About once a year, my friend Oddball and I like to do a “New Shooter Day” at one of the local ranges. The last time we went, though, the target stands for the pistol berm were….missing. The time before they were pretty well destroyed to the point of uselessness.
When I was at the LuckyGunner Blogger Shoot, Tom Givens brought some target stands with him that were made out of PVC pipe. I thought that was ingenious, and took note so Oddball and I could make some.
New Shooter Day is this coming Saturday, so last weekend we made 3 target stands, following the instructions at The Box O’ Truth:
A couple of notes:
- Use a Wire PVC Saw. Things go much faster, and you can shorten the pipes in the parking lot if they won’t fit in your Jeep 😀
- Following the instructions, you end up with a 22″ length of pipe at the end. Don’t worry about cutting it down to 16″ unless you really really want to.
- You don’t have to use PVC cement if you get fittings that are “slip” fittings. Those type fittings have enough of a lip that they’ll stay on the pipe without cement. The other kind (the name of which escapes me) tend to not stay on as well, and are cheaper than the slip fittings. Our T’s are slip, the elbows are not.
- The 1x2x8 stakes are about 80 cents locally. The entire cost is about $10 per target stand, but the consumable stakes are really cheap.
- It took about 45 minutes to make all three, including me using a hand saw on the stakes.
An added bonus to not having to use PVC cement is that the targets break down into smaller components. Right now these are broken down and sitting in my garage.
One last thing: Box O’ Truth uses IPSC targets, but we’re just going to use old Amazon boxes or poster board*.
*If you use brightly colored poster board, it acts just like those Shoot-N-C targets, only in reverse and a whole lot cheaper. It’s really easy to see the holes from 50 or 100 yards out. I usually go for the green stuff as it’s easier to see a red dot.
I did the same thing a couple of years ago, except mine has another piece connecting across the back as well to help hold everything together (only the long pieces with the T’s are cemented together, and the elbows are cemented to those). I’ll have to try the poster board idea – I usually use pizza boxes with printed targets taped to them.
The only problem I have with it is that it tends to blow over if there’s anything more than a light breeze. I keep meaning to make up a couple of bags of shot to put in the cross pieces to weight it down, but have never actually gotten around to it.
Ahhh… Range Day. I miss it. Definately weigh it down at the base or you’ll spend more time setting it up again, and again, and again…
hmmm…. maybe I’ll bring some rope and tent pegs. That’ll hold the suckers down.
Unfortunately, I didn’t think of ordering some zombie targets until too late to get them here for the shoot. Otherwise, we’d have some of those.
I use a similiar PVC stand design. I didn’t glue any of the pieces together so I can break the stands down so that no piece is longer then 12″. That way I can cram several stands into a backpack, minus the furring strips.
A couple tips:
Shorten the upright PVC legs a bit. The shorter they are, the less likely they are to be shot. (They WILL got shot eventually, this just keeps ’em going longer)
If you need a specific minimum number of stands for any certain event, make and bring extra, as they do get shoot and damaged. You can repair them later, but if you extra on hand, even unassambled, it saves time right then.
Duh, yeah. PVC rocks. Git yerself some ratchet action PVC shears from Home Lowes for about ten bucks, a couple ten foot lengths of 1/2 inch PVC, some fittings, and you’re set for a while.