Home made brass catcher

[fpgt72]

I am looking for ideas, and hopefully some photos.

Getting a little nutty on finding brass.....I shoot mainly old military stuff, so finding 7.5 french is not going to happen during a trip to the walmarts.

The bolt guns are easy...but the automatics...that is a little different.

So guys lets hear and see your ideas.

 

[Chuck R.]

What's your ground like??

Off my bench area I use a simple canvas tarp and a couple electric fence posts:

I just run a couple flex ties through the tarp grommets and hang it on 2-3 posts. When the wind is up I put a couple brinks on pinning the edge to the ground. Could also use stakes, but I concreted in my bench pad a few years ago. Leave a trailing edge on the ground and the brass will hit the tarp and slide down for collection. Don't use a plastic tarp............. (ask me how I know...)

Sorry no pics of the tarp, was shooting a bolt gun on this day, but it sets up on the right edge of my pad:



Chuck

 

[Larryswn]

I usually shoot indoors so I bought a net bag made to hold soccer balls and stuff. The mouth is 3' in diameter so I just pin it up next to me and it works perfect. Go to Amazon it's called : Mesh equipment bag, 32"x36"

 

[Larryswn]

Used it for the first time yesterday, it's great. $9 or something. Cheap

 

[barnbwt]

Oddly enough, TFB had an article about this recently;
http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2017/03/20/indian-militarys-improvised-brass-catchers/

I thought the sheet metal boxes at the top were cool looking (MG08/15), but probably annoying in practice (and noisy). The soda bottles, while a bit ridiculous unless painted camo (see the article, lol), actually seemed somewhat clever to me; unscrew the cap and it's easy to neatly funnel your brass into a storage container, plus it's plenty large enough to prevent fouling the action while weighing/costing practically nothing. Pocket knife custom-fits it to any gun.

The sad part of these images is that such drastic measures are necessary in India, Japan, Korea, etc because gun control laws are so onerous and draconian that there would be tremendous temptation to sneak even empty cases off-base for black market sale were they not carefully accounted for after every maneuver. That, or the potential for suicide in private (not sure why the logic thinks they can't off themselves on the firing line like some do over here, but whatever). Makes one wonder about how reliable/trustworthy/loyal these fighters would be in real combat if their superiors are convinced they are all itching to offload their armament to criminals without constant supervision...

TCB

 

[fpgt72]

Ground is flat....think old pasture, I have stakes out at 25-50-70....need to clear more brush to go farther.

I am thinking perhaps a fitted bed sheet on some kind of PVC loop or something....it would be easy enough to move that way as I move between the distances.

 

[entropy]

Tarps work quite well; after 4-H, we just fold up the tarps we set down for prone shooting, and all the .22 brass just slides out one end into a bucket.

 

[Speedo66]

Good luck to the soldiers, you tend to do in action what you do in practice. They'll be worried about brass while being fired on.

It's happened to LEO's, dumping the brass from their revolvers into their hands and neatly putting them in their pockets as instructed by lazy range officers. Unfortunately, they've also done this while under fire because........ in a high stress situation, you tend to fall back on what you've been taught.

So in the past, dead cops have been found with brass in their pockets. Fortunately, the change to semi-autos has stopped this.