Pellet Trap for 10m Air Pistol

After making the pellet trap I posted earlier, I discovered that it was overkill for stoping a pellet from an Airgun. My former trap was filled with rubber mulch. I found that pellets did not penetrate the rubber very far and many simply bounced off. It also proved to be heavy, messy, and required repair from time to time. This is my better solution!

One standard plastic Milk Crate

Pieces of Rubber Mat

Various wooden sticks and blocks

Cardboard

Staple gun

Screws, washers, wire, etc.

This is the finished project. The idea here was to create “flaps” for pellets to get caught in. The flapss are hanging strips of rubber floor mat. It may remind one of those hanging strips in a car wash. Pellets go quietly into this jungle and fall to the bottom. The trap easily absorbs the shock from a 7gr pellet hitting at about 5lbs from my pistol.

Other ideas I’ve seen on the web include shooting into an old sofa cushion, using a cardboard box full of more cardboard or clothes, using some relative expensive putty backstop, or that rubber mulch, or one of those expensive and loud steel traps. Other than the steel trap, these other systems retain the embedded lead pellets that then end up in a landfill or somewhere worse.

Starting with the milk crate, I attached two side panels having two vertical sticks front and back. These support horizontal strips that act as rails. Leave a 1” space between the top of the rail and the inside top of the milk crate. I fit a floor made of a piece of mat board into the bottom slanting backwards. As pellets fall onto this floor they roll down the slant and collect at the back. I drilled a 3/8” hole at the back corner to remove the pellets. The pellets can now be collected and recycled/disposed of responsibly!

Cut crossbars to hang flaps from. These can be 3/4”x 3/4” and about 11” long. Make this length a bit loose side to side when supported by the two side rails. Cut pieces of rubber mat to fit the height and width of the open space loosely. I happened to have on hand scraps of floor runner (HD sells similar in a roll by the foot). The piece of mat is attached to the crossbar with a staple gun. It should be long enough to come close to the floor but not touch it and should swing freely. I then cut the first two layers into 1/2” wide strips. The third layer 1” strips. The fourth layer 1 1/2” and so on. I made the cuts in one layer line up with middle of the strip behind it. I made seven layers but, as it turns out, three or four layers would have been plenty.

Slide the rearmost crossbar along the rails to the back. Add a 3/4” spacer block to each side. Add the next layer forward. Then spacers and the next layer and so on. Finish with a final crossbar that is ripped to fit between the front layer and flush with the side posts. Make the length a snug press in fit. The targets are attached to this piece with push pins.

Here is what it looks like after about 300 shots. The heavy white background paper is shredded. From the pattern you can see that I positioned the target in different locations side to side to keep the center from taking all the impact. Removing the paper and tilting the crate backwards, the pellets can be emptied by pushing them out hole or shaking them out if you make the hole bigger than 3/8”. Here are some pellets showing that as they have passed through the trap they have deformed and lost their energy.