JWeber Posted November 15, 2012 Share Posted November 15, 2012 This topic sparked a lot of input from some very knowledgeable and experienced forum members. You can hit me over the head but I would like to drift the topic a little and take advantage of the experience that has showed up here. I think because of prop designs and setup methods between clubs stages at some clubs are easier than others to setup & tear down. Locally it seems to me Bluegrass run by Corey has props that are easier to deal with than our club's. Our's just evolved the way we do them. Because the stages are harder to deal with people shy away from helping. So taping into the wealth of knowledge here, what physical attributes of props used to build stages have you seen that makes them easier to set up and tear down? The reason I ask is that we are just starting to look for easier and better ways to construct stages. Thanks for your input. Jay Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ima45dv8 Posted November 15, 2012 Share Posted November 15, 2012 Split from this thread: http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=162131&st=0 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vluc Posted November 15, 2012 Share Posted November 15, 2012 At some of our clubs, prop storage is very close to the stages. At others, it is not and they have to be trucked/hauled in. Factors like this increase the setup time and can cause some people to not want to help. So in this regard, the closer the props to the stage location, the easier and quicker to do. Walls - get away from stockades as they are heavy and require two people per to lift and carry. Light wood frames with cloth or screening over them allows one person to handle that prop without getting overwhelmed. Connecting walls. Some clubs screw them together, and at one, they zip tie their lightweight walls together. At this club, one person can tear down an entire complicated stage, including steel, because the storage is right there, no need for a drill, as a sharp twist on the walls will break the zip. Prop support - spikes. Most clubs have short spikes, easy to drive in and tear out. Others have foot longs that are a royal PIA. Just some factors I've seen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JFlowers Posted November 15, 2012 Share Posted November 15, 2012 PGC asks the squad that finishes on a stage to tear down that stage and bring things to the "mouth" of the bay/berm. Someone, usually the MD, comes around with the cart and trailer and hauls things back to the storage buildings. This seems to get good response since all that is asked is a group tear down one stage. With squads of 11, say 2 won't help, but 9 people can do the tear down in no time. Of course you always have that core group that unloads the trailer and puts things away, and otherwise puts in a lot of work. I think one of the other things that helps that club get good participation is that they finish at a decent hour. usually by 2pm at the latest. When a match is not well run and goes til 4pm or so (as opposed to matches that go to 4pm because of size/shooters.etc) people are tired and leave rather than help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PopPop Posted November 15, 2012 Share Posted November 15, 2012 We have a group of 3-4 that show up early (7am). They drag out the wall trailer and set out all the walls needed in each bay. By that time others have arrived and seeing the walls out, they seem to help more readily. Empty bays seem to be a turnoff to some. I guess they're afraid they'll get stuck setting up the entire stage. We also have carts for each bay with sticks, target stands, tools, stakes, etc. Keeps workers in the bay instead of leaving to look for a stapler and getting "lost". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bikerburgess Posted November 15, 2012 Share Posted November 15, 2012 Most of the ranges I shoot at Hire out the tear down the crew gets $2 per shooter to do the work the shooters can all leave without feeling guilty. When I do the set up and tear down I would say the biggest thing for props is weight, light is better. next on the list would be tool less dis-assembly that way nothing can hold you up like a lost wrench or dead battery. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JWeber Posted November 15, 2012 Author Share Posted November 15, 2012 I appreciate your input and a lot of it rings home. Our stakes are a foot long. All the walls are either screwed together or to what we call stantions . It takes screw guns to put together and take apart on top of that we use cheep screws. Distance from the barn also rings home. The stage next to the barn usually gets tore down and brought to it. The rest of the stages are far away. Shooters bring what they can to the mouth and figure they are done. Walls are left up because they don't have screw guns handy. Since we use long spikes shooters usually need crow bars to get them up so they end staying up until one of the few that hang around who knows to bring a crow bar shows up and gets them out. What I like about how Bluegrass has designed their walls is 1) they use a steel foot that just sets on the ground no stakes. 2) their walls are made out of 2X2 stock that fit into these steel feet. I saw a small girl carrying 2 walls with ease. 3) They use wood shims to lock the walls into the steel feet. 4) They use precut sections of wash line rope to tie the top of the wall together. Everything is light and can be put up and taken down with no tools. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaxshooter Posted November 16, 2012 Share Posted November 16, 2012 I think you are right. The wall, barricades etc need to be light weight with no tolls necessary for tear down. Most of the clubs in my area are moving in that direction and it is appreciated by the shooters especially us old guys. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Norman Posted November 16, 2012 Share Posted November 16, 2012 At one local club, soon to be two local clubs we have a trailer for each pit. Each trailer has everything you need on it to build a stage, walls, braces, target stands, sticks, spikes, fault lines, steel, and a couple activators. We park the trailer at the mouth of the pit, pit crew arrives and builds their stage, at the end of the match, the squad tears the stage down and loads the trailer. Match crew collects the trailers and puts them back into the conexes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EkuJustice Posted November 16, 2012 Share Posted November 16, 2012 The non screwed together walls are great but the zip tie and go only tool needed is a knife which most have anyway Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark R Posted November 16, 2012 Share Posted November 16, 2012 Funny because I have bene thinking about this very topic for a few weeks. We have 2x2 walls and steel bases that are light weight. Our steel, wall bases, and other props are stored in a shed. The targets stands and sticks are stored on a trailer which I have to move aound before and after a match. A lot of prop movement right now. I'm thinking of making storage boxes for each large bay that will hold 16 of our 2x4 target stands and sticks. For each small bay, I'll put a box between them and share a box. Also plan to put walls close to the bays, if not inside of them. Then all I would need to haul around is steel and non-standard props. A small 4 wheeler and a small watercraft trailer I put plywood on works perfectly for the small hauls. I think the clue is getting as much as you can close to or in the bays....both for setup and teardown. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark R Posted November 16, 2012 Share Posted November 16, 2012 For some reason...the edit thread would't let me save the Edit...added here. Edited to add...I also purchased a roll of double sided velcro which works great for connecting two walls together. Then during teardown, the velcro goes in the shooting buckets we use during shooting. Next match, it's in the buckets ready to reuse. Sometimes I'll use zip ties, but the velcro has worked great and is reuseable. For free standing wall setups, we have the metal bases that the 2x2 walls fit into...and can be spiked down if needed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Racer377 Posted November 16, 2012 Share Posted November 16, 2012 Warsaw has a really clever way of holding up walls with L-brakets that get zip-tied to the wall. They're much easier to deal with than my clubs' screwed in diagonal braces. No drill needed for setup/teardown, and they use less space in storage, and don't stick out way into the shooting area when set-up. Waiting around for a drill is a frequent time waster with the folks who help tear down with those. I dunno how many times I've used my multi-tool instead to unscrew a brace because it was faster than trying to find a drill. Personally, I think the only tool that should be needed for set-up is a hammer for stakes, and for tear down, a pry bar to get them up. Everyone has a knife to cut zip ties, but the velcro fasteners idea sound even better. On that note, walls and other props with old broken off screws sticking out are not especially encouraging for tear down participation. Shorter spikes are nice, and easier on whatever they're holding down when someone pulls them without a pry-bar. Lighter is better. At my club, we have a door that takes 3-4 people to load/unload off the trailer. No one likes dealing with it. OTOH, the 2x2 wood frame walls with snow fence are pretty light, single and hinged double sections can easily be moved by one person. I always thought it'd be a great idea if poppers and other steel props had some kind of latch that held them closed so your fingers didn't get smashed. It probably goes without saying, and I've never seen a club without one, but a dedicated trailer for walls, props, etc is a must have. Last squad tears down and brings it to the mouth of the bay, and trailer comes by and picks it up. I usually help until everything is back in the barn, and more often than not we have a 6 stage (4 field course) match completely put away in 20-30 minutes after last shot fired. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mildot1 Posted November 17, 2012 Share Posted November 17, 2012 Our new club in Illinois (ECSC) has a little different system designed by my lil brother (Scott Metcalf) that requires no screws, zip ties, or velcro to hang the walls. He used foundation anchor bolts (2 on each end of the wall) drilled thru the vertical uprights and pointed down. We welded two tubes to a 1/8x2x4 inch plate that screws to the 2x4 upright(2 per), you simply have two guys grab the wall and slide it into the the recievers on the uprights. No tools required and we have been setting up the afternoon prior knowing that we were going to have a wind issue that night. Simply pulled the walls and laid them on the ground, took five minutes per stage to rehang. We did find that the top ones need to be longer than the bottom, it is hard to line up both at once. would be better to start the top then align the bottom. FWIW MIldot Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shoot-em-All Posted November 17, 2012 Share Posted November 17, 2012 Our current range we have to haul everything in a pickup from the storage shed to each bay, way to much stuff to hand carry. So I also say the closer the better. Tywraps to hold the wall ends together works great-are cheap and a pocket knife is all that you need. As for the 12" spikes driven in with a hammer/mini sledge takes alot of work to get them lose. I like the big rope they use at the Gator Classic. If we had the props closer to the bays setting up a stage could be done alone instead of waiting for the stuff to be hauled down and waiting for the sporadic help you may or may not get. I'm not gonna wrestle the big steel stuff alone, well not anymore. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colt Posted November 17, 2012 Share Posted November 17, 2012 (edited) Racer377 didn't see how we (Warsaw IN21) got started 5 or 6 years ago. Everything stored in a 12x12 shed that you hit your head when putting things in it. Walls stored in a bay with a roof over it. Load steel and walls on a trailer, unload them, match over, load them and unload them. We used screws at that time too. Some how we talked the club into building a pole barn 30x40. We built a trailer that holds every thing but the walls. They are 2x2 with light snow fence thats more like a fishing net. The walls are the lightest part so we use pickups for that. The trailer holds 20 pp. , 20 usp and 55 or so target stands and sticks and 7 crowbars that are ground out to fit the stakes and Star's, drop turners or what ever you want to put on it. The draw back is the trailer is very heavy and takes a heavy truck to pull it. We use zip ties now. But the Velcro sound like a good idea. Today we hook to trailer take to lower bays( a ways from the barn) unload in bays. Bring walls down in pick up or 2nd trailer. Match is over Load everything on trailer unhook in barn. Unload walls. Done. The guys and gals helping now have no idea how hard it was before the barn and trailer. We have set up many match's with 2 or 3 people for 5 stages and still building good stages. But starting last year we have had a lot of new people from the club that come out and help out in set up and tare down, but tare down has aways been great with the shooters taring it down and helping load it on the trailer. I feel very lucky to have the help that we have now. Last summer with no rain the ground got like concrete so we bought 6" lag bolts and used a drill to spin them in the ground in stead of stakes. Then it started raining and the lag bolts wont hold so back to stakes. It all takes time and money to figure out what works for your club. Make it as easy as you can on the help. And I will tell you that Racer377 lives at least 1 or 1.5 hours from the club and sticks around till its all up. That makes a big difference !!! Brent Edited November 17, 2012 by colt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JWeber Posted November 17, 2012 Author Share Posted November 17, 2012 What I started using was a battery powered rotary hammer with a 3/8" X 13" bit. We have lots of rock and with the ground being like concrete last year we were bending spikes everywhere. This allowed spike driving to go very easy. I like the idea of steel bases. You won't need spikes or crow bars. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark K Posted November 28, 2012 Share Posted November 28, 2012 EAGC has been working this same issue for the last month or two. For the last 4 years, we have been screwing walls together, and screwing walls to wooden L-shaped braces nailed with spikes to the ground. We stored all our walls and steel in a fenced off area at one end of the range. We are in the process of changing. This last month, we took 2.5' PVC tube, and screwed it to the existing woodend braces, so we now just slide the walls down into them. At present we still nail the supports down, but will soon be using sandbags, stored on each bay, to hold them down. Our wall are made of 2x2, and covered with either snow fencing, or old swimming pool cover/tarp, but we are moving to Landscape Fabric (it is IR resistant, tough, and you can cover 12 eight foot walls for $40). Last month we stapled pieces of 2" wide Hook velcro to all four corners of the walls, front and back, and now use velcro hook strip to hold them together. We also drove 4 big fence posts in the mouth of each bay, and we now stand the walls between them, instead of hauling them all the way across the range. Fault lines - we use PVC tubing. The problem comes with nailing them down. If you use even the sort 6" spikes, you wear people out nailing them in and taking them out (as well as breaking the PVC) when the ground is as hard as it was this last summer. We are trying out cutting down the spikes shorter. We are also using fewer spikes where a shooter will not actually be running up against them. Poppers/plates/stars/moving targests - we have to secure them, so that some yahoo does not shoot them up with his AR during the week, so they are locked away. Once thing that made it easy to move poppers, is we to poppers like this: http://www.horseofiron.com/index.php/USTB-Universal-Target-Base-USPSA-IDPA We have some club members that have metal working skills, and we made our own bases, and just used the old poppers. We still have several poppers of each type/size with hinge frames, for when we need them for activating movers, etc, but these poppers are easier to carry. One of our pain points are double stack barrels. We used to use 3-4 wooden strips to hold them together, but they tend to break, though they do give you something to hold on to when moving them. We are now moving to using 8 "Spax" screws, and driving them through rim of one barrel (thick) into the bottom edge (thick) of the other barrel. This leave the need for a handle - we are going to try a 1' section of garden hose screwed to these same locations. This is a great thread for MDs to see what others are doing. Once I became a match director, one of the treats of going to other club matches was seeing how they did walls/props and match setup. Mark K. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark R Posted December 2, 2012 Share Posted December 2, 2012 Well, I bit the bullet so to speak per thread 11...I made up 2 target stand storage boxes. They are long enough to get 16 stands and all the sticks needed for a 32 round stage. I plan to build one for each large bay and share one between two smaller bays. I haven't got the top sheets of plywood on top in the pictures, but they are on now. Plans are to use a chain to limit the open position and to put pull handles in front to ease opening and closing. I used pressure treated vertical legs so ground contact won't rot them. I have them lifted off the ground to prevent our leg-less critters from getting and staying under. The horizontal supports underneith are same dimensions apart as the target stands. I put a slight slant on the top to allow rain water to roll off...and I'm going to paint them with ourdoor paint. Home Depot and Lowes had gallons of premium outdoor paint for a few dollars...paint they mixed up and customers didn't want. This will reduce prop movement from bay to storage shed AND double duty as a shooting bag table/RO table. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JWeber Posted December 2, 2012 Author Share Posted December 2, 2012 Your workmanship looks great. What a good idea! All of our pits have tables used for placing pasters, staple guns, everything needed for a match. Using that space for storage makes all the sense in the world. One thought would be to put a layer of ice guard on the top piece of plywood. This would insure everything inside stays dry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark R Posted December 3, 2012 Share Posted December 3, 2012 Your workmanship looks great. What a good idea! All of our pits have tables used for placing pasters, staple guns, everything needed for a match. Using that space for storage makes all the sense in the world. One thought would be to put a layer of ice guard on the top piece of plywood. This would insure everything inside stays dry. Ice Guard? What is it and where can I get some? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe4d Posted December 3, 2012 Share Posted December 3, 2012 drawn out picture of the stage including a list of supplies posted at the bay, NOT in the hands of one person running around. More people will get involved helping if they know what to do and dont spend the whole time standing around waiting for a MD with a case of oneguyitis to tell them what to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JWeber Posted December 4, 2012 Author Share Posted December 4, 2012 Ice Guard is a peal and stick roofing underlayment used in the first 3 feet of roofs that are subject to freezing and thawing condition. It is very water proof and is self sealing when the sun hits it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark R Posted December 4, 2012 Share Posted December 4, 2012 Ice Guard is a peal and stick roofing underlayment used in the first 3 feet of roofs that are subject to freezing and thawing condition. It is very water proof and is self sealing when the sun hits it. Thanks...will have to check it out if I run into water issues...I put two heavy coats of paint on sides and top, so hopefully they are rain proof. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark R Posted December 6, 2012 Share Posted December 6, 2012 Complete boxes ready to go to the range for storage of stands and sticks. One has logos on it. Greg donated to the club when we moved in to the new range so the least I could do is put his logo's on a box. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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