DIY Portable Target Stand

[RolandD]

I wanted to show this off. I haven't got a chance to try it out, yet. We went to an unmanned range in a state park the other day, and the pistol range was 25 yards with a stationary target. Fortunately, we were the only ones there, so we moved our firing lineup to 7 yards. I decided that in the future, it would be far better to have our own target stand so that we could stay behind the designated firing line. After looking on-line, I wasn't impressed with the portability of the cheap ones, nor with the price of the more portable ones. Here's what I cobbled together for $10 Thursday afternoon.




I made it out of a camp chair that had seen better days. I designed it to hold a standard cardboard target. The uprights are 4' fiberglass driveway markers, with magnets to hold binder clips attached to the cardboard. I left the seat in the chair so a sandbag could be used to weight it down and the feet have holes to stake it down.


Let me know what you think. Step-by-step and materials list are in post #15.

[JimBianchi]

I made one similar to this years ago and had to carry a sandbag to keep it up in the wind.

It eventually got clipped by 223 rounds and I never built another.

My current stands are all rifle-proof.

[Scarywoody]

Not seeing the images. Just big Minus.

[Bills1873]

Me also. - sign.

[CPTKILLER]

Good concept.

[RolandD]

Me also. - sign.

Changed them, should work now.

[Bawanna]

I like the concept. Folds up nice, doesn't take a lot of room. I might have to check out my lawn chair bone yard and see what I have for candidates.

[Bawanna]

I had one of these but the concept just wasn't sound. Took up too much space and I had to feed it weather I used it or not.

[b4uqzme]

That's pretty cool. We got some smart fellers around here.

[RolandD]

I like the concept. Folds up nice, doesn't take a lot of room. I might have to check out my lawn chair bone yard and see what I have for candidates.

I'll work up a step by step tonight.

[Bawanna]

I got a boneyard wheelchair out in the shop. Maybe I can develop a shooting cart / target holder.

Guess if you shoot up the holder you gotta pack the stuff out by hand. Good inspiration to shoot carefully I reckon.

[DavidWJ]

The PVC target stand cost about $3 and can be disassembled is necessary. This one sat out all winter and the strings degenerated, but you can still see where they go through each upright at two places. The target is then clipped onto the strings with clothes pins or whatever else you have.

[Bawanna]

I built one of those a few years ago, it worked pretty good and one could disassemble it for storage or transporting.

That is until my son moved my van to a more convenient location and backed over it. The target stand versus a full size F word van was no contest.

[RolandD]

The PVC target stand cost about $3 and can be disassembled is necessary. This one sat out all winter and the strings degenerated, but you can still see where they go through each upright at two places. The target is then clipped onto the strings with clothes pins or whatever else you have.

Run some wire instead of strings, or even better bungee cord. The bungee would help hold it together and wouldn't need untied if you disassembled it.

I was originally going to go with that design and run bungee cord through it, so that it could be disassembled, but all the pieces held together. Like tent poles, but cost was a factor. I have to be careful or my designs get away from me. My budget more than doubled once I started and saw ways to improve it. [emoji1]

[RolandD]

Step-by-step tutorial

I started with a normal camp chair with arms, but it would be easier if it were the armless style. I drilled out the rivets that held the back and arms in place. After slipping the back off, I cut it away from the seat,and the arms slid up and off. I then cut off the section of tubing where the arms attached to the front of the chair.





I reused the plastic caps to cover my fresh cuts and to keep the seat attached. At this point, I could have drilled holes in the plastic caps on the back tubing, inserted the fiberglass rods and called it a day, but that would have been too easy and one of the caps was busted. I decided that rubber leg tips with a hole drilled slightly smaller than the fiberglass rods would hold the best.





I had already decided to use binder clips and magnets to secure the cardboard to the uprights. At this point I made a Home Depot run. The tubing of the chair was 3/4” OD, but I wanted a tight fit so I got 5/8” leg tips.

I wanted the top of the uprights to be 60” from the ground, so I inserted self-tapping screws 12” up in the back legs.





I didn't want the tubing coming up any higher than it had to, so I measured up 2”from where the seat stopped when it was folded up and cut them off there. (I almost messed it up by cutting them off 2” above the seat when it was open. This would have left the tubing 4” short when folded up.)





As I was doing all this, I began to think about how the fiberglass rod would contact the screw I had set in the legs and that it might shunt off to the side or slide past it entirely. I ended up lining the tubing with a section of 1/2” ID Plex tubing. The OD of the Plex was just shy of 5/8”, which was the ID of the metal tubing of the chair.

To keep the fiberglass rod centered, I cut the wings off some red wire nuts and trimmed them down so they just fit inside the Plex.

Finally, it was time to work on the fiberglass rods. To glue the magnets to the rods, I filed channels in the rods for the magnets to sit in. I probably could have used a fast setting epoxy and glued them to the curve of the rod, but all my epoxy has gone bad, so I worked with what I had,contact cement and it needs a flat surface.





For each binder clip, I used two magnets spaced far enough apart that they can still make full contact. I then spaced those groups about 28” from the bottom of the bottom magnet to the top of the top magnet. This holds the cardboard in place rather well, but may not be enough in a real world situation. I may need to add another set of magnets in the middle of the rods, or figure out some way to make the binder clips less slick,perhaps some contact cement on the binder clips to add a rubber like coating.


The front feet of the chair already had holes in them, but I had to drill holes in the back feet. I've been making my own stakes for years. These are the little ones. Just a big nail and a fender washer duct tape dtogether. (For our big tent, I use 14” landscape timber nails)





I've gotta get some sand and make some sandbags. If the ground is too hard to stake, the sandbags in the seat should hold it in place.


Materials List:


Stuff I had on had on hand:


1 Old Camp Chair(seen better days)
32” 1/2” ID Plex Tubing (replaced when I installed new dishwasher)
2 1” Self-Tapping Screws
2 Large Red Wire Nuts
4 Big-Ass Nails (6”)(the ring-shank ones work really great)
4 1 1/4” Fender Washers with 1/4” hole


Items bought for project:


2 48” Reflective Rod Orange ($1.99ea)
1 4pk 5/8” Rubber Leg Tips ($1.85)
1 10pk 0.3” x 0.11” Neodymium Rare-Earth Magnet Discs ($3.98)


I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial. I think I have an armless camp chair in storage that is about at the end of it's usable life, once this one has proven itself at the range, I'll go to work on it.


If I have any problems with this when I go to the range, I promise I'll update.