I've made a  silicone mould and made some disks out of plaster of Paris. Disks are 37.2mm diameter, so possibly a bit bigger than a real round liquorice all sort. Added some red food colouring to the mix which resulted in a pink colour.  I tried adding a black spot in the middle with a vivid marker but it hasn't worked very well - may have to let them dry more before doing this.

I did set one up at 20m and tried to hit it with open sights on my .177.  The colour stood out OK at 20 meters but still very difficult to pick up with my old eyes. certainly going to be a challenge to knock over 3 of them at this range.

  Hopefully get a change to try again soon.

FWIW this is what the disks came out looking like

Don't think they are too far off the look of the real thing....

In honour of Myson's dad who once challenged him to try and hit his lighter at around 20 yards with a bag of  liquorice as a prize,  Myson and I have come up with the Liquorice Challenge.

The challenge is to set up 3 round pieces of  liquorice from a bag of Liquorice Allsorts at 20 yards and knock them all over with as few shots as possible.  As Myson used a BSA cadet for the original challenge this needs to be done with open sights - preferably with a springer!

As I have just done a clean and rebuild of the Gold Cub .177  I got on TradeMe for $15 which doesn’t have a rail for fitting a scope, I decided to have a bit of a test yesterday afternoon and set up one of my plinking targets at 20m to see how hard this would be with open sights.

This is the target I used - the disks are 38mm in size which I thought would be about right.   My poor old eyes REALLY struggled to see the disks at 20m and I only managed to hit one a couple of times.   I did try a few shots with my Hatsan as that doesn’t have a scope on at present and I only did slightly better with that so I can't put it down to the Gold Cup being rubbish.  I did set up some BOSS Coffee tin cans at the same distance - these are the same size as 250ml V cans but are made of steel and have a heavy bottom, so are more stable.  Anyway, once I got used to shooting the Gold Cup (it has a truly horrible trigger)  I was hitting these every time.

Going to replace the stickers on or repaint the disks and have another go once the weather clears but I know this is not going to be easy for me - which is half the fun!

I fully expect Ranger Pete to ace this with his beautiful Diana side leaver if he can find somewhere to set up the required 20 yards.

 

Next time I'm in town, Ill have to buy a bag of Liquorice Allsorts so I can see just how big the round ones are.   I might even try making some plaster of Paris disks of the same size and painting them appropriate colours.  Would be fun turning them into clouds of dust.   Better than wasting good liquorice!