Use of a 2x6 lumber barrier against "Cowboy" rifle/soft lead loads at 100yds

I would have to see a single pellet of birdshot cut a 2x4 in half before I would believe it. Cause a very low quality drawn and cracked 2x4 to finish cracking into, yeah. Cut one into, NEGATIVE.
 
It takes about a foot thickness of wood to reliably stop most bullets.
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Depends entirely upon the bullet in question, it's velocity and the wood used.

I've seen 55gr .223 bullets fired from the 600 yard line stopped by the wood target frame ......

The soft yellow pine/fir used in most modern framing lumber is not very dense or hard. It won't stop much of anything. Old growth white oak and hickory, some of the exotics like jatoba, ironwood, or mesquite, or antique heart pine/vertical grain fir, OTH, are hard as bricks.
 
It takes about a foot thickness of wood to reliably stop most bullets.
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Depends entirely upon the bullet in question, it's velocity and the wood used.
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Absolutely. 400gr .45caliber MV 1800fps approx. Found over two FEET deep in elm tree trunk. May not fit in your definition of "most bullets" but it was one of mine, either from a .45-70, or a .458 Win.
 
Some have spoken of shooting "tires filled with dirt." We did most of our live fire SWAT training in "tire houses." They were constructed from tires filled with a mixture of clay and gravel. They work well, for the most part. We shot tens of thousands of rounds and never had any wall pass throughs. We would be in rooms shooting with only the tire walls separating us. With proper maintenance, the tire walls are very safe for stopping the bullets. The problems we had were with buck shot and suppressed sub sonic .40 S&W. They would ricochet and hit you hard. The first ricochet and hit with the buckshot and we banned shotguns. First time it happened with the .40, we banned subsonic ammo. I got hit by the buckshot ricochet. It went through BDU long sleeve shirt and ballistic nylon over jacket and broke the skin on my arm. It bruised up pretty good. Funny, wearing level 4/3 body armor and I get hit in one of the few places not covered.:rolleyes:
 
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I shoot alot in the yard. One thing I did was (to make my shooting chores easier) I used an apprx 10"x10" card board box that was about 18" tall filled with dirt and very firmly tamped. 22lr at about 30' will not make it through. After the 50th or so round in the same spot you start making a hole and one or two will sneak out. Retamp. Ofcourse where it is located there is no danger of a stray bullet harming anyone and its ONLY for my 22lr But it works great. Now I can shoot off the back porch right outside the back door. Just be careful and aware.
 
One of the original "Forensic Files" aired an episode of lumber being used (inadequately) as a pistol backstop. The "magic bullet" traveled quite the distance through lumber, barely over the mound, and into a building through a few walls of sheetmetal, and struck a teenage boy in the head, killing him.

You couldn't duplicate that shot in 1000 tries. If that bullet or the shooter or the victim done anything different that day, including a hiccup, the tragedy would have been avoided.

But one lesson was that the lumber backstops were inadequate and IIRC there was a multi-million dollar lawsuit settled for the victims estate.
 
My rimfire and occasional pistol backstop is 3" thick (actual) oak boards I scavenged from somewhere long ago with 6x6 lumber backing that up. I haven't found any evidence of anything making it through that thus far, in fact the .22 only penetrates the oak a quarter inch or so.

But it's 1800 yards beyond that to an isolated structure, and that's through several stands of thick woods and not in a straight line. You'd pretty much have to aim at the sky to hit that with what I shoot there.
 
When I was young I got some railroad ties and made a wall by sandwiching them between cedar poles. I had some 1/4 metal strips I put behind on the seams where they were not flush. Put a LOT of led in those ties for many years before the cedar posts rotted out.
 
Wood is a lousy backstop. You're generally using a softwood, like hemlock, fir, or pine, plantation grown with open cellular structure. Then it's nearly always used in small dimensions like 2x6 or 4x4, laid with the smallest dimension perpendicular to the firing line. Even worse, it waterlogs, gets soft, and loses cellular structure in a year or two outdoors.

You can use to contain your earth berm, but not as a barrier. It's worthless for that.
 
Wood is a fine backstop, once you get the right kind, and ENOUGH of it. A couple of FEET of solid hardwood works pretty well...anything less..not so much.. :D

not even remotely cheap to do it that way, though. Dirt is much better.
 
Yesterday the same load (44-40/soft lead/1,250fps) went through
six separate sheets of 3/8" plywood clamped together.

Stopped up against the seventh....
 
Dirt....and with enough shooting --- the backstop will turn into a solid mass of copper, lead and steel --- that is covered by a layer of dirt.
 
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