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John Cooper | all galleries >> Galleries >> Ham and Petersham Rifle and Pistol Club > Half inch steel boiler plate, backstop for airguns, .177 only
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10-Oct-2019 John Victor Cooper

Half inch steel boiler plate, backstop for airguns, .177 only

This was a smooth steel surface. After many, many tens of thousands of .177 pellets have hit it, it is very much pitted. I am very surprised at this as the pellets only have less than 6 foot pounds of energy in each one.

Canon EOS 7D Mark II
1/400s f/8.0 at 135.0mm iso3200 full exif

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John Cooper19-Jan-2025 19:37
Could be Tom, but the fact that the texture is exactly the same size as the circle on the Air gun target on every plate is difficult to ignore
Tom Beech19-Jan-2025 14:52
Very interesting John, What comes to mind is that these steel plates were used as a backing for arc welding projects to protect a workbench etc. That surface looks a lot like what is called "popcorn weld" where the welding wire did not penetrate the steel plate and just attached to the surface.
Could they be old used plates that started out with this texture when placed behind targets ?

Just exercising the imagination a bit..
John Cooper14-Jan-2025 00:02
Tom
If someone had told me that the pellets could do that, I absolutely would have refused to believe it. I found a pile of the plates about 8 inch square. the centre of the plates about 4 inches round had all that damage. I was puzzled as to what did the damage. Someone told me they were the plates put behind the airgun targets to stop the pellets damaging the wall.
And they had been there many years, he guessed about 40 years or possibly more. There was no one there who remembered them being put up.
At first i refused to believe the pellets could have done that. But looking at them with a large magnifying glass I saw some pellets jammed in the rough surface.
I still find it hard to believe.
I will ask around to see if there are any plates left, I have not seen them for a while.
Tom Beech13-Jan-2025 21:56
And to think, boiler plate typically has a Brinell Hardness number in the range of 300-500 HB and the typical lead pellet has a Brinell Hardness of around 4-5 HB
John Cooper11-Jan-2025 22:45
Tom it is really difficult to believe when you see the damage to the steel plate
But finding the pellets wedged in the plate, is irrefutable evidence.
Tom Beech11-Jan-2025 15:15
Very interesting, sure doesn't seem like the .177 lead pellets could do this damage to steel
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