My project today

[mogunner 240]

I shoot at a buddy's place out in the boonies, he lives on ten acres of heavily wooded property and had carved a shooting lane out of the woods. He isn't much of a perfectionist so it leaves a little to be desired. I figured since I shoot down there pretty much at least once a month that I could spring for what I felt was the biggest shortcoming there, and that was the shooting bench.

 

What he had was a rickety, barely standing, chunk of plywood covered in lexan, nailed to four length of cedar that he had cut. His idea of an adjustable rest was carving a "U" shape into a chunk of plastic and affixing it to a scissors jack out of a car. The shooter sat in an old kitchen chair with no padding, which slowly sinks into the ground over time. Here's a quick shot of it.

 

 

I've been busting my butt keeping up with sight tool orders around here for almost a solid year, and I needed a break from them, so hunted up some plans for a bench and set off to Lowes. I have roughly $60 in this not counting the deck enamel that I'm going to paint it with.

 

Framing

 

Completed

 

 

The only problem is I'll need to chase down a couple of the neighborhood guys to load it on the trailer for the trip to it's new home, this bitch is heavy!

[thebuns1 4,323]

gotta love shooting on private land. no RO's, not limited to paper targets, get to be outdoors, its a great feeling. Nice look bench! should be a big improvement.

[termite 463]

If ya build me something like that, you can come shoot on my land, and I'll help ya drag it up there with the 4 wheeler and trailer. We just came in from the front porch, I popped a full magazine out of the .45 at a stray coming up the driveway and not one "neighbor" even said a word. NO I didn't hit it, more for scaring him off, but it is fun to do it off the front porch.

[mogunner 240]

Well, it's kinda off his front porch, he has a modular set down in there off the roads a ways and I guess the front doors DO face towards the woods there, lol... he cut only the minimum amount of trees to get the house in there, I bet the transport fellers were really cussin him bad.

[MT Predator 2,294]

Nice bench!

[ChileRelleno 7,071]

Nice!

[storm6490 2,768]

That's a sweet bench and a very kind thing to do for your buddy who could give two shits less about his shooting bench! After he does you a few favors, bring over some steel dinger targets and the range will be the cat's meow!

 

Well done!

[DrThunder88 912]

Well done! I'm always envious of people who have the skills to make nice things.

[Dad2142Dad 6,559]

Great job, both on the bench and helping a fellow with his range

[patriot 7,197]

Nice bench! I built mine out of pipe and plywood, but the weather fucked up the plywood top, and the ground's pretty soggy back in my woods most of thime, so the feet sink in once in awhile. Maybe I'll go your route next time. Or maybe I'll go with concrete. That way when the stream rises and floods that 1/2 acre, I won't have to go hunting for my bench.

[Wolverine 10,360]

Great job on the bench. I wouldn't mind putting that on my brother's land for our occasional shoots there. Otherwise, it's the range closer to home.

[liberty -r- death 1,445]

Nice bench. Were did you get you plans to build from?

[Syndicate 812]

cool, you going to make a base for it also?

 

and are you going to paint/stain it for water resistance?

[mogunner 240]

I've got some battleship gray deck enamel to finish it with, but the remnants of Isaac hit us yesterday and it's about 110% humidity today so it'll have to wait a bit.

 

It really wasn't difficult to build although I did cheat a bit and left my POS circular saw under the bench and just used my horizontal bandsaw that I usually use for cutting my aluminum stock, with the 10TPI blade in it I got some nice smooth and straight cuts.

 

Here's a link to the PDF of the plans I used.

 

http://www.horstguns.com/pdf/HandMcopyrightedshootingbench.pdf

 

Note that on the plans, the legs have a horizontal line drawn across them at 9" from the bottom, these are set up so you can set them 9" into the ground or concrete whichever your plan is. Ours will sit on a concrete pad so I simply shortened the measurements that 9".