Commercial Range in Colorado

A customer in Colorado called us about an issue with their steel trap. The mouth was completely clogged and filled with lead. They had to shut this and the neighboring lanes down to avoid potentially dangerous issues.

After reviewing some photos and an evaluation visit, we determined the best path forward would be to remove and replace the chamber rather than trying to dig the lead out. The reason this happened in the first place is because this particular chamber had a breach directly behind the open mouth of the chamber where the target was placed on the retriever. So, over time the steel became worked hardened and brittle and eventually became a breach. A heavy steel plate was welded over the breach but the crack was still there and that created a catch point for rounds to build up eventually creating what you see in the picture. Our team showed up on site and sprang into action. With this much hard compacted lead and the steel composition of the chamber, this thing was extremely heavy. Also, the chamber was just inside the back man door and to the right of it so it was not readily accessible from the door. With it being hidden behind wall somewhat and as heavy as it was, we still needed some heavy lifting equipment to get it out of the trap room and safely on a recycling pallet. Enter the beast!

Notice in the picture the back wheels are kind of off the ground. That's because of the weird angle and the extent the boom had to be out to get a hold of this thing. In order to get the boom inside the room where the chamber was we had to remove the cage and the forks, push those into the room, extend the boom into the room and then reinstall the forks and cage. Once that was completed, we had to move the forklift into position to get under the chamber since the welded install handle broke off the chamber years ago. Now, with everything in place, we could start to remove hardware and break this chamber free!

At long last and several muscle flexing issues later the chamber was free of the building itself and on a pallet and ready to be picked up. We used Range Environmental Solutions for the pick up. They offer safe, legal hazardous waste recycling and the customer checks a check for the trouble. The only minimal fee that comes with this service is for non-recyclable materials like filters etc. Everything comes a chain of custody manifest from point A to point B and is seamless. Well done RES! Anyway, now it was time to install the new chamber. A new, empty chamber only weighs about 600 pounds so we opted to use an engine hoist to literally glide the new one in place and button it up. Easy as pie!

Next, it was time to inspect the rest of the range. We like to go the extra mile on our jobs and make sure everything we touch is in good working order and then let the customer make an informed decision on what to do next if there are any problems. We found a few:

We let the customer know what we found on the range and hopefully they bring us out to correct these issues. At least now, those closed lanes are open and making the owner happy again. Another example of range mastery, mission assurance.