The Great Strand Range Refurbishments of 2024-25

This academic year 2024/25 is the Centenary of the Rifle Club using our home range on the Strand. After almost 100 years of hosting our club training, there's a whole lot of history that has accumulated here over the years...

The last record of major refurbishments were in 1988, where our range was re-certified and issued with a new certificate for prone .22 calibre shooting. There were some subsequent episodes of minor works in the noughties and 20-teens to repair various aspects including the frame that holds the ballistic rubber curtain at the end of the range, but inspecting the range properly in the Summer of 2024 revealed that lots of work needed to be done to get the range back into tip-top shape!

We assembled a team of keen and willing volunteers and got to work! Our incoming Club President, Natasha Pasternak-Albert, spearheaded most of the project management and delivery during the Summer break before the 2024/25 academic year started, working hard to make sure that our range would be refurbished and safe, and back up and running for our general training sessions to start again in September 2024.

Step 1 involved organising with some local Scrap Metal Merchants to come and safely dispose of our scrap brass and lead, a not so glamourous but periodically necessary task.

Next, we had to consider the existing target holder and how this could be replaced with something more robust, taking into account future plans we were considering to increase the number of firing points from 1 to 2, to maximise use of the space and to ensure as many of our members as possible could safely take up general training sessions here in our home range each week.

This involved a trip to a B&Q in South London and some time spent brainstorming target holder designs, and eventually putting it all together, with a furry little helper, of course.

Transporting this new target holder into central London was a feat, but it fitted (just about!) in our President, Natasha's, little Fiat 500 and we braved the Congestion Charge Zone to get it here. The final new target holder, made with ricochet-safe materials, has some extra vertical height built in to allow for a future tiered firing point to be made, so that we can have two people shooting at the same time!

Our beloved little range was looking a bit untidy by now, but the refurbishments were well on their way!

There was, however, still lots more work to be done... our wooden baffles were in need of a refresh, and the peeling paint on the walls needed to go.

In the Range Office we had a large old disused Victorian-era safe, possibly originally used within our club as an ammunition safe, or even maybe a safe used to hold the Pistols prior to the pistol ban in the 1980s, which was impossible to move. We called around bulky waste collectors, begging and explaining that it was very much in the way and we would happily pay for them to come and take it away!

Alas, the safe, we are told, was probably filled with a mixture of concrete and steel, and so was effectively worthless, and we were told it would be impossible to move... and even if they were to make an attempt, they would charge in excess of £1000 for the pleasure! Luckily for us, this story has a silver lining, as some very kind lift mechanics who were servicing our very cool James Bond style lift down to our office, were able to shove it into a corner using a crowbar and brute force!! At least it is no longer in the way...

Here's a photo of the new refurbished baffles above the targets, done by Natasha and Siqi in the 2024 Summer Break:

Next, we needed to erect some new shelving, as our kit storage was in total disarray, with all of our shooting jackets haphazardly hanging on coat hooks, and our gloves getting rained on by a slowly dripping leak when it rains... and our slings were just left on the floor! What a mess. Nice new shelving has now gone up in our little corridor between our office and the range proper, with boxes for kit storage too.

Additionally, our old door sign was looking quite tattered, so up went a new one!

And Natasha found an abandoned/neglected white board, discarded with some ancient Semitic-speaking thalassocratic civilizations written on it in permanent marker... hmmm. These were not easy to remove, and so the other side was used instead, although a little grey, it made a fabulous score board, painstakingly taped up by Avis Fung (BUCS Captain 2024/25)!

And here's an amazing after photo of the scoreboard in use!

And thank you to our President Natasha, and VP Siqi for installing our brand new dart board - hopefully this will give those waiting for their turn to shoot something productive to do! (Don't worry KCLSU - we have a risk assessment!!)

Pictured right: Siqi Yao (VP) and the dart board!

Next came the final push... with lots of helpers descending upon London in the first few weeks of Autumn term in September 2024, we dedicated two dates to try our very best to get the bulk of the refurbishment work done!

Kind souls such as Sasha Radkovskii and Gabe Shaft willingly volunteered their time to get rather dusty and covered in cobwebs to aid in completely refurbishing the end of the range. This included taking down all of the old Linatex ballistic curtain, disposing of it, and then fixing the frame which holds it up, as there were places where the wood had rotted and required replacement or reinforcement, and then hanging an entirely new piece of Linatex ballistic curtain and affixing that safely to the frame using non ricochet inducing materials.

Secondly, this dynamic duo also fixed a potentially quite costly problem - there was a small point of attrition on our original vertical steel plate bullet trap, installed in the 1970s. It has fared our club very well over the last 50+ years, however, over time where the bullets hit in the same place over and over, the 8mm thick steel has started to wear away in one area. Because of this, some more steel needed to cover this tiny hole to make the range safe to shoot within again!

So, with a lot of effort and strength, Sasha and Gabe moved a spare piece of 6mm thick steel behind our current vertical steel plate to act as a patch over the small area of attrition and a second line of defence for the rest of the bullet catcher! This was amazing and we are very lucky that there was an existing bit of spare steel to hand in the range already - as this stuff is not cheap!!

Whilst all of this was going on at the end of the range, we had a whole host of other volunteers kindly donating their time to deep cleaning the range - wet brushing and mopping the range office, corridor and shooting gallery, stripping the peeling paintwork and painting the walls of the shooting gallery, and repairing the wooden baffles with new MDF and painting over it with new paint!

Also massive thank you, in no particular order, to Siqi Yao (Vice President 2024/25), Isaac Toh (Range Officer 2024/25), Avis Fung (BUCS Captain and Social Media Manager 2024/25), Anika Joshi (Range Officer 2024/25), Amren Singh (Secretary 2024/25), Sheraz Khan (Range Officer 2024/25), Luke Burrows (Range Officer Manager 2024/25), Sankeith Kirubakaran (Range Officer 2024/25) who were instrumental in getting these refurbishments done... Many, many combined hours of hard labour went in to making the range what it is today! Including rounding up years and years of rubbish and detritus which had accumulated in the range and the range office, deep cleaning everything, organising kit and storage, painting, repairing, etc etc etc!

Now we have a range with a complete facelift! Newly refurbished steel bullet catcher and curtain frame, new Linatex ballistic curtain hung, freshly painted range walls, refurbished and painted baffles, clean and relocated target storage, new kit storage, and a clean and tidy office will make all the difference to our members this year.

Our next challenge is the installation of the tiered firing point system...

Getting a bunk bed into Central London in the first place was no easy feat... we found the perfect bed, with the perfect dimensions which had the same footprint as our existing firing point, and was a low rise design meaning we wouldn't be shooting on stilts on the lower firing point...

However, co-ordinating an amazon delivery into central London, at a time where a member of the committee could be there to receive it and transport it down into our basement range was no easy feat! Our President, Natasha, spent over an hour on the phone with a frantic and very stressed delivery driver, who was apparently not very used to driving around Central London, directing them via GPS to Bush House... only to have to end the call quickly to call her Vice President, Siqi Yao who was at the time peacefully slumbering to get up and run to Bush House to meet the delivery driver because he was 10 minutes away!! In some superhuman feat, Siqi managed to arrive at Bush House in less than 10 minutes and meet our very stressed delivery driver and collect the bunk bed (flat packed) and with some help from our Range Officers take it down to our basement range!

Next, Natasha (President 2024/25) there to supervise the use of any power tools; Avis (BUCS Captain 2024/25) and Isaac (Range Officer 2024/25) - both pictured above - volunteered their spare time to build the bunk bed, hoping for it to be ready in time to use when shooting BUCS postal cards this season!! The instructions were certainly interesting... but with team work (and Isaac taking the somewhat unnecessary role as a Human Hammer), the bunk bed started to take shape...

Before we knew it, the bunk bed was built! And lifted into place to replace the current sloped firing point at 25yds, which possibly had been there since the range's inception in the 1920s!

After placement of some MDF boards on the lower bunk, just to test it out and make sure that it was easy to get in/out of and was the correct dimensions to shoot from, Isaac had a test himself, only dry firing for now...

Isaac (pictured, right), seemed pretty happy and comfortable. Some slight modifications, however, needed to be made to the top bunk prior to it being ready to accept shooters.

Firstly, the head/footboard at the front of the top bunk was preventing the shooter's view of the targets and was also acting as interference if you were to attempt to get into the prone position. Because of this, the two upper beams of the head board need to be removed. Sadly, however, the top beam is structurally integral, and so after conferring with Mr Phil Northam, an Engineer and member of the wider shooting community, we were advised to perform bracing of the front and back short sides of the bunk bed prior to removing these structural beams of the headboard, and thus this put a slight spanner in the works of the tiered firing point project...

Finally, after some deliberation, planning, designing... we procured the needed wood planks and floor boards in order to make the requisite modifications to the existing bunk bed structure to fully allow two tiered shooting for the first time in the Strand Range's 100-year history!

As of January 2025, the Strand Range at King's College London officially has a tiered firing point, and is ready to accept two shooters concurrently! This is a first in the 100 year history of Strand Range and our club and its membership is very exited at the prospect of a 100% increase in our capacity to host training slots!

This would not have been possible if it was not for the amazing volunteers who have been instrumental in the planning, procuring, delivering, and managing of the Great Strand Range Refurbishments of 2024, an estimate of the total combined hours spent on these refurbishments is well in excess of 200+ for all of our volunteers - which is absolutely amazing!!

With special thanks to Natasha Pasternak-Albert (President 2024/25) and Siqi Yao (Vice President 2024/25) who gave up so much (weeks!!) of their 2024 Summer Holiday to come to the range and get started with the refurbishments prior to the rest of the students/committee and club members returning to London in September - combined contributing over 200 hours to the refurbishment project.

Huge kudos to Sasha Radkovskii and Gabe Shaft, who are no longer students, but simply extremely kind members of the wider shooting community based in London who came to donate their time to this small London University Rifle Club in desperate need of some TLC. We definitely wouldn't be shooting now without you two!

Some extra special mentions to Mr Phil Northam, the one encouraging the initially somewhat hair brained idea of a Bunk Bed firing point, and who was a constant source of Engineering Wisdom, at all hours, when Natasha finally decided to make this hair brained idea a reality...! And to Isaac and Avis, for all of their hard work physically making the Bunk Bed a reality!

And this brings the Grand Range Refurbishments of 2024/25 to a close. We are so excited to get members, new and old, down to our newly refurbished range, at a much greater capacity than before. As with everything we do, this is for our membership - we hope many of you to come will get another 100 years of enjoyment from our beloved Strand Range.