Not sure if this is the best place for the question but I suspect training folks put a LOT of rounds on their targets. So here goes...

I have a 12" x 20" x 3/8" AR 500 silhouette which is used primarily for handgun. After several hundred, perhaps 1,000 or so rounds I had it back to the shop to change a chain.  I noticed that it was starting to bow towards one side.  I hung it back with the bow toward the shooter - hoping to flatten it back out. After some months of use the bow has gotten worse. It has turned to a definite belly. Towards the side on which the bullets strike!  Is this something any of you have seen?

I know that when flame straightening steel the technique is to heat the side of the metal to which it is desired to bend. This seems counter intuitive. Steel expands when heated. However, it shrinks to a greater degree when it cools. I wonder if something similar is happening with each bullet strike?  I have reversed the target and will see what happens.

Thanks,

Ken

Im no expert and material science was not my strength.  Do you know how the target was cut? Plasma, laser, water jet? I wonder if when getting cut it heated up weird and introduced some sort of stress..  If no one else has an answer I may even be able to forward the question on to one of my professors who is very knowledgeable in material science and fatigue.

1k of pistol only? and that happened. Its not 500 for sure, get your money back. Our 500 plates take thousands of 223 rds a year and over several years they will start to concave, then we flip them over.

Subbed

Who made the targets? I've been looking at getting a few steel targets, but I'm trying to make sense of the price differences between brads.

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I agree it does not sound like AR500 steel.  

I have thousands of rounds on 3/8" plates and over time shooting pistol and rifle, both 5.56 and 308, the plates do bend or bow, but I am talking thousands of rounds of each caliber.

I have a 1/2" plate and nothing I have shot it with shows any bowing.