Unknown Steel

Last week, I talked about steel targets, and the challenges of hanging them so that grandkids wouldn't destroy them with gunfire.  You might recall this photo from last week, where I hanged some targets from discarded fire hose.

That target on the right is good, AR500 steel, and it's absorbed lots of strikes from everything from .22LR to 7mm Rem Mag, and it continues to satisfy with a good "thunk" and no deformation.  Of course, we follow all safety precautions and don't shoot centerfire rifle at it any closer than 100 yards.  However, it's that little steel plate on the left that I was uncertain about.

An acquaintance who knows I like to shoot steel targets brought me several of those little Mickey Mouse targets.  They're some sort of blind flange that his company makes and he told me that they're the hardest steel that he ever tried to cut, and thought that they might be suitable for target material.  These particular ones didn't spec out to the customers needs so he saved them from the scrap pile and brought then to me in the off-chance they might be good target material.  I agreed to give them a go, and until this morning I haven't had the opportunity to pull a trigger on them.

This morning, after finishing my chores on the land, I pulled the truck around to our range, laid a roll of carpet across the hood of the truck, took out my rifle, and sent one shot downrange.  The target swung, hit solidly, and I cleared the rifle to walk downrange.  I was shooting my rifle, a Savage 110 in .30-06, and the ammo is my load of good Reloder 19 pushing a 150 grain Hornady SST at about 2900 fps.

I walked downrange to find that the little target isn't very hard.  That 150 grain bullet punched completely through it, and left a really interesting spall wound on the face of the target.

Ain't that interesting?  I don't know what type steel that is, but it darn sure isn't target steel.  I guess I"ll have to buy a couple more of these Quality Steel targets, because that unknown steel doesn't look like it will hold up to standard centerfire rounds.

But, you never know until you try.