Steel Targets Factory Tour | Tactical AR500 Targets

so we finished our 4-day class with TA target out here in Pennsylvania and I've never actually visited the shop even though we've worked with them for a number of years so we're out here today we're shooting a complete video start to finish how these things are made how they design them why they design them like they do why they're the best target on the market why we use them and of course we're visiting with the owners Jared Ethan and Kirby and you'll get to see in that future video start to finish how it's done [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so Jared what do we see going on behind you right now Ethan is loading up a sheet of our half-inch AR 550 which is pretty much the material that we are known for and what made us stand out from everybody else he's putting that up on our CNC table which burns out all of the products and pieces for all of our different assemblies everything from a tap tops to our target plates as we are walking over here to my business partner Ethan the dude behind all the production at Ta targets getting all this stuff scheduled and in process hey what are you burning so for any of you that know us and what we do that's the C zone plate 12 inches wide 24 inches tall and it's our favorite material the half-inch AR 550 when we started ta targets about a year into our company we started playing with half-inch AR 550 we saw that there were pretty substantial gains and strength audibility and durability of the target systems over AR 500 the downside of the AR 550 was the initial cost for raw material so those targets are going to be a little bit more expensive but what we found is they actually offer way more value to the end-user than selling just an industry standard AR 500 steel so over the last four years half inch AR 550 has pretty much overtaken our entire production as far as our materials are concerned one of the comments we always get is steel as steel and people mistakenly believe that they can pretty much grab any material off of some fabrication shops shelf and use it for targets and that's just simply not the case you could buy a AR 500 steel and many companies use this steel but when you buy a AR 500 steel there's a huge specification range that the mill is going to call it acceptable even though the mill says it's acceptable it may not actually be safe enough for you to use for your steel target for example you can buy a whole run of AR plate for example with AR 500 material you could order it from the mill and it could be as low as 470 on the Brinell hardness scale and that number is describing how hard the steel is so the problem with that is if you just buy standard AR 500 you may be getting really soft material and when it's at the bottom end of the spectrum it's not acceptable to use for steel targets many companies haven't made that distinction between the low end spec and high end spec and because of that there's targets on the market that just get destroyed prematurely and that was one of the driving forces behind us moving away from AR 500 steel so when we go into the AR 550 steel it's a much stronger material it's higher on the Brinell hardness scale and that equates to the strength of the steel and we also buy just from certain manufacturers of this AR 550 and the specification window on the AR 550 is much tighter than the AR 500 so you're gonna end up with a better product every single time you look if you look real at that plate it says our docks 550 but if you look closer it has in big bold letters there the middle number that's a lot number of steel we track that from start to finish and we put stickers behind the angles on every plate that gets sold every eight athletes to get sold that tracks back to the mill sheet so if we have issues we know this is the bachelor came from just to clarify that number is attached to this individual piece of steel you got a pallet of this stuff each one individual number like a barcode for that piece so if there's an issue customer calls then they didn't hold up which doesn't happen you would know that came from this piece you'd call your supplier no we know when we received the plate they have hardness certifications for the plate we know when we burn the plate and what products that went to I'm assuming most target makers are more interested in buying what's cheapest to cut yes so this is not what's cheap oh no this is not cheaper material starts the cheaper they can sell the brawler this is why we can and I've got some of your steel for several years that's been hit thousands and thousands of times and it's still smooth this is why this is why it starts with the raw material and that's probably 80% of your battle is you have to get really good material for that foundation and then after the material you move into the design and and the design has an effect on it as well but super cool yeah that's where it starts right here and that sheet it's super heavy it's 48 square feet and it weighs 20 pounds per square foot so it's not light so how much does that weigh over 800 pound wouldn't be 800 pounds yeah Wow over 800 pounds man-sized stuff you could pick that up yeah with I see it yeah that would be that this is dangerous stuff people get hurt right yeah we use equipment obviously the forklifts to move it around we have a crane which you can't see but it's overhead that has magnets that we can pick sheets up you guys that people that are in the machining and fabricating business this is old hat to them but to us that are the consumer it's pretty cool to see you of you've laid out and basically figured out how to just like mom rolling out cookies yeah you figured out how to get as many cookies out of the the roll of dough as possible yeah so it starts out like I said in the office over with me we have AutoCAD drawings that I create with the parts as we're going through different prototyping and different product development once we get to that end product the next step is making burn programs for it and with those burn programs I have a program called Omni wind that makes our nest which is like mix that just kind of like a cookie cutter sheet stacking them in as efficiently as possible because we don't want to waste a ton of material we want to get as much product out of it as possible and so after I nest the products they end up going out to our server which is gonna drop them on our CNC table and then Ethan our max can pull up the program set the table zero it and then pretty much hit the Go button from there how long will it take to cut all those where you got 16 pieces or something on there 20 pieces how long will that take I don't know half-hour so so then when you're done you you end up eventually you get a scrap pile of stuff like that and you guys have figured out ways to use that stuff to make like your fire ring and different things like that you've used your scraps for well pretty much everything at this point in our company has become what we call master programs we just fill sheets up we try to avoid scrap at all costs so even everything down to our paddles or brackets it's all as many as we can fit on a sheet that's what we call our master and we run them over and over and over and over again pull the inventory okay I'm with Kirby now the president of ta targets and we just showed you guys the table running burning some of the products and so we're gonna actually take a walk over here to our racks and show you what they look like when they are assembled so Mick let's going over here all right so this this is the stuff yeah I'm just gonna pick one up okay so that's cut off of what we just saw yes that's a finished plate it has its brackets folded onto it does do I see somebody did some grinding a little bit we touched the whole surface so there's no sharp edges okay that's all it requires just punch it just take that furlong Holt the angles to the back and that's where your head bracket fits in right there and your target pivots is that hole I see Sir this one this one's ready for paint grade five grade eight grade eight bolt and then mechanical locking nuts in the back just that they don't loosen up right away in the cost to tell you what I've got a couple of these that are several years old never replace the bolts and I've never tighten the bolt yeah that's pretty darn cool then these get these are going to the paint ones will go in the paint neck and we normally let product pile up so we have a full paint room these are why you have to load the paint guns up for however you don't want to just do you know 20 or 30 plates at a time we end up filling for complete get like a day of painting yes paint usually a couple days awesome a lot of thought going into everything yeah we're trying keep workflow efficient as possible keep the price yeah yeah can't afford to handle the product in any time so this stuff is bolted together you got some stuff like the bases yes so these would be an example of a product that would need fabrication whereas the atap target plates don't need any fabrication so now this one's already welded up this is ready for pain at this point anybody that's trained with us you guys have heard me we've done a number of videos on these awesome target base you got your regular popsicle sticks or the 2x4 and it's heavy enough that it doesn't blow over and flat ground or uneven ground you just dig it in a little bit take your whatever your wood application is and your way to go so I I was out at your range T a target range this past four days and I saw you guys had a really cool steel up right yeah so somebody that's kind of permanent set up where they're gonna get shot to heck we all know the two by fours get shot up yeah that's not gonna happen with that right and we've had requests for that from departments especially but even gun clubs because there's a lot of different applications where the customer is going to want them to be downrange but they don't want to have any risk of resetting anything just because it's a live firing line and then makes sense so that's coming with the steel wall the post yeah we've just been calling them armored hoes armored post yeah cool it's just a two-by-four does anybody else do that I've not seen it I don't think so people make steel post but they make them out of mild steel so if you hit them you're just gonna punch through yeah I like it totally durable leave it out in the rain it doesn't swell up no that's the pain in the butt anybody that uses a 2x4 into a bracket like this it gets rained on and then you're out there trying to get it apart cursing beating it so awesome these are my favorite faces you're never going to lose it never gonna never get tipped over don't need sandbags you've got the only the only downside is when you have somebody that doesn't know how to shoot and they shoot holes we have a solution for that come and sit better shooters that would be a good idea but no we have another just put a teaser out we do have another base coming soon with it's kind of that is completely armored up on the front so it serves a different purpose it looks totally different it's not going to be for everybody okay but for certain applications you know one or the other they're gonna fill every working long distance you got angle rights things like there you absolutely cannot risk it that base will fill that role by the way guys it's been like high 90s 95% humidity here in Pennsylvania for the last week in this shop holding this I have now broken a complete sweat yeah what's going on Lee what are you working on bassist Lee is the guy who does all the production stuff 48 targets he is the man behind all the welds and fabrication that you see on the targets so all of this stuff all the steel in my trailer all the steel on all the ranges across the USA he welded it this gentlemen welded pretty much everything I mean if he's busy with other stuff sometimes Ethan will jump in and and take over his little position here but yeah 99.9% has rolled through Lee's hands well I got to shake that guy's hand those are some sweet welds man thank you sidenote I've never had somebody ever email us and say hey my welds broke so yeah those are sweet welds I dig it how long have you worked here for years how do you like working for these guys would you say that even if the bosses weren't standing here yeah they take care of you [Music] look at the look at Kirby space here Kirby's like you better actually I can say having been around your family the last couple days having visited with you guys numerous times it's a great family environment this is a third-generation company here right look at that your business partner likes to give you a hug now this is your son's childhood best friend opted son yeah inspect almost as much time as my house as a kid as you did at his own house oh yeah yeah for nearly 20 years that says a lot as a business owner myself as a guy that's worked for people you see especially now everybody just goes where the grass is greener because they're always thinking you know I've got to find something better find something better you keep employees for 20 years that's saying something I dig it good stuff nice well then after this process would be paint you want to go check that out yeah I'd love to see the paint process okay so this is one of the paint areas you got you got another one over there with some different product in it today yeah got a lot of stuff going on in here super efficient wrapped out and these are bases yes so a lot of companies you get the stuff it's just metal yep why do you choose to spray it and what kind of paint do you use so anytime you buy anything when you open up the box what do you do you take it in you know what I mean you want that first impression so the first thing with the paint is you've spent a lot of money on the product okay and when you open that box you should get a finished product you want him to open it and be like oh hey I bought this ta target steel target yeah I want that effect and we want that effect on the customer because you've spent good money on your product there's something to be said about having a refined product in your package okay and then on top of that after the customer receives the product it's going to protect it from further rust so yet we've talked about a million times when you shoot the front of the plate you're going to chip off the paint the lead is going to cover the plate and that's gonna the front from rusting but there's probably a majority of the system untouched by yes and these guys sit in dirt and sand and mud so you put that nice it will put some footage up of them but other other videos we've done you see it that you guys use that nice tan color and what kind of paint is it it's direct a metal paint it's similar to automotive grade paint but it's it's director model so it's like something you paint a tractor with or something yeah so tell them about the you know what's unique about how we spray it with the system we use we actually ground out our carts okay and we have an electrostatic gun it positively charges the paint and then when we spray the paint is magnetically attracted to the base it's not powder coats and doesn't yeah okay it doesn't just it's like polarization negative positive cool so you don't do you not end up with a huge cloud in here then no you can see so before we when we just use an HVLP gun and we sprayed which is high volume low pressure yep this whole room would turn tan which doesn't matter to any of you it because you're just gonna shoot it at anyway but the end goal here is obviously if we consume less materials and we're more efficient with our process our prices are better yeah on top of that the finish adheres better that's a big thing it cut our paint consumption in half Wow yeah that's cool well but not just going up into the atmosphere and onto the floor and in the walls and on the painter I like that you guys get it I talk about it all the time the stuff that we share with you is the best stuff available and it's not just the best stuff because we want to be snobs I'd rather buy two of these and have them for 10 years then I have some other ones that they're cheap and they will hold a base until a 5 mile an hour wind blow so they'll hold on I'm sorry they'll hold a cardboard backer up and then the wind blow so then you got to go find rocks I don't want rocks on the ground at the range not rebase your time you got to have a sandbag and then now you're getting a shovel and dragging sandbags around where these cut it will do everything and we've gone over that but it's a it's kind of like what kind of person are you do you want to buy it once and be done with it or him in haul if your only thing you're looking at is price and that what someone's mindset is the call we're gonna be disappointed what we're offering they don't see the picture of value we're trying to do different business differently better ethics quicker shipping times better products and around all of that if you see value in that you're gonna buy and never regret it you know what I mean that's if you're of that mindset but again if you're just price shopping there's plenty of guys making $99 targets free shipping and probably lose your eye but no joke and we've done yeah we'll put a link up here to the video that we did last summer punching holes through all their steel targets and then we shoot yours and not only does it not punch a hole it's still smooth yeah and that's not just steel quality it's the engineering you guys have done where it dispenses energy and dumps it to the ground yeah and you'll see in that video that they're doing stuff with this steel that you can't and would be insane to do with most steel and it's not just about keeping you shooters safe it's people a hundred feet left or right or behind and yeah it's good stuff so what would be next packaging yeah assembly area so maybe we can go over there and we can see how some of these mechanisms work yeah I think I saw a plate rack on the ground over there we have a couple play racks that are paid for waiting for pickup we can kind of give a rundown of some of that stuff and I'll throw this in here now as we're talking if you guys have questions on this stuff I was just in the office with curb and heat we were grabbing batteries and he answered the phone ta target so look them up ta targets and the technical AR 500 targets comm which is kind of funny because we started out with AR 500 steel and got about a year and a half two years in began to transition away from that but we look up the name everybody knows by ta target we have a couple components here that are already wrapped by our shipping manager mark unfortunately marks off today so he's not here but we'll just kind of give you a rundown on what we normally do mark takes all the individual components and uses this cohesive wrap which just keeps everything safe during transit if somebody orders like you're you're like keynote like our 238 app yeah that's what it'll sit gonna show up on your doorstep looking right like this so I mean you open up the box these are the components that are gonna be in there that's your two-thirds a tap target so that's basically that's gonna come the only thing that's not going to be in there is going to be a two-by-four like a 3 or 4 foot piece of 2x4 so so yeah you'll have your top rocket we've got a target plate that's wrapped up here and then you'll get a 20 inch base in that box and they all pack and now that's all painted up and pretty oh yeah all fancy will open up this target plate and show you guys their smirking a little bit because the gentleman that runs this department's not in today and they know that he's going to be annoyed that they're messing with his workspace so the beautifulness that's half-inch by 50 that laughing yeah so that's the one that I've got some of those that we have pounded thousands of times and they look pretty much like that just gray instead of white because they're covered in sweet lead now so yeah this is the signature target this is the one that if someone's buying a silhouette by far the two third and half inch is the one that people grab more then you got a little porch kid in there with the bolt and oh that's all on there so normally people use a 2 by 4 and the 2 by 4 just drops down in the post here very soon you're going to see on our website an option for people that more or less need a post that is not going to get destroyed whether you're a range trainer or have a club and you just want people going down range this is an AR 500 post that's going to resist rifle rounds and it gets away from the 2 by 4 and the consumable post that's in integral with the the bracket so you don't have a separate bracket you can see that and the cool part is because it's the same design up top our hostage assembly can bolt right onto the post as well one cool thing about a 2x4 is you can use a 3 foot a 4 4 to 5 foot 6 foot 2x4 adjust the height you got a field with tall grass right so this is in the box you have the option on our website to add the hostage bracket and then that will just slide right on the head bracket of our a tap system and you can lock a paddle right in and typically there would be hardware holding this thing together we don't have the bolts in right now it's designed that you can buy it with or without the hostage bracket it's just a nice functional supercool why is this so important to you guys well just from a training perspective now you've got something to make you even more accountable this is small enough step back yesterday we were at about 35 yards on their range getting a pistol shot on that one is that five inches made by five five by five carpenter eye you can really start to hone in on a cure so you got to be like right there and think about context you think you're a hot shot with your pistol because you watch Instagram and YouTube that's your wife that's the bad guy you got what it takes how you practicing doing that you you see it yeah no boys no people bolted on this pulpit on you see it instantly instant feedback you don't have to walk down range and look to see a hole in paper you hear a tooth and that sucker move and this is rifle Raider there's this pistol its rifle ready this is the rifle one for one bullet okay one bolt so I don't dump it on the floor like a root ball four bolts it comes with you have to come in a little packet and you never have to do anything to them because this is absorbing your misses so unless you're seriously goofy and you're reading the cute angle which let's talk angles these are 15 degrees yeah you'll have about a 10 to a 15 degree fan that you'll have a fragmentation okay so the if you buy any of our products we have a little diagram that I drew up that shows what that looks like to scale and if you follow our recommended distances it's not an issue for a safety concern as long as you're following the recommended distances so this is for the guy that wants something that's not going to get splattered up a professional range you're shooting a lot of rifles at distance you're not going to be chewing up the 2x4 so the two by fours in this equation are somewhat perishable and one of the things we know is they get full of jacket fragments which can cut you up right if you're not careful yeah super easy huh yeah the symbols just like the regular top bracket but now you've just got an armored post any ethan apparently loves the hostage slinger so he wants to make sure that you guys understand so somebody buys one of your targets the cool thing is because you guys are so smart about it if they don't buy the hostage targets out of the gate they can call and order it from you later yeah it comes with the parts and the four bolts and you throw it on yep and people do that all the time we have probably every week somebody's ordering just the hostage assemblies to fit onto their ate apps that they bought you know even three or four years ago cool and that's a cool point to add if you have one of the original ADAP targets from back in 2015 this hostage assembly will work on those as well so you've kept some continuity in your engineering yes you guys have and you guys have a bunch of other targets oh yeah I've got falling trees which will throw a link up to the video that we show that one you've got different sizes of this you've got the horizontal plate rack that you launched recently you've got the larger base that you can use for the bigger targets and the heavier targets what else what am I forgetting poppers poppers yes we have ours and those are nice yeah there's a lot of companies that make poppers is there a popper handy there right I'll fetch one all right so pepper poppers these have been at mistis style targets been around for a long long time I'm gonna stand this one up this is the one most people see he's oh there's also a classic example of this that's got a little taller knob on the top that's a tombstone basically standing on top of this and you guys are going to open this one which is a prairie dog sure we can make it happen yeah that's just showing the capability that we have it's a little fun target and people that are out west tend to like to buy this thing set it out and use it long range with their rifles living shadow doctors that's two helpless friends present sentenced [Applause] and you've thoughtfully left some holes in the base so that you can get a stake down to the dirt do they ship with the springs you can buy them with or without okay that's up to the end-user I have to talk to you about getting some Springs so with the Springs there's adjustability and then you can actually with lighter calibers say you're using a handgun you don't want to fall over you just want it to kind of ring move a little bit but you don't really want to risk the time of going downrange whether you're teaching or working with a club or whatever you can just set the springs and it's gonna stand up okay the best part what I really love doing with these poppers with Springs I'm using calibers like 308 and you can set them out a distance and you'll get some really good reaction out of them okay so it'll fall and then it'll spring right back I'm gonna drive right back home this takes takes especially the heavier place so stakes would just go through the ground like that drive I'm on a nice angle and that holds everything in place we've spent a lot of time together we broke bread together we've had some cold drinks together we've talked about families about the way we love America and all that good stuff in this industry that we work in and I legitimately mean the industry because people throw it around this term industry like if you shoot guns and film it you're in an industry which Tamizh you are you are legitimate business fabricating products which you know makes you part of an industry and there seems like there's so many people that's like oh I like to shoot thus I want to I want to be involved with it all the time so I'm gonna make something like like holsters or sights or steel targets and the person has no real idea like what they're doing but they will then they so you see holsters in targets and sights and ammunition that are state unsafe garbage not really like what we need hey you guys are total shooters sportsmen hunt conservative guys that believe in American values and you live it like I spent the last couple days with your boys they're not running in the dirt you know showing me chickens and no TV right no TV go out and get dirty so it's not it's not a white I think this is important it's not hey we have the machines to make this what can we make to make money you guys are guys that are like we shoot this stuff we want to make stuff that other dudes will buy that's kick-ass that's not already available that's my interpretation yeah it's like like this I don't is there anybody else making poppers like this no oops oops then and that's why I was asking I knocked it all apart it's all right so go right back together like a lot of the stuff that you guys have done there's other people that make a target the shape of a prairie dog but you have to like prop a stick behind it which defeats the point of having it a popper or walk dog right right right ride your four-wheeler down there to get it but you guys because your shooters are like hey how do we go have fun and not spend the day walking up and down the range so you can if you had like a really heavy caliber you'd put more tension on it depends on what kind of movement you want okay I have gun clubs that buy these and they don't want any movement so they'll put the spring all the way back okay and their whole goal is just keep it upright so you could use it like that and you're using spotting scopes so they see the hit right okay now if you wanted a lot of movement with something like this you hit it with a 308 six five Creedmoor with the setting it's at you're gonna knock that thing flat back and bring it up cool it'll be violent on the way to seven it's cool yeah you can if you notice that it's hitting it way too hard you can add a little bit of attention and now it's gonna take a lot more than yeah yeah but that's when when you need to have the stakes in place because when it slams that plate forward it wants to lift the legs up I know when you were working on this which has been over a year the the next I want to spin around here you guys can talk to that but what I'm talking about is the plate rack there's a couple companies that make these on the market they don't look like this this looks like I came out of NASA and they didn't want to launch it until they were certain it worked perfect it wasn't sending dangerous LED back to these shooters because if our training is gonna kill us I've seen a tourniquet put on from a lady getting hit in the wrist with a piece of splashback so let's talk target safety one of the main things that scares people about steel is it can hurt you yeah it can hurt you well ideally you should be squared off to the target I mean that's kind of common sense our targets are the same as everyone else's in that aspect if you're shooting at a really shallow angle like from here your bullets are still gonna fragment but you're gonna send that fragmentation at a higher velocity up the side all right so we're talking about the safe angles to use this stuff this comes in the box so straight on shooters out here how close can I get with a pistol 10 yards 10 yards even with my standard on all of our products like a 10 millimeter how about a 44 mag 44 mag is where we typically would still start telling people to back up to 20 back up to 20 whenever you get into Magnum calibers and it's usually revolvers 454 casull 44 mag what about like now we see all this hard like underwood superval these hard solid copper bullets is that a native had the same experience with the solid copper as we had with the Full Metal Jacket like what about like the ripp round will that just blow your target over no that was a joke that was a bad joke what will happen is it will fry them in the bullet like am I just kidding it was a joke guys what about if we if we purchase surplus military ammo that's got a steel core that we would recommend you don't use so don't you [ __ ] wheel airman we're consistent about that across the board our targets and we have tested with all of this ammo these are gonna stand up better than anything else to that kind of ammo and there's certain clients we have that in very controlled environments because they're with military or they're with other units that are using that ammo need to train with that but even then we don't recommend that they use that amble on the target is you are shortening the lifespan tremendously overusing hundred pounds and pounds yeah it's like taking a steel hammer and just beating on it you and your yeah you're looking at velocity and the size of the bullet smaller the bullet and the faster it's going the more prone to damaging all right so you want to use a projectile that's not made of ferrous metals yep and you can test that with a magnet you can take a heavy magnet put it on the bullet tip if you're not sure and then speed so if I go by five five six or six five Creedmoor or one of these fast-moving small bullet speeds a problem yes and all of our distances we've calculated and tested with ammunition that's three thousand feet per second at the muzzle it's very easy with especially 5.56 nato to get XM 193 that's coming out at like 3,400 feet per second and it's not the projectiles right the projectiles got steel in at the speed it's going so fast that it's just yeah that's a standard full-metal-jacket leadcore bullet but because of that velocity if you started shooting really close with it you're gonna start a distance four half-inch 150 which is 30 yards even in 30 yards and if you read any of our literature we allow closer shooting than most companies but it has to be within the parameters of the ammunition we describe as soon as you leave that threshold you have to start backing up to 100 yards and again no joke you guys die yeah that's no joke yeah I mean it's like not like it's not haha he's just exaggerating you could have a chunk of lead coming off the target at thousands of feet per second so I wanted to make sure people understand when they start getting on an angle Kirby you said about 15 degrees dish so so we're talking like this yep something like that and like that why that's important is if you don't have a burn off to the side of the target you will have something flying off this way and you just no don't don't leave your lunch sitting here or your vehicle or your vehicle paper targets that are over here are gonna get peppered but you guys ingenious ingeniously set this up and you the angle you've had to put some thought into that because it could be more vertical too much you don't see enough of the target and this dispenses so much of the energy yes even glancing hits because this can move you're gonna scrub velocity so fast I mean the ability to move is just gonna absorb all this just like if if you decide to like stop me from pushing you versus you just let me push you a little bit that same amount of energy it's absorbed rather than you getting you know like a bruise very cool and that's also why we don't mount them straight up I mean we could have done that as well but then all of that load of that impact is going to get spread on where it's hit so why not just do it like some of the companies that mount it straight up but kind of floppy huapi because that's not consistent haha and the idea is we want the same reaction from this steel plate every single time so you're seeing the ones that are floppy huapi you don't know it might go this way one might go that way if there's a couple plates that can move side to side they'll have maybe one hole in the middle okay and a hook or something and they might have a little bit of movement but even those they mostly just rotate if you envision that if it can just do that you're changing that presentation of the target plate and you're essentially creating those glancing blows we were just talking about if all it can do is move you guys have tested these up to what caliber 50 BMG 50 BMG at what distance 100 yards and what was their degradation to the steel and now there's of course AP rounds and things like that any of our targets that we rate for 50 BMG we're rating for ball ammunition so 50 BMG is a little unique it's obviously a behemoth of a and this targets not designed for 50 BMG you could shoot a 50 at it but you're gonna flip it over just because of the sheer energy of a 50 but the steel would be unharmed but we do have targets that are purpose-built for 50 BMG and it uses the same half-inch AR 550 steel okay but 50s obviously people know that they have armor-piercing rounds incendiary ralphus rounds so with the 50 we would recommend staying away from all the armor-piercing ammunition and sticking with what they call the ball ammo which is in the 600 some grain projectile or use the 750 grain a max and it won't damage the school I'm just looking back here I remembered that you had the sticker on here which you guys grabbed earlier I'll take a good pic of it for you guys to see but you got a little cheat sheet here yeah says this gun this caliber this distance hello if you don't remember you don't have to just walk behind the target and take a peek I remember you telling me you guys take you guys have our target called our Goliath yeah and it's one of these shapes and it's a full silhouette you know and it's a half inch thick just like this you guys took that or take that out to the big machine gun shoot every year right yeah twice a year and you were telling me one time what did you say about that piece of steel the first Goliath we ever designed we took it down a knob creek the Kentucky do the machine gun shoot because we retort your test our targets that's what we do what happens at that shoot what's going on there for people that don't know 50 machine guns 200 50s there are many guns Wow everything and they're shooting some things so people before the shoot starts you put targets downrange there's like stuff out there to blow up there's like cars out there people put like refrigerators out there it should be on everybody's to-do list at least one time in the shooting industry you should go and I think what you had told me what stuck with me is that target was out there just eating steel while all the others were gone yeah everything else was exploded and burning and our Goliath was the last target so the steel just for the listeners and viewers understand was getting so hot that it was just literally like coming apart the first one we had out there I was actually fortunate enough I'd had my binoculars on we headed out there about 200 yards and I was watching when they actually defeated the plate and the minigun which is a 308 caliber machine gun that's thrown out how many thousand rounds it was over 4,000 rounds a minute so that's like this yes think of like six barrels rotating yep it's like yeah and that's the full sized version like a USPS a cardboard target plate pin back against so now it can't dump energy move and then a 50 Cal with armor-piercing rounds and came up across it and the target plate just exploded that's cool but how many bullets do you think it took home hours and hours hours so not to bash competitors but just as a comparison for people watching or listening what did you see with other steel targets out there they weren't they won't put them out they won't you can take a little bit of you know bragging a little bit I'm confident you could take anybody else's targets on the market and stick it out anybody's anybody even the guys that have been doing it for a while big companies I don't care which target it is the Goliath with the half-inch they are 550 and the way it's design is superior so if you want like a range owner in Texas or like Knob Creek or one of these places where they do lots of long-range shooting yeah you go buy that you spend that money how much is it 575 with an armored post so retail 575 bucks and that thing will be out there in the prairie or wherever they put it for years yep people shooting at it with their with their hunting rifles and sniper rifles are gonna do nothing to it obviously everything that is created by man has a service life but we are attempting to make nearly indestructible targets at the most you might have to replace some bolts yep right lift the plate you can unbolt it and put the press weight around because you will start to get some deformation interesting you just said that this I have so many of these from you guys that have and I've never flipped one yeah we did have a guy show up at a s12 event that pretended not to listen to the two emails about steel core ammo yeah and he whacked the heck out of a few of them but it still didn't really cause divots that have caused any kind of dangerous situation talk about that general target safety like when she wins enough enough so we get questions a lot about that from people who are thinking about buying and then we'll have customers who will send me pictures Billy hey look at my target tell me am i good all this other stuff so if you have a dimple it's not necessarily a safety concern it becomes a safety concern once you start getting about the diameter of a pencil okay and you can feel it with your finger okay it'll be a substantial little ding that you would see when that happens what if you've got very deep craters that look like like you're looking at the blades actually curved yeah if you're looking at the front of the plate like like you could like drop water in it it would hold water then that's a problem you want to avoid that and if you're following our range distance recommendations or ammo requirements really you're not going to see that in the short term or even long term for most people these targets are gonna be a lifetime sorry can you just grind them down no no what happens if you do if you start getting craters on the front or if you're already on a target that has those craters on it I think those bolts out if there are targets to flip them around that's the time to put them take a picture of the sticker you want to keep the stickers away cheap but so you've got that smooth surface again and then watch what a motor use it one thing to point out we have we have one target there are a couple targets that we have confirmed over a hundred thousand rounds from full wot full auto fire and those have slight dimples on the front they're not craters so the the thing to remember is like a pencil point it looks like a little pencil point touching them so I always explain to us from the chemists at the mill is as the steel is cooling and this is air-cooled steel it's allowed to just naturally cool down it is going to absorb imperfections from the air around it they called that layer D carb it's only a couple thousandths of an inch it's very very thin and so if you're hitting that with five five six and you're close range it's possible to see little tiny almost look like pores they look like a pencil point those are perfectly fine and the plate that we buy actually work hardens as you use it so we're going to get stronger and tougher over time that's cool so I get questions about that Finch 550 especially in our full-size a tap after you get over 20,000 30,000 around you'll see it start to curve get a slight curve it won't curve towards you it will curve away from you and what's happening is on the face of that steel it's getting hit with those bullets over and over and over again every single bullet that hits that plate it is putting heat into that place and as that spot that gets hot that steel relaxes a little bit and that's steel on the back cold so the front starts to relax the back stays tight then that's why you'll see some of our half inch by 50 targets after 2030 I doubt summer times I cut some of those there that start curving away from you because the face of the plate will actually relax start to relax and the back stays tight in it and it allows it to dine of a well used target exact so perfectly safe yeah if you flip the plate it will relax the opposite side and then will start to push it back flat again and the key would be to catch that if you see that it's warping and it's usually heavier rifle calibers they're gonna make that happen or if you have a range or you're training people with high volume 5 5 6 it can happen I see but you want to catch that and flip it before it gets too much great because then if you think about if it's curved away from you and you flip it now there's a lip kind of coming out towards you so it's about preventive maintenance most people are never going to see that happen we have targets on our range that don't have any curve at all and then we have other ones that we brought out 20 machine guns and spend an entire day just loading magazines and dumping on that plate top chiotti guys it's a tough job I was actually not there that day but we did we actually had an event at a training facility in West Virginia we had over a dozen guys at one point on the line at what 10 yards 15 yards all with five five six and just where I recommend this is people in a controlled environment with known weapon systems with no projectiles known Disney all were using the proper ammo yes we were all using 16 inch or less 5 5 6 so we know we know where the Lawson range was so yes it was controlled we don't recommend that one there was one a Kay but regardless we did that for a specific reason and this was as we were starting to get into the half inch AR 550 that was just one of those don't try it at home right we wanted to see what can this plate take and that entire weekend we just hammered that thing we had it on a Hoover we had it stagnant took that to her that way if you got rain it's all arranged and that was three years ago that's a graph I thought you guys would put it up build a little nice wood frame around that light not ready you want to break it hold that was one of the first ones to be still that our goal that weekend was the break back part still then bright that's cool okay you'll see like I said if you look at the front of the plate it's got curve to it and it has what almost looks like a little bit of a dragon scale texture but it's like someone took a pencil point in play-doh and just like lightly touched it it's not in DES it's just very light in dents you can barely feel so I have a local butcher shop I've said this on many videos they have a sign over the butcher counter that says good meats not cheap cheap meats not good and it's like I think that goes for pretty much everything in life I've got comments on videos man those are expensive I by Michelin or Cooper or whatever tires you know I could go to and I have bought lower grade tires it's not about snobbishness instead I Drive seventy thousand miles on a set of tires so I want to buy a good set of tires sometimes you just invest the money in the thing and if you appreciate this kind of stuff you know that you're gonna get your money's worth out of it yeah I know I have I know that the story right there it's a fantastic illustration and I know they're not lying good dudes family men hard-working guys and we're in the heartland here with a company with you guys buy american-made steel American workers not only find you best place if you want to talk or see what we're about Instagram is definitely the first I would recommend just type in ta targets and you will find us and website is another one just type in ta target's calm we do have a YouTube I have some videos out on YouTube to just type in ta targets you'll find that I have many plans for that just time constraints and time what would you say to folks that just spend an hour watching what would you say I would I remember was the first time that came to our range and do the training course you ask the three of us why defeated what do we do it what's our goal in this business and I remember what I told you then and I told these guys before if we just met the highest quality product on the market we don't pack the cent sales goals we don't have to set artificial thresholds we can just do the best we can to be the best in the industry we do that everything else and you pontificated on that you added to that what did you say after your dad said that I remember that a few years ago we want to be able to stand behind our products 100% and I don't want to ship something out I'm standing behind 100% if it's gonna get destroyed very quick or hurt somebody or hurt or hurt property not something that we want to happen super cool guys I appreciate that you took the time to visit with us I appreciate that you guys took the time to have us at your range again have us at your homes we broke bread we had drinks we played with babies his youngest puked on me which was cool yeah it was fun it was fun take a look at their stuff share it if you have it keeps keep the stuff in mind about the safety because we shouldn't be training to protect ourselves and then hurt ourselves in the process Kirby Jared Ethan Mickey be well

Channel: CarryTrainer

Views: 11,317

Rating: 4.852941 out of 5

Keywords: steel targets, tactical ar500 targets, ar550 steel targets, best steel targets, best steel targets for ar15, best steel targets for rifles, best steel targets for the money, shooting steel targets, ar500, ar500 targets, ar550 steel, best steel target for 9mm, best steel target paint, shoot steel, ta targets, ta targets adap, ta targets steel, ar550, carrytrainer, Ethan Sensenig, factory tour, Kirby Sensenig, made in the usa, S12, shooting sport (sport), target shooting

Id: XZOg2lv8UJI

Length: 53min 1sec (3181 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 04 2019