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Walls made of square metal tubing


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I am thinking about moving from our current 2x4 wood walls that have removable legs, to walls made of square metal tubing with permanently attached legs. I have seen these type of walls at several major matches but never really had a chance to take a close look at their construction. Can anyone provide some guidance or feedback on what they have deployed for walls using square metal tubing? Such as what gauge of steel tubing is sufficient verses over kill? What type of "Foot" works the best for these type of walls?

I am thinking that we would make the main frame work of the wall using the metal square tubing and then use snow fence in the middle to represent the visual blocker portion of the wall. Its usually pretty windy at my clubs range so all of our existing walls have snow fence as the visual blocker to make them more wind resistant.

I am sure my club could figure this stuff out via trial and error, but I would rather start off the project with at least a little bit of suggestion from others that have already done it.

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1" 14 gauge tubing. it is better to use removable feet though. And the feet should use round tubing, not square, that way you can put 2 or more tubes on a foot and pivot the walls in whatever angle you want. The snow fence will work fine.

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Yes I was thinking of using a straight leg with a removable foot. I seen some feet with 2-3 round pipes to place the wall legs so you could have that many walls intersecting on the same foot. Can anyone think of any drawback to making all of the feet a triple pipe setup? Other than additional cost in building them.

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It's actually common to build wall frames out of steel? Seems to go against the grain of keeping steel at appropriate distances for safety? I have personally never seen any metal used other than target stands or wall stands.

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It's actually common to build wall frames out of steel? Seems to go against the grain of keeping steel at appropriate distances for safety? I have personally never seen any metal used other than target stands or wall stands.

Very common at the matches I've been to. They are made of light gauge square steel tubing so if they do get hit the bullet usually passes through.
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Every once in a while you will want feet with only 1 pipe, but for the most part 3 should be fine. As far as safety how would that be any less safe than having a metal target stand at 3 yards that holds a target that you are actually shooting at?

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A club that I shoot at uses conduit for legs and they slide down on a foot made out of rebar welded to a piece of angle iron. Due to it being round it can pivot and because it fits inside, it can be placed very close to another wall.

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A club that I shoot at uses conduit for legs and they slide down on a foot made out of rebar welded to a piece of angle iron. Due to it being round it can pivot and because it fits inside, it can be placed very close to another wall.

Can you post a picture of that wall/foot setup?

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I think you can get electrical conduit in 20 foot lengths. If you are good with a conduit bender, you could bend something that looks like a giant staple. 6 foot legs with about 8 feet in the middle. You could also take about a 8 foot long straight piece, squash the ends flat in a vise, then weld it to the legs/between the legs, so the bottom of the snow fencing has something to get zip tied to.

There was a thread a while back where some club was using these anchors made by the Simpson strong tie company. It looked like a long lag screw. IIRC, there might have been a video posted of them screwing their walls' feet down to the ground. It seemed to work really well.

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