I have several 3/8" steel targets that I purchased from the hide several years ago. When going to shoot this week I noticed that the skull and crossbones shaped targets are cracking? This is AR500 steel. Is the steel safe to keep shooting? They are used mostly for pistol 10 yards and farther and occasionally for .308 at 100 plus yards.
Steel cracking?
- Thread starter Maelstrom
- Start date
The AR should be quenched and tempered so it is a little unusual to see cracking. None the less, as others have said, shoot it but not from 10. Might want to hit it a few times with 308 and see if the crack grows also ...
You may have a poor quality piece of steel. I don't trust the plates and keep a mound of dirt behind my targets. I hang mine tilted forward to help deflect rounds and I still had a .308 punch through one of mine and it must have been a soft spot as you can see other hits splatter off right next to the hole. I was shooting 43.5 Varget with a 168gr match bullet, not exactly armor piercing 
I've seen AR500 targets crack after years of getting hammered, this was at locations where a rigid mounting mechanism combined with cyclic abuse contributed to fatigue being the failure mechanism. Are your targets rigidly mounted? Also, if you're steel is slightly cratered from rifle impacts at 100 I wouldn't use them for pistol targets, clean steel is pretty safe to shoot at close range with pistol ammo, if the surface is marred it is not.
I just punched through a 5/8 inch thick 5" round piece of AR500 with a .243AI running 115gn DTAC's at 3180fps over the weekend from 210yrds. After at least 4 years of being smacked 50 times in row every month with everything from .223's to .300WM's it finally let a pie wedge loose. That target was single point suspended from a piece of fire hose so the mounting system wasn't rigid at all but the power level of the rifles hitting it was high and the range was fairly close. Only so much you can beat on something before it fails.
Shooting closer than about 15yrds even with dead soft cast lead bullets has resulted in me and many people I know catching frags. With soft lead bullets it's never been anything worse than the feeling of fine gravel thrown at you. That said, one piece from a jacketed .45acp bullet penetrated into my hand kinda deeply one day & I learned my lesson right there. I'd encourage OP to not be that close to steel targets.
Shooting closer than about 15yrds even with dead soft cast lead bullets has resulted in me and many people I know catching frags. With soft lead bullets it's never been anything worse than the feeling of fine gravel thrown at you. That said, one piece from a jacketed .45acp bullet penetrated into my hand kinda deeply one day & I learned my lesson right there. I'd encourage OP to not be that close to steel targets.
The targets are suspended on chain with a slight forward downward angle. The surface is not pitted at all. On one of targets does have a small hole where someone thought it would be funny to shoot an armor piecing 5.56 round. That plate is only used for rifle rounds at distance as a result. So far I guess I have been lucky and never had any pieces fly back at me or if I have I did not feel them. Most of the pistol shooting is a .22 pistol but occasionally .40 or .45.
My targets are hung from chains and tilt forward about 15*. I use this one on occasion to backup target stands and never shoot closer than 25 yds or straight on with a handgun. The rippling effect is from many layers of paint not wear but there are some obvious craters. The red plate is 1/2 Ar500 and where I mostly shoot my rifles.
