What will help is the angle of the plates. The holders you have make the plates face you directly which is suboptimal. The Chambliss welding guy said he used to make those and had problems with ricochets from the hangars.
A better solution would be to use a 2-3" bolt to hang the gongs. Use washers, but use a nylon locking nut at the back. The weight of the gong will cause the chain to ride to the back of the bolt up against the nut and away from gong. Hanging in this position will cause the gong to face slightly down in it's resting position.
Kinda like this, but even further back on the bolt:
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I like that idea. I could rig something up to make that work.
