Prop Construction

[tpe187]

Hi Guys,

We are trying to getting started with matches here on post. We have purchased a decent amount of steel targets and target holders, now we have to build the stages.

We have access to a fairly unlimited number of plywood and 2x4's. I'm interested in some general construction guidelines. For example, I can make a great wall out of 2x4 and plywood that would be a great 8man lift but I"m looking for flexability in stages as well as easy transportation. They don't have to go far, only a 100 meters or so for storage.

Is there a particular way to set up 4x8 walls that are modular or interlocking?

Should every wall have a port and then cover with a piece of plywood if not needed?

I'm really interested in the one barricade used by Matt Burkett in the AR video where it had an open area about 10" high all along the bottom and then could use either kneeling or standing, left side or right. A couple of those would be good for AR and Shotgun.

Thanks for any idea's or links to designs

Tom

[Vlad]

What we do localy is use 6x8 sections of wood fence from he local home superstore. They get attached to eachother with long deck screws and/or supported with 90degree braces made out of 2x4's. They are light enough to be moved by one strong person or comfortably by 2 people, you can cut ports in them of any shape you want, you can attach push open port covers, eye hooks, or whatever you want for your activators. They stack nicely (vertically) and they last a while in bad weather (cause they are you know .. fence). A battery powered drill and saw are all you need to modify them to your needs.

[LJE]

Hi Tom,

Just like Vlad said, we also use stockade fence sections for most of our walls. You will need to build wall support legs to hold them upright. If you insist on using plywood for walls, use 3/8" or 1/2" sheathing plywood, and fasten 1x3 lath (cheap stuff, & will help keep the weight down) to the back perimiter of the plywood. Fasten the 1x3 flat against the plywood, not on edge. You can make 4x8 sections, stand them up vetical, overlap the edges of adjoining sections and screw them together. If you need more information, I can send you some drawings for support legs, etc.

If you visit my website, you will find lots of photos from our club matchs, and also some stage design software that might be helpful. Contact me by e-mail if you need more help.

Larry Eckert

T.A.P.S. Assistant Match Director

Topton Action & Practical Shooters

[freeidaho]

Tom,

Our club has lots of traditional plywood walls. Truth is they are hard to transport around the range, heavy, and hard to store.

Here are a couple of other thoughts. Our club made up about a dozen Bianchi barricades, and we use them together to form walls, halls, corners, etc. They are light, and easier to store. We will make more this year too, I am sure.

This year I am also going to weld some 2"x2" square tubing to a bunch of old steel car wheels. Then 2"x2"s can be put into each piece of square tubing to form wall corners. These corners can then be used to hold up that orange construction fence, black plastic, or whatever.

Hope this helps.

Ken Reed

[tpe187]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm afraid all I have right now is the plywood and 2x4's, but I'll see what I can come up with. Thanks for the links also.

[Tman33_99]

4'x8' walls made with 2x4 and covered with construction fence. You know the bright orange stuff. Just educate your shooters that just because they can see through it, they cant shoot through it. Makes a nice light wall. Legs made out of 2x4, and all legs and walls drilled with a template so holes are in the same places. Legs attaced to walls with carrage bolts and wing nuts.

If you don't want visablity through the walls, another option is the heavy mil black plastic sheets.

Edited March 11, 2006 by Tman33_99

[tpe187]

another very good idea. My problem is that we have the plywood and 2x4's and don't have any of the construction fence. We also don't have any funds, other than our own and the wood if free. Well, I guess taxpayers pay for it, so its not free, but on hand anyway. Thanks for the idea!

[Flexmoney]

This is a picture that shows our four foot by six foot plywood walls, they have a 2x4 frame on the back side.

These are kinda heavy, but fairly tough. Putting them, in the back of a truck is better than carrying them 100y.

You can see the "L braces" that hold them in place. Each leg of the "L" is about 3ft. long. The brace has a hole drilled in the bottom leg that allows a stake to be driven though and into the ground. The vertical leg of the "L brace" is attached to the 2x4 frame of the walls with screws and a screw gun. The "L brace" has a support that makes a right triangle (as you should see in the pic).

When you butt the walls together the 2x4 frames can be screw to each other directly.

These walls stack flat, on top of each other (stack them to cup "down" to avoid holding water, keep the bottom wall off the ground, cover with a tarp).

You don't need walls any bigger than 4ft. by 6ft., they would just get heavier to move around (not a good thing at all). Use thin plywood. Throw some paint on them (all military bases have lots of extra paint, right?).

[Bill Nesbitt]

You can rip the 2x4's and make them 2x2's and frame up your wall sections with them to save some weight.

The screw gun will be your friend when putting together your wall sections and taking them down.

[tpe187]

A pictures worth a thousand words! Thanks Flex. Hadn't thought of making 6ft walls. We can definatly do that. Yes, lots of old paint around here, but not like the old days when you had to paint rocks

We do have a good bit of old officer funiture that we can get hold of. Should make for some interesting scenarios.

Now all we have to do is get range control to allow for more than 15 degrees for the field of fire! We just have to be creative to get around some of those.

Thanks again for the help.

[John Heiter]

It may not be the best method but this is how we build our walls these days. We've tried orange netting, plastic lattice, regular plywood, wafer board, etc. but the luan stuff gives the best combo of ultra thin and light while still fairly rugged and solid. The 2x4's you have can be ripped to make great frames but I would still go invest in some luan (Home Depot/Lowes) if I were you. Having walls that are easily one man portable makes setup and tear down a breeze. We've got some of our walls made out of luan and others out of ply and guys will race each other to carry the luan models out for you. Not so many takers on the regular plywood kind.

John

Edited March 12, 2006 by John Heiter

[Flexmoney]

If you have a 4x8 sheet of plywood that you will be cutting down to 4x6, then you can use that 4x2 foot piece to make those barricades that you were talking about. (A barricade is often 6ft high by 2ft wide, but you can move your 4ft piece to butt at the top, leaving a 2ft gap at the bottom.)

[shred]

Ahh. whack the 4x8's to two 4x4's and mount 'em 2-1/2 feet off the ground. Easier for the RO to see brass pickers & lost tapers and you get 2 barricades out of one.

The best material I've seen for opaque walls is the Core-plast stuff they make 'Vote for Senator Joe' election signs out of. Light, tough and easy to work with. Although sheets can be bought reasonably cheaply, with an election year coming up, free walls will be sprouting everywhere. Just make sure you remove them _after_ the election. Stick two face-to-face and you won't even have to face Senator Joe's smiling mug at every match.

Updating: If you want transparent walls, look into the garden netting, shade cloth and mesh products-- it's used extensively internationally since they like looking through the walls and if you've got a good frame (a must), is really light, windproof and allows for much better spectator action. It doesn't hold spray-paint well, so if you're into that sort of 'decor', avoid it, but it comes in much nicer colors than the usual snow/safety-fence blaze orange.

[driver8M3]

The best material I've seen for walls is the Core-plast stuff they make 'Vote for Senator Joe' election signs out of.

+1. that's nice stuff....the walls end up being very light (and colorful).

the snow fencing is nice too, in that it allows others to see the action...including the clipboard holder, who can now watch for foot faults, range equipment problems, etc. (with the RO mainly focused on the gun, its often difficult to pick up on other things that are going on).

i know you mentioned that you're short on money now, so the plywood is fine (just heavy). if you start to attract a good # of shooters you should be able to start to buy new items soon enough (plastic wall stuff or snow fencing).

[Flexmoney]

Just be careful with the solid light weight materials. As mentioned, they can catch the wind. I have seen them make better sails than they do walls. Which really sucks during a match.

[Nate]

Our club is in love with the the 4x8 sheets of ply and they have worked well, but they are terrible to set up a large 6 stage match with lots of walls. I am going to build some snow fence walls and see what the difference in set up time is. I like the advantages that have been written about.

1 You can see the action

2 The RO can see the stage is clear

3 They are light and fast to set up

4 The wind doesn't move your match to the next county

5 You can use black plastic if you need a vision barrier

I didn't even use a mask for the hijacked thread. Nate

[Jim Norman]

We have found that inexpensive stockade fence works very well and lasts for several years. We can cut in a port when we need it, It is uniform allowing easy set-up of odd shapped rooms.

True, unlike construction barrier, (That orange net stuff) you can's see through it, you also can't set up on a target that you can't see. more realistic. Not as good from a spectator view point however. Also the RO does have to make sure the range is really clear.

[Flexmoney]

If you are already a USPSA member, you can go to the USPSA.org website and click into the member area. There you can download the Club Program Manual. It has some basic prop building ideas. (New clubs likely get their own copy as well.)

[gino_aki]

You can tell which clubs are new, along with those that have enough set-up help, by the wall panels they use...they're the ones using 2X4's and plywood. Old clubs like ours where help can be pretty late in coming to set up or has lotsa old guys build wall panels out of 2X2's for the framing and construction fencing for the covering. 4X8 panel is one man portable, and have legs on the bottom to stick in the target stands we use for bases. You can get 2X2's in twelve foot lengths for longer walls, just run a middle vertical brace. Reinforce the corners with hurricane ties. Will post a pic later, got to go back to the range to take pics.

Edited July 31, 2006 by gino_aki

[Sterling White]

Here's a pic of Larry at the Summer Blast with the construction fences used in frames. The fences stand even during wind storms.

http://lchico.5u.com/images/2006/100_4173.jpg

Edited July 31, 2006 by gmw2b

[Sterling White]

If the link above does not work then go to Linda's parent website and follow the links that take you to the summer blast photos.

http://lchico.5u.com/

[gino_aki]

Easy to build and one man portable. As you can see we use our metal target stands for bases, but other methods could be devised. Our next design which could prove even lighter would be to make the framework out of 1 or 1-1/2" Schedule 40 or 80 PVC pipe and use concrete forming stakes driven into the ground to hold them up: just slip the legs over the stakes.

[49COE]

Just a little FYI on the 1/4" Luan plywood, most of it is made with interior glue, meaning that if left out in the weather it will soon delaminate and be worthless. However, there are exterior grades of Luan that are availible that will stand up to the weather, usually they will need to be special ordered, but in the long run are worth the effort. Price isn't too bad either, I just ordered 10 sheets for my club for $14.40 a sheet.

[get2now]

If you don't have to worry too much about wind, then what we did was attach a 3 foot long 2x4 to one end of a 4x8 sheet of plywood. Then we attached an 8 foot long 2x4 to the short one with a hinge to make a Tee. The walls would be leaning but they'd still be over 7 feet tall. It made for really fast setup.

Don't know if you can see it very well in the picture but it'll give you some kind of idea.

Gary

Hi Guys,

We are trying to getting started with matches here on post. We have purchased a decent amount of steel targets and target holders, now we have to build the stages.

We have access to a fairly unlimited number of plywood and 2x4's. I'm interested in some general construction guidelines. For example, I can make a great wall out of 2x4 and plywood that would be a great 8man lift but I"m looking for flexability in stages as well as easy transportation. They don't have to go far, only a 100 meters or so for storage.

Is there a particular way to set up 4x8 walls that are modular or interlocking?

Should every wall have a port and then cover with a piece of plywood if not needed?

I'm really interested in the one barricade used by Matt Burkett in the AR video where it had an open area about 10" high all along the bottom and then could use either kneeling or standing, left side or right. A couple of those would be good for AR and Shotgun.

Thanks for any idea's or links to designs

Tom

[LPatterson]

Hi Guys,

We are trying to getting started with matches here on post. We have purchased a decent amount of steel targets and target holders, now we have to build the stages.

We have access to a fairly unlimited number of plywood and 2x4's. I'm interested in some general construction guidelines. For example, I can make a great wall out of 2x4 and plywood that would be a great 8man lift but I"m looking for flexability in stages as well as easy transportation. They don't have to go far, only a 100 meters or so for storage.

Is there a particular way to set up 4x8 walls that are modular or interlocking?

Should every wall have a port and then cover with a piece of plywood if not needed?

I'm really interested in the one barricade used by Matt Burkett in the AR video where it had an open area about 10" high all along the bottom and then could use either kneeling or standing, left side or right. A couple of those would be good for AR and Shotgun.

Thanks for any idea's or links to designs

Tom

Take some 2X4's & cut them about 3' long cut a 45deg at 1 end drill 3/8" holes down thru the 2" face & about 3 places in the top, these will be the legs to drive landscape nails thru depending on the ground use 12-16". Cut lots of 2X4's 2' long, these get screwed to the back of the plywood. Cut lots of gussets from the plywood 2' long on a side at 45deg angle I think that works out to 16 per 4X8 sheet. Use 2" drywall screws thru the plywood into the 2X4's. If it gets windy use an extra leg on the middle of a sheet. If possible only cut ports in a certain number of sheets in different locations. It starts to look tacky having a bunch of patches over holes. To make a wall like Matt get some 2X4" iron channel, weld it to 2"x1/4"X3' plate, drill some holes in the plate for nails, screw 2X4's to the plywood at the height you want. Everything assembles quickly & stores neatly & flat in separate piles.

The Army likes neat and you can paint them to make them last longer if they have to be stored outside.