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Home-made Plate Rack


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My club does occassional ipsc-type steel matches. For a plate rack they use a railroad tie with stands on each end and 6 plates that are set on top of it. Each 6" plate has a 2" wide piece of flat stock welded to the bottom to stand them up on the tie. Other than a slow reset (pick up plates from ground to literally reset them), it works well. The stand on each end folds up so it's also fairly portable.

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If you don't have the dough to do it 100%, I would highly recommend shooting paper plates instead - or buying 6 self-resetting Colt speed plates. Building the reset mechanism is fairly easy. What is hard is doing the AR500 plates on your own. I would STRONGLY recommend you buy the plates and hinges prefab from www.mgmtargets.com then build the rest of the mechanism yourself. MGM has the best plates bar none.

www.randrracingonline.com builds a man-portable plate rack that splits into two for what I consider a VERY reasonable price by the time you pay retail for steel and do it yourself.

I built a flatbed plate rack trailer last year and it was expensive and an enormous amount of work - because I chose to rework an existing plate rack and existing motorcycle trailer. I don't regret building it, but if I did it again, I would make different choices and rework VERY little of it.

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I found something in our local clubs steel house that I thought was pretty cool ... it is a hinged plate welded to a steel rod (looks a lot like a fence post ) that sticks into the ground they are light easy to reset and six in a row feel just like a plate rack. they also make for great rifle targets at distance... very cool !

if you like i can get some pics next week...

later

C-38

I have also seen plates welded to chain that when hung in a row make a pretty good portable plate rack .

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Fantastic fellas, this is just the kind of feedback I was looking for. C-38, pics would be a great help, thanks. I'm gonna try to re-work something to get a suitable prototype.

If at first things fail, shoot it and try again.

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I have a swinging plate rack I designed, and my father built. Good for practice, no resetting, and you can tell instantly if you hit it. We used two pieces of a road grader blade. Road graders have a replaceable piece of steel on the bottom of the blade that wears down to a certain point, and they then replace it. These are very strong, hard steel. We welded these together, and angled them slightly down, to keep any stray shots going down, into the dirt. On the back, we made brackets for each plate. We took pieces of steel rod, and welded the plates to one end, and a sleeve to slide the bolts through, on the other. We then made two removable legs for the whole assembley. It is quite heavy when assembled, but the legs can be removed and it can be put into 3 pieces. It is possible to assembly it by your self, but it is a pain. Two people can assemble it with no problems.

If you want, I can take some pictures when I get a chance.

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Kind of off-topic, but a plate rack is well worth the cost or effort to get kids focused on shooting and less on hearing the gun go boom. I built a ten place rack on salvaged iron. The plates are hinged with 1/2" re-bar and 3/4" angle. It is crude and ugly and it weighs a ton. It is on skids salvaged from some kind of cattle trough. My kids blaze away with their 22's and love it and I admit I shoot it more than I probably should.

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  • 6 months later...

ANCO---I will send you some pictures of the plate racks I make.If you can weld or have a buddy who does----one of them can be made easily in one day.

They are a "improvement"of the ones Ray Chapman has at his training facility.Good scrounging should allow you to make one of these for around $75-$100.

Give me a week or so to find the diagrams and you're on your way to better shooting---and having all your buddies want to borrow them!!

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