anyone got any info on pipe range designs? I'm thinking of building one 100m long, so need to know about minimum pipe diameter, ventilation and lighting

Cheers

Grant

Bigger is better but will of course cost more. I would think that 36" would do nicely. As far as lighting I think that "at the end of the tunnel" is all that is needed. I'll let someone else adress the ventilation issue.

Is it going to be burried under ground and can you use a T intersection pipe to have an upright section at the 35 and 70 yd mark that may have a perspex top for light and holes in the side for ventilation or air flow.

This is an interesting post!

I thought about it a lot. I would want at least 36 inchs 48 inch or more would be better.

Being able to afford it is another thing.

I had the idea of building a tunnel with 24 or 30" PVC schedule 40 pipe until I looked into the cost. The 24" pipe was $48 per foot. That would make it close to $15000 for 100 yards of pipe. A friend of mine has a 48" concrete tunnel that would be better than a 48" corrugated steel tunnel. I shot in Gene Beggs 48" diameter tunnel and it shot well. Every once in awhile you had to turn the vent fans on to clear out the tunnel. Running the vent fans continuously caused groups to enlarge.

We have an underground range, 100 yards.

It has two extractor fans, one at 35 yards and one past the 100 yards line.

They are both installed on top of a sort of chimney.

We heard that the air from the extractors disrupts groups, so we ran a test.

We used a Hall action heavy bench rest rifle in 6mm PPC.

This rifle was built by Dwight Scott, and very well known gunsmith in the bench rest fraternity.

The rifle shoots incredible groups - some as small as 0.02" as far as we could tell.

We fired a number of groups, over several days.
Half were fired with the extractors on, and half with the extractors were off.

We could not detect any discernible differences in the groups over all.

May be the extractors in our range are not as powerful as I have seen in other ranges.

Saeed;

In Ireland they have Leprechauns to blame for wandering bullets, in the US we have Gremlins and I'd bet you fellows in the Mid East have Jinns.

jim

rebar, chicken wire and shotcrete "A" frame

This isn't quite a pipe range, but I've shot in a 50 yard indoor range that is an extended tractor shed. Not my place but I really wish it was!



The extension is approx. 40 yards long and 7x7' wide/tall with steel frame/walls like the rest of the building. The "bench" is a 3x3x3' concrete cube and there is one spotlight on the target. It works very well for testing rifles.

That just reminded me of the "Houston Warehouse". Now that would be a set=up for testing.

Many years ago a friend, whose father had been in the chicken business, let us use one of the no longer used chicken houses as a shooting range. We built a bench outside at one end and set the target stand outside at the other.
We had a 200 and some foot noise suppressor so as to not disturb the neighbors.

Jim

I thought about buying a well used no longer road worth semi trailer for the same effect.

Years ago, we used a tunnel made of steel 55 gallon drums with the ends cut out, welded together.

The drums were free, the welder was free, it was cheap...............and worked well!

A hunting buddy married this fine young lady whose father owned two insulated seed warehouses, 350yds long, by 200yds wide, with 60 foot ceilings. Low speed air fans in the ceilings about every 100 feet. It stayed about 72-degrees, +/- a degree or two, and about 15-percent humidity.

We made a backstop out of 1" plate on three sides, six feet tall and square. The box had about two feet of pea gravel in the bottom. It was on 6" casters. The open side had conveyor belt and got targets stapled to it.

It is amazing how small a group can be shot in "zero" conditions, but equally irritating when the 5-shot groups have any spread. Fred Sinclair built me a LV 6ppc on an old 40X SS action I had, and the late, great Wally Siebert had converted a Unertl for me. The only weak link in the system is the shooter.

I was heartbroken when they moved to Denver.

Evan K - You are missing a scope ring!

quote:

Originally posted by Lucky Punk:
Evan K - You are missing a scope ring!

Yes it would seem so. There was one Kelbly double-screw scope ring attaching the March to the Turbo. Some rimfire benchrest shooters believe a one-ring attachment system is better than two rings. Personally I stick with two rings but the gentleman who owns that rifle wanted to give one ring a try.

For what its worth, the rifle did shoot very well with just one ring and it didn't seem too different, but I have a feeling it would have shot well with two scope rings too.

quote:

Originally posted by Mike Bryant:
I had the idea of building a tunnel with 24 or 30" PVC schedule 40 pipe until I looked into the cost. The 24" pipe was $48 per foot. That would make it close to $15000 for 100 yards of pipe. A friend of mine has a 48" concrete tunnel that would be better than a 48" corrugated steel tunnel. I shot in Gene Beggs 48" diameter tunnel and it shot well. Every once in awhile you had to turn the vent fans on to clear out the tunnel. Running the vent fans continuously caused groups to enlarge.

Perhap's you should look into damaged ocean cargo container and link them together.

I have found a cheaper source or "piping" HVAC guys make ducting form 0.55mm gauge galve steel sheeting.

600mm diam works out at around nz$50/m, which is viable for 100m so I have bought 12m and dug it into the ground to test. Seems to work ok, and is rigid enough to take 12" of dirt over it but obviously want take any load so will need to keep stock off it.

Now need to extend to 100m!

Rebar, chicken wire and shotcrete is a good idea. Depending on how much rebar and shotcrete costs.
You might check.on the price of 24-36" dia plastic culverts. They are plenty tough. Trick is to get them bedded perfectly straight. You shouldn't need hurricane for wind to air it out. Unless you plan on sustained fire of a MaDuce. . Just gentle lifting flow of air thru.the tunnel.
I'm stocking up on old tires to make a muzzle blast and impact silencer.

The US military uses 18" plastic culvert with fiberglass insulation held in place with chicken wire as a silencer. 6 feet long will do it. Legal too.

Expanding on richj's comments:
Ferro-cement is a super-strong method, using inexpensive materials, but labor intensive. It involves a steel (re-bar and poultry netting) frame, called an armature. That is plastered with a cement-rich mortar mix. Total thickness for a structure like this would be around 3/4 tone inch. It could be built above or below ground.

Barges were built with the stuff during WWII, and in the 60's it was popular with home builders of boats. I think this was especially so in Australia and NZ,so there may be some folks there familiar with it. Books are available, too.

I once had a 46' Tahiti ketch of ferro-cement. tougher than whang leather. And no, it is not especially heavy.

Those monolithic dome homes use a very rich cement/shotcrete mix. 8 sack

Polyester balloon inflated with air
3" foam inside the balloon
rebar hanging from the foam
3" cement to cover the rebar

this is for a 40 foot diameter dome.

richj's comments recall the days of ferment and cement, R. Buckminster Fuller, geodesic domes, and young folks in tie-dyed shirts lugging buckets of mortar mix. Good stuff. The US military bought thousands of dome shelters from Fuller's company.

Aside: I have a scanned copy of "The Houston Warehouse" if anyone wants it. PM me with your address.

Far cry from Fuller I believe they are in Paris, Tx.

I got the first videos they did on VHS. They were touting a complete DIY but backed off of that when people were screwing up the foam shoot.

http://www.monolithic.org/domes