Now This Is FUN!!

This is the target our friend Milt showed me how to make so we can target practice right on our front porch or about anywhere. It's real easy to make and only takes a few minutes. It is 1/2 inch Schedule 40 PVC. Home Depot sells these 2 inch pieces of it and it takes 9 of them and 6 Tee’s and 4 elbows and that’s it.  The one above is not even glued together, I can take it apart and store it if I want to. It works out so the plastic ammo falls down into the bottom of the back drop and you can reuse them.  All of the PVC pieces are 24 inches long, the only one I cut was the bottom feet and I just cut it in half.  Oh, it also takes 4 caps for the feet if you want to use them. 

   

This is a side view. You can use anything you want for the backdrop. Milt’s wife Jayne made a canvas backdrop for theirs but I just happened to have this old naugahyde window shade that we took out of the Motorhome when we put automatic shades in it. It works perfectly but even a heavy towel would work…..


What do we shoot this target with? Aw Ha, I knew you would ask. This is one of the types of guns you can use.  They are called “Air Guns”.  Some are spring driven, some are electric. There are Gas Guns that use CO2 or Green Gas.  Green Gas is simply Propane.  We use the Propane. Our pistol is a replica of a Glock, Milt has a Colt 1911 and another friend Jerry has a Smith and Weston. They even have revolvers.  Jerry loves his because he can use it while out riding his horse in the desert. It don't make enough noise to even scare his horse......


This is Ms. Pats real Glock, see how identical they are!   They are even close to the same weight. The slides are the same, they take down and come apart the same too. It's unreal!


If it wasn’t for the orange plastic tip on the Air Gun, you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart. The bright plastic tip on the barrel is, as I understand it, required by law.(not sure about that)  The magazine is filled with propane gas from a regular portable camp stove bottle. You can get lots of refills from each bottle. You can even get a special fitting that enables you to refill the small camp stove bottles from your BBQ grill bottle. Neat !!



This is the Ammo and the different gas bottles you can use to fill the Air Pistol.  It really is not a toy but I don’t believe it would do more than sting real good if you got hit with one of these light plastic bullets. I even doubt it would go through the screen on our screened in Porch. But I don’t know for sure!!  We are presently waiting on one of the special brass filling adaptors before we can shoot it.

This is Milt and Jayne in their back yard in Surprise, AZ with two of the targets. Milt is a long time Range and pistol shooter and extremly fast and accurate Maybe all this practice is why!! Jayne just began shooting with the girls class at Wickenburg sportsmans range, but she is becoming  proficient very quickly.

Milts gun just barely penetrated the cardboard target, then the bullets would hit the light canvas back, drop and fall right into the bottom pouch. So we will see.  I hope we don’t get any holes in our screens…. I have some scrap screen I will experiment on..   You should definitely always wear eye protection when using these guns or in the vicinity.. BE CAREFUL !!  Treat these as if they were REAL GUNS!! By the end of the week we should get our parts and be shootin!! As Milt says, this is a superb way to practice such things as trigger control and site placement and tune up your accuracy and even your presentation.  Plus, a little fun never hurt anybody…….right?

KCGAZ asked if we ever get any lead ricochets' when shooting the lead targets.  We never get any serious splatter from the soft lead bullets we shoot from the steel targets.  Once in a while you may get a little light splatter even when you're watching or from the adjacent bay but it is not enough to even sting or cut.  I suppose it may have happened in the past but that’s one good reason to wear eye protection even while watching or in the area.

Bob asked if there was a public holding company he should be looking into since we are having a shortage of loading components such as powder and primers. Well, it sure is getting scarce.  All the places I have checked are “out of stock” and “backordered” on these items. Where it will go from here, I don’t know. But if I were you and looking for an investment……..I would buy firearms themselves. I have never known anyone to lose any money on good name brand popular firearms. Far better than the Stock Market in my book! Plus, look at all the fun you can have playing with them!

That’s about it from here at North Ranch near Congress, AZ for the time being. I have to get busy loading up about 250 real bullets for us to shoot at the Range pistol match tomorrow.  

I have been meaning to welcome:

The Box Canyon Blogger…….
They have been aboard for a while now. I can’t find a blog for them but we are sure happy to have them drop in when ever they can….

God Bless you all..

Mike

This Blog is Published every Wednesday and Sunday..