Steele hardness?

Hey everyone, just a quick question about making your own Steele targets. I can get round plates from where I work but I'm wondering how hard should they be for general shooting up to a .45? I have the ability to check hardness with a Versitron hardness tester which will give me a reading on the Rockwell C scale or I can do a Brunelle test with a king hardness indenter. Also, is there a certain type of Steele that is better, if I had to choose between 4140 grade or 6418? What about plate thickness? Any advise would be awesome? If this info is already in a tread could someone please post a link? Thanks, and be safe out there.
 
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Start by spelling it STEEL. HT to 45-50 HRc. You're looking for toughness more than hardness . 4140 is great for anvils , hammers and target plates at those hardnesses. Angle the plates down and back so the bullets hit an bounce down to the ground.Don't shoot beyond 25 yds for 45 acp handguns.
 
The usual good quality commercial steel target is AR500.
I cannot find the actual alloy, apparently it differs from brand to brand.
It is heat treated to Brinnell 500 or so, about RC 52.
There are some AR 350-400 targets still around, pistol use only.

I don't know what 4140 or 6418 would do at that hardness.
 
There is no way to know either the alloy or the hardness, but the indoor range where I shoot has a plate rack. The rack was there when the current operator of the range took over the business eleven years ago, and it was old then. The plates were a full inch thick. They were also badly cratered, resulting in unpredictable ricochets of bullet fragments. (This is all from handgun ammo -- the range has never allowed centerfire rifle because the backstop isn't capable of handling it.)

About three years ago, early during one of the Thursday night competitions, one of the better competitors took a fairly significant wound in the leg from a fragment that bounced back about 20 yards after hitting the plate, and struck the guy in the lower leg. The wound was bad enough that he was taken to the emergency room to be patched up.

At that point, the plate rack was retired and the range operator ordered a set of new plates made from some kind of steel that's made to stand up to gunfire -- possibly/probably the aforementioned AR500, but I don't know. The new plates are only 1/2-inch thick, so they perform much better (the old plates often wouldn't fall when hit squarely with a 9mm bullet), and there isn't a hint of cratering.

Getting the right alloy is crucial.

And I concur -- the word is "steel," without an 'E' at the end, and it isn't a proper name so it doesn't get capitalized.
 
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