downs, then welding you target to a base plate will do. If you want it to remain in place, use a frame and welding heavy chains to it and the back side of the target will let it "dance". Weld it with 7018 or better to hold the longest. This will need to be rewelded from time to time, as this is very. T-1 will hold up about the best but it is expensive and will not weld without pre and post heating( a real PITA). Or plasma torch holes and bolt to chains with grade 8 bolts.

Keith

I have three, one 10x12, one 6x9, one 6" round, all by 1/2 inch thick, and a portable frame to hang them from.

I have heard 100 yards is too close, two hundred being considered the safe distance.

With 3/8's plate I'd triple them up, plug welding the outside pieces to the center plate.

Angling the plate at 45 degrees by four chains should keep the hits low. Your target will present a smaller sight picture than it would if hanging verticle.

Dividing the heighth you want the sight picture to be by .707 (or 11/16's) will give you the heighth the actual target needs to be, with the plate hung at 45 degrees.

I spray paint my gongs flat white so I can see the hit (funny, sometimes I don't see any, and the plate doesn't move).

FWIW, I shot one of mine at 50 yards with a 40gr 22 Mag and it put a shallow dent in the plate.

Brass dingers are a little safer to use as they absorb a little of the impact and tend to drop the bullets right under the gong.

I welded one for 4-H with little 3/8" pieces of metal for a spinner. I'm not sure how bigger guns would react, but it sends .22 bullets straight below it.

We used to hand nice chunks of oilfield pipe from wire. It makes a really nice noise when you smack it. The 22-250 would shoot through it though. I dont know what a larger slower bullet would do. You can hang 2 or 3 with different lengths for different tones. super fun with 22lr at long distances

I once made a 10" x 12" dinger from 1 1/2" thick mild steel thinking that it would be just the ticket for durability. "Big Bertha" was certainly hellforstout but after the face got cratered a bit, I had a couple of instances of comebackers. This isn't much of a testament to my intellegence but I shot a box of 50 at it with a .22 and noticed multiple ricochets in my direction. Ya, it was stupid to not stop immediately but the final straw was when my friend fired his 416 Rem loaded with some old style Barnes 400gr SN at it. Immediately on the heels of the shot, a BIG, shiny, jagged looking chunk of copper and lead pitched right past our heads as if someone chucked a baseball at us! With the craters, perpendicular face, and heavy weight, it was a certain recipe for throwing them back at you. I got rid of it and went back to making plates more often.

Since then, my rule for practice closer than 100 yards is to never shoot anything but cast bullets, preferably with loads up to 2000fps max, and brittle slugs, preferably on plates with flat faces angled slightly downward. The bullets then tend to fragment and disperse parallel and downward along the plate surface. I'm not confident that most full power big bore loads have enough speed to fragment their typically tough bullets on a steel plate. If you're making swingers, you'll have to get a little fancy with the hangers to get them to hang at an angle.

Ooo, that reminds me, be careful of those round sections of pipe! I'll stick my neck out again and admit my stupidity but with that same .22 and a nice piece of pipe that rang like a bell, I think sometimes would, if a bullet managed to hit the inside curve of the pipe, it would slip along the inside of the pipe and fly out in who knows what direction.

That reminds me of another good one! I once had a 150 grain Hornady SP out of an '06 completely shed it's core, invert the jacket into a jagged tube, and richochet directly backwards to imbed itself in the front of my 50 yard bench after a session of 2-300 yard offhand practice.

Please note that all of this was back in my young and foolish days and that I'm not so young anymore

3/8" plate at 30yds is no match for the 375 H&H--I made up some spinners using a 36" metal foundation forming stake, some washers, some coupling nuts and plate steel or 1/4" and 3/8"--I welded a washer onto the stake and welded two plates opposite each other on the coupling nut and then slipped it over the stake end and then welded another washer on top of that--I then just slipped the last spinner on to the stake--made it lighter to carry---the beauty of this system is you can move it around to different distances, but you need thicker plate steel, even though the plates would spin around the 375 punched a 1/2" hole right thru and 222 rem mag up to 300 win mag made pretty good divots in the plates---kids loved shooting the 22 at it which was its main purpose---chris

following the thread- the first one I made was a round one, 6 inches in diameter, 5/16's thick. I shot it at 120 yards with a 243, and it punched holes in the plate like they were done on a machine- a little flash around the hole, and that was it.

The cheapest dingers I found were 1500 series blind flanges at scrap yards. You need to be around a yard that buys from refineries or the like. But a 1500 series flange is hard to wear out.

The rail road plates that the rails sit on are very tough and hold to to gun shots pretty well.

Keith

If it's mild steel, 3/8" isn't good for much more than 22rf. I damn near shot through 1" mild with the 458 lott, and I was shooting hornady softs

And in the that was really stupid catagory, I shot not one, but two rounds of steel core 8X57 ap at the plate. You'd think the strange wizzing sound would have clued me in after the first shot

I have some 3/4" 316 ss plates that have held up to some pretty stiff loads at 50yrds.Mild steel is pretty worthless in less than 1 inch thickness.-Rob

Some railroad tie plates are cast. You'll know it if you get one. Some of the other ones I've destroyed gave good service though. I'm my experience with shooting whatever I can get my hands on, if it's hard enough to resist cratering, it's bound to crack and crumble. But what the hell, destroying something with bullets is half the fun!

Thanks guys, I will talk to my uncle and see if we can't find some really hard steel, we have a couple of good scrap yards around. I don't know if what I have is mild or not, I just bought a huge piece of it at the scrap yard to build my belt grinder out of (mounting plates).

Red

Check out mgmtargets.com.

His stuff is very good.

It has been my experience too that if it the metal was hard enough to resist cratering from bullet impact sooner or later it'll crack and break all to pieces.

I get some steel from a machine shop and also use the railroad tie plates as well.

Instead of welding a chain onto the plate, I cut a hole in the center about a 1/3 of the way down from the top of the plate.... big enough pass a couple of links of chain thru (from the back to the front) and use a chain hook to secure it (the hook then lies flat on the face of the plate).

This does 3 things.
#1, it makes the plate hang at an angle so the bullet splash goes down
#2 The plate faces me and will dance around/move when hit, but will return to face me (most of the time).
#3, its easy to repair when a bullet cuts the chain.

Mine are hanging from an "H" brace (like in a barbed wire fence) made from pipe placed at 100, 200, & 300 yards. Oh yeah, I shoot on my own property, so no need to move them around.

Hang another one with cable tied to a swivel welded to the top of the plate and use it for trigger control on follow up shots while its spinning and dancing around.

HAMMER'em

A 12" 150 Blind Flange works resly well @ 100 yds!

Hammer, do you have a picture or can you explain further? Is it a single hole, chain passed back to front. Where do you secure the chain hook? thanks, Bob

Bob,

Single hole center right/left about a third of the way down your plate. Make it just large enough for the chain links to slip thru.

I usually start out with about 6' of chain, tie the tail end around the center part of the "H" " with a half hitch" so that the working end is at the desired height...pick up the plate, while holding the hook in 1 hand..... stick the chain thru from back to front, just put the hook on behind the first link. When you release the weight the hook will pull it back up against the "face" of the plate.

Just wrap the remaining chain around the pipe H. When it gets shot in to, just re-adjust for length and re-hook.

It is infinitely easier to tie the chain to proper height without the plate on it, and then put it together.

Never done pics....I just moved into the digital "camera" age. I can take one, but have yet to download one to MY computer or post one here. I saw Terry's instructions but have yet to actually..............put forth the effort to use them.

But I need do need to learn.

A picture would be worth more than a thousand of my feeble words of explanation .

Thanks, I think I got it. The hook doesn't hook to anything, just flattens against the plate and holds the plate up. Do you find with a single chain that the plate faces the shooter instead of twisting around? bob