Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Seven Ounce, Non-Woven Geotextile

I'm always looking for backstop material for our wax bullet ranges that don't break the bank.  What we need is something that will stop a wax bullet reliably, and as in all shooting spots, economics is an issue.

The Association recommends ballistic nylon or good archery netting, but those things get pricey.  The last time I looked at archery netting a 10X20 would cost about $200.00 and that's not even half of what I need to make a good backstop.

However, there are construction materials that are very strong and we've been using some material at Thorn Valley for the past couple of years that's very good backdrop.  It stops the bullets well, is virtually indestructible, and because it is a construction material, is fairly economic.  As it turns out, this stuff is a geotextile fabric used as an underlayment for asphalt roads.  A good friend, fellow shooter, gave me the code and told me where to find it

They call this stuff 7-ounce filter cloth and I found mine at a local merchant,  Construction Materials, in Alexandria, LA.  I wandered in there today after work, and they knew just exactly what I was talking about.  As it turns out, they sell a bunch of this stuff to road contractors, and out DOTD tests every roll that they sell.  They had a 15'x15 piece and gave it to me for testing.

As I suspected, it works great.



The best part is that a roll of this material, 15X300 costs only $400.00.  The guy told me that if I cane in with good, green, folding money, the cash discount would bring the bill to about $350.00.

I may have found a nearly perfect backstop material.

1 comment:

Old NFO said...

THAT is a nice find! :-)