I have an acquaintance that has a tremendous gun room/reloading room/shooting bench inside of a very large out building. His ranch is big enough that it's not the noise impact to his neighbor's he's worried about. It's his family. He built his bench attached to a wall where the window opening is. The bench is about 10 feet long. He started with a 55 gallon barrel as the shooting tube and had it sprayed with insulating foam repeatedly until the through hole was about 10". It didn't work very well. He got a second barrel and backed it up to the first one and put in one of those small memory foam mattresses and let it expand. He had a heck of a time forming the shoot through hole in that second one and getting it aligned with the first barrel. It worked reasonably well. I've shot a few hundred rounds through it. You still need hearing pro on the inside of the building when shooting. You get a pretty good concussion to your face and body, especially with anything over a .308. The thing I hated about it, and the reason he got rid of it was this - while you can see your target pretty well, you can't see your field of fire. It's hard to describe, but it doesn't feel right touching off a round and not being able to see if a kid is riding his ATV out there! It's freaky.
I shoot all my centerfire and rimfire rifles suppressed. It reduces the muzzle blast and noise every bit as good as those two 55 gallon barrels did. No blast, portable, no vision restriction, useable on dozens of rifles. Not trying to start an argument, but unless you're living in a communist state that doesn't allow suppressors, buy one or two and you'll be much happier.
Bob
