The Gun Counter

Scrap steel from a local manufactory. My buddy claims that it's 316 stainless and so hard that they have to use special tools just to deal with it.



Has anyone ever used this stuff for target material? I"m going to hang it out at the 100 yard line and see how it does.

Snort...enjoy your ricochet.

IMO with my experience in knives, hardness isn't what you want in a target ment to be shot at as hard stainless steels are much more shock prone than equally hard or softer carbon steels. I would expect chipping if not total catastrophic failure if you shot at it if it is as hard as they say it is. Still it is all theory, the only way to find out is to shoot at it. Depends on how thick the disc you got is as well, and it might hold up if it was adequately thick.

skb12172 wrote:Snort...enjoy your ricochet.

I'm not worried about ricochets. Any risk can be managed, and while a steel target might ricochet a bullet, it's my experience that when a standard cup-and-core bullet hits a flat steel plate, it comes apart. Not a ricochet at all, but the bullet itself fails spectacularly with lead splatter and total jacket destruction. What I am interested to see if if this steel will hold up to the impact or whether it will fail.

bubblewhip wrote:I would expect chipping if not total catastrophic failure if you shot at it if it is as hard as they say it is.

Yeah, that's the issue. Still, as you say, the only way to find out is to shoot it. I'll try to remember to take pictures and post an update when that happy event occurs.

316 stainless isn't that terribly hard, around 95 on the Rockwell B scale. It's used widely offshore.

That's about a $80-$90 target, D.

It's not that hard, it's slightly more rust resistant than 304 because of the slightly higher Nickel content, and oh, IT FRIGGIN' WORK HARDENS IF YOU LOOK AT WRONG.

If it doesn't chip it should work harden from all the impacts!