Hey all,

I would like to see some pics of your homemade targets.  If you don't have pics, how about telling about them and how you made them?

I am getting ready for a move south and I am not going to be able to take my archery target.  My target is about 30 inches or so and I would like one about that big as I am prone to miss on occasion....

I have checked out the prices of targets and a target as big as I want it comes in about $100!  And that's for one of the cheap ones.  I have seen them as high as $400 or so, and I definitely can't afford that.

So I need some ideas about making my own home target and saving money.  Let's see your targets or at least hear about them.

Thanks for the help.

BD

These are made from insulation sheeting and Great Stuff expanding foam.  They've worked wonderfully and are now in their second summer, having been outdoors all winter....  The link shows the whole process of making them:

http://www.howardhilllongbowmen.com/backstopsandtargets/foamtargets/captdickfoamtarget.html

toe sack(burlap bag) filled with old clothes or sheets has worked well. My mother in law saved all her walmart bags and put in toe sack and worked just fine as well.

Homemade feedsack target:









Doug

Here's a few that I made.

 

 

Here is my indoor target butt it is 6' x 4' x 16". The material is Celotex but some lumber yards call it brown board. When I purchased the material (in 2007) it was $5.50 per 4' x 8' x .5" sheet. I had difficulty finding it in KC because Lowes and Home Depot didn't carry it and the lumber yards I called didn't know it by the name Celotex. I finally found this material in a home center store named Menards. There are two types of this product one is brown like you see in the picture and the other is black because it is impregnated with tar. Stay away from the tar.

I built the target with a 2" x 6" base and top and put casters on the base. There are four sticks of all thread in each corner of the target that run from top to bottom that hold everything together. The top and the bottom (wooded pieces) act as a vise, by varying the tightness of the nuts at the top of the all thread I can adjust the compression of the Celotex. The tighter the compression the harder it is to remove the arrows.

I built a simple jig to cut the pieces of Celotex and a jig to drill the holes so that I would make all the pieces the same. The whole project took about a day to build and setup. And the only power tools needed was a skill saw and drill.

The material did leave a little bit of glue resin on my carbon arrows in the beginning but I adjusted the compression tension and the problem went away. The whole target cost in the neighborhood of $200 including the two 500 watt lights mounted to the floor joist, but the target is 6' x 4'. Compare that to a Block Target 24" x 24" x 16" $209.

This target will last me for years and when I finally shoot out one side I'll turn it around and start shooting the other side.

Good luck.

I took some 4'x4' pieces of cardboard stacked them about 3 or 4 feet high on a pallet. Then I compressed them with 2 pieces of c channel and 2 pieces of all thread.(homemade block target) It is by far the best target I've ever owned. I've shot it for almost a year and you can't hardly tell. It is also inside my shop which is 100 feet long. If it were outside it would need to be covered with a tarp or something to keep it from getting wet.

You can do a search here and find a lot of info.  My own technique is to get big burlap bags from coffee roasters and stuff it with heavy plastic from the dumpsters behind a furniture store.  Material costs = $0.  Hang old carpet behind if you want a backstop.

This is my broadhead target.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQV_lVzjLx0&feature=channel_page

This is my field point target. "MS" series.
http://www.randwtargets.com/pages/cat_1.html

I just completed a sand pit target.  Used treated lanscaping ties and stacked them like lincoln logs.  A few rebar pounded through drilled holes in the wood and a foot into the ground.  4'X4' and 3'tall.  Takes a ton(literally) of sand.  Works great!

I love that target Gatekeeper.

I like the bag targets. Great minds think alike. I've been making bag targets for over 20 yrs. I use plastic stratch wrap like what goes on skids for shipping motorfreight. The nylon feed bags work great. Shoot up the bag just put your plastic in a new bag. Get a soft spot just step on it some and good as new.

Another inexpensive target of the bag type is made out of cotton. What I do is take an old twin top mattress, cut the cover away,cut loose the cotton, fold it up to about the size of a
burlap bag or feed bag. Put it into a large plastic lawn bag and then slip it into my bag. usually I hang it  from a frame I knock together but you can just as easily prop it up against something. The cost is nil.

I have one of those big round bales of hay that is rolled up by some farm machine. I put my ragets in front of that sometimes. You can't miss that!

How do the R&W Targets compare to the other major brands?

here's mine i get em free...but they have on the auction site for about $22 or so.





the other is a block of styrofom fished out of the lake lol

If you use sound board instead of celotex it makes for an easier pull.  There is very little tar/glue in sound board.  Here in Tucson I get about 4 or 5 years use out of one.  I make mine 4'x4' it takes 12 4x8 sheets ripped to 12" to make a 4x4 butt.

MAP

Michael,  what is sound board?

I have used the burlap or feed sack filled with plastic grocey bags.  They work really well jsut make sure that you get the bags all stuffed together so you don't laeve any empty spaces.  They'll stop any arrow you shoot at them and are really inexpensive to produce.  When the bag wears out yo can buy another feed bag for a couple bucks at most and use the same stuffing again.