mortar racks

[natedogg284752]

I'm going to be building racks here starting soon, i have seen people use steel banding on the racks, in case of detention. I have heard controversial things about it, thoughts???

[Rick_In_Tampa]

I'm going to be building racks here starting soon, i have seen people use steel banding on the racks, in case of detention. I have heard controversial things about it,
thoughts???

Adding a potential source of shrapnel to your rack design is not a great idea IMHO. Again, IMHO if the risk was that great, most (if not all) commercially made and sold racks would already come with steel banding.

[natedogg284752]

so you don't recommend adding steel banding but commercial racks do have banding??? I'm a little confused.. IMHO i think if a 3 or even a 6 blew up. no matter what kinda bracing or how well your racks put together.. i would imagine its going to come apart. just didn't know if maybe the banding would keep some of it contained. and maybe the other tubes pointing up.

[Rick_In_Tampa]

so you don't recommend adding steel banding but commercial racks do have banding??? I'm a little confused.. IMHO i think if a 3 or even a 6 blew up. no matter what kinda bracing or how well your racks put together.. i would imagine its going to come apart. just didn't know if maybe the banding would keep some of it contained. and maybe the other tubes pointing up.

No commercially produced rack that I'm aware of comes with steel banding. Sorry if I wasn't clear about that. My point was/is: if adding steel banding was a good safety idea, the commercial vendors of this type product would already be doing it. In fact, the Consumer Product Safety Commission would probably mandate they do it! They're not.

If you're talking about shooting 6" mortars, then we're not talking about consumer racks, and your crowd had better be (here we go with the math again!) 450' back minimum anyway. At 150 yards, if one of those puppies lets loose, there's not a high likelihood anyone would get hit with anything. So... I just don't see the need for steel banding. Build it strong enough and load them right, and you should be just fine.

Again, just my humble opinion. I'm sure there are other opinions out there. Do what you think is right for you and gives you the piece of mind you desire. It's your show! Just make sure you comply with all the best practices and safety requirements and you'll be fine.

[natedogg284752]

how do you recommend building bigger shell racks. just by using 2x8 on the bottoms and sides, and use what for the cross braces?

[Rick_In_Tampa]

how do you recommend building bigger shell racks. just by using 2x8 on the bottoms and sides, and use what for the cross braces?

Here are a few pictures of the setup from a shoot we were part of last month. The tubes are 3" and 4".
1308
.
1309

I didn't build these, so I'm not going to tell you I know the dimensions, but you can probably guess they're something like 2"x6" deck planks.

[natedogg284752]

I have seen this building style before but never used it. We usually use rebar and make one big line. We usually go one at a time down the line. I've seen a couple videos where Dave goes from rack to rack giving himself distance before it goes off. That seems like a better idea then what we do.