Target Stands Nearly Done

I haven't had a whole lot of time for blogging lately as work and other stuff keeps sucking up all my time. I did get a chance yesterday and the day before to put in some time on the set of target stands and steel plates for the new Useless Bay Tennis Academy. (It's actually a single bay range I've set up next to my house, but don't tell anybody....)

The target stands have taken a lot of time in the design stage as there were a lot of things I wanted them to be able to do. I wanted them to be light weight and easily moved around. They needed to be able to hold two vertical wooden 1x2's so I could use cardboard IPSC or GSSF targets, and they needed to be able to use a steel center post to hold a steel plate for Steel Challenge style shooting. I wanted them to be built using basic hand tools, and be built from commonly available and reasonably priced materials. They also had to be simple of design, too. That was a tall order, but I think they came out OK.

Day before yesterday I cut out the first 16 steel plates with the cutting torch. If you can get someone to cut these for you, I'd do it. If you can find someone with a plasma cutter or a water jet cutter, even better! My cutting torch is old and the tip is far from the best, so it wasn't cutting as cleanly as I would have liked. That meant some grinder time to clean them up a bit. I did get them cut out, though, and got two coats of white paint on them yesterday evening. I'll paint the other sides today after I go get some more paint.

I'll post some pictures and details if anyone's interested.......