making a plate rack?

[seez52]

I'm thinking about making a plate rack to permanently install at my range. Anybody else done this?

 

I've shot them before at other places and they see like pretty good practice and fun too. The ones I've shot before have been the traditional falling plate with a pull rope to reset. I was thinking about making one with an auto reset to eliminate the rope. Something like this:

http://www.salutetargets.com/gravity-plate-rack.html

 

Kinda upside down from the standard falling rack. 

 

I've already ordered some AR500 3/8" plates, 8" in diameter. My question is what would it take to hit the plates and have them lock in the up position? The one in the video uses 5.5 inch plates and they are shooting it with .45s mostly. My concern is that a 9mm might not lock it up and certainly a .380 would be iffy.

 

With the regular falling type rack there's usually an adjustment built in so that even .22s can knock them over. 

 

I like the idea of blasting through them without having to stop and reset. But it's not going to be much fun if they don't lock up.

[peejman]

Cool idea. The plates you've ordered are pretty heavy. You might could design in a spring assist or counter-weight that could be connected so it functions properly with smaller calibers.

[peejman]

double tap. Edited November 27, 2015 by peejman

[seez52]

Cool idea. The plates you've ordered are pretty heavy. You might could design in a spring assist or counter-weight that could be connected so it functions properly with smaller calibers.

my son suggested a counter weight that could be changed out. I hadn't really thought about that but it sounds like a good idea. I was thinking more along the lines of a torsion spring. Counter weight would probably work better and easier to adjust.

[seez52]

just about to get it ready for a first run through. I've used mostly scrap, other than the plates and few misc. pieces. I had hoped to finish it this weekend, still need one piece of angle iron. Anxious to see how it works. Still need to mount a couple of the plates and determine how it's going to be mounted.

 

 

[Dirtshooter]

If you are going to put this upside down it looks to me like the angle on the frame would cause a high miss to be deflected, but may just be an optical allusion. I love shooting plates, although they can be intimidating as a miss is hard to figure as opposed to a miss on paper. Looks good, but your shop is way to clean to actually do any work. LOL