I made this almost 2 years ago and it still stops arrows nicely. This will not work with broad heads.
Here's what you'll need.
-8 plastic milkcrates
-scrap plywood
-a couple pieces of old carpeting
-rope for handles
-heavy duty plastic screen material. found in rolls at Home Depot, or swipe some from the enclosure around your kids trampoline. (Its used obviously for screen doors for people with pets. It prevents dogs nails from easily riping the screen).
-staple gun with 1/2' staples
-wood screws
-lots of rags, old bedsheets, clothes etc.. remove any zippers.
-heavy duty wireties
-sawzall or jigsaw
-drill and drillbit
-heavy weights or weighted objects (you'll see why later)
With the openings of the milkcrates facing the same way, wire tie them all together to form a square. Take your saw and cut out entire interior leaving a 4 sided shell with the back (previously the bottoms also intact).
Measure inside dimensions of the crate sides and cut a piece of plywood out to fit the sides of target shell. No need to cut a piece for the back side of target.
Place each cut plywood piece into the target shell and from the outside screw the plastic crate into plywood. Put in as many screws as you want. By adding and screwing the wood to the target shell this will strengthen it.
After the four pieces are screwed into place, you may trim off any screw that extends to far into the target. Next, drill 4 holes into top of target and tie in the rope to make handles.
Next, place the back of the target down and cut out a piece or two of any old carpeting you may have and place them inside the back of the target. You can see the blue carpeting in one of the pictures. The carpeting acts as a "final stop" should an arrow get through any of the stuffed material.. it won't go through the carpeting.
Take all your rags, old clothes, or whatever and stuff them into the target. I found an old down comforter which works real nice.
Compact everything by hand as much as possible and then leave an extra 8" or so outside of the target, you will be compacting all of that as well shortly.
Now get your heavy duty screen material and place over it all.
I then used a piece of plywood and placed it over everything (leave one edge of the target exposed) and took a couple hundred pounds of weights and layed it over it all compacting the remaining rags into the target frame.
Now you can staple the screen to the exposed wood edge of the target. Staple to the plywood inside the frame and not to the plastic.
After one side is stapled well, pull and stretch and move the plywood to the opposite edge and staple down. Pull, stretch and staple remaing 2 edges.
Once its all stapled down nicely you can cut off any overhanging piece of screen, paint on some bullseye's and try it out.
I also added to mine which you can't see from the pictures a small piece of
2x4 screwed into the bottom front edge, this angles it upward slightly. The kids like the slight angle when shooting at it.
I made mine in a couple hours..best of all I had everything laying around so it was free!
This target stops fieldpoints great. I never had one go through the target, and its large enough to place in the lawn and have the kids shoot at it. The dimensions are 25-1/2" x 25-1/2" x 21-1/2" deep. Also, I NEVER shot at any other target were the arrows pull out so easily.
If you make one good luck with it.. just don't leave it outside, with all the rags its really not all that weatherproof.
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