Metal Target Tree From Scrap

This is one I have always wanted to do and now I decided to make it for some friends of mine so they can have fun the next time they are at the range.

A pistol tree. Not sure how well its going to work... but it seems to be just fine when hitting it with my knuckle.

Safety apparently... is IMPORTANT!!!

Something I told my daughter (who was 8 at the time) was that the best thing to do is keep all of your fingers. It will allow you to be more productive in life if you got all 10.

"Keeping your fingers is a lot like passing a class. If you get a 90 or an 80 at the end of the semester. You're still going to be OK. But... you get anything less than a 70 and things become really difficult. Also, thumbs are worth 50. So lets shoot for 100 please." -Robert T Fischer

everything in the tool room is dangerous. Some more dangerous than others.

For this you will need
(On the safety side)

Gloves
Welding mask

Goggles or face shield if not both
Patients

(Metal working tools)

Welder your preference but we are working with mild steel
angle grinder or chopsaw
angle grinder or milling machine
angle grinder or belt sander
measuring tape
marker

deburring tool

So as you can see I have a nice pile of scrap gathering in my shop and decided to grab all round rod and tubes I can find for this one.

I am using round to reduce ricochet.

I am needing hinges for this so swivel the targets around the back side after being shot. So first thing I need to do is find inner and outer diameters that match.

Then I need to remove any of the steel that is tool steel since it is hard enough to cause more of a ricochet issue.

As you can see I am cutting down the inner and rod and outer piping to make the hinges.

I got the pair that swiveled together with the least slop and wasnt tool steel. You can see the sparks do not have much secondary explosion at the end of there trails. Kinda like fireworks. If it did that would be a higher carbon steel which means it would not absorb the blow of the bullets very well and would ricochet more.

The inner tubes were cut to 3 inches while the outer tubes where cut to 1 1/4.

This was to give room for the arm to come off of the inner piece in between each hinge.

For ever inner bar I made 2 out pipes for top and bottom.

as you can see the cuts on the tubing and bars where rough after the chopsaw (or angle grinder) so I had to do some inner and outer deburring on all pieces.

This is important to allow the pieces to rub against each other smoothly.

In my scrap bin I had a bunch of 1/4 inch 4 by 4 end cuts just lying around along with some rebar.

I stacked the plates all up in the mill and did a bit of end milling to get a section of rebar to fit into each plate for welding later.

I then cut the rebar into 6 inch pieces.

I lined up ever hinge in this fashion after welding on the rebar to the inner bars for the hinge.

Using a piece of flat tubing to make sure its vertical and a magnet to make sure the top and bottom hinge are in line.

Everything was done with a couple of tacks. After it cooled I checked to see if the hinges where alined since they are free floating from each other before welding.

A simple tap of the hammer would align the upper or lower hinge then once it swung smooth, I continued welding it all in place.

For this I found I had a left over break rotor and another piece of pipe larger tham my schedule 40 tubing the hinges are welded too and made this my base.

Since the schedule 40 slides into this tubing on the bottom it is now removable. The down side is its not a perfect fit so it has a little bit of slop. A simple whole with a nut and bolt will fix this.

I hope you enjoy my saturday morning scrap build as much as I did making it.