Bench spacing and cover

H

HovisKM

NRA Life Member
Hello,
I have a couple of questions and would like some opinions. I am getting ready to redo my benches and going to build a shelter cover. Here are the questions:

1. What center to center bench spacing do most like?
2. Building a lean to style roof. Would 8ft in the front and 7.5 at the back be ok for height clearance. Looking at a span of around 10 to 12 ft.
3. How far should the overhang of the roof extend in front of the benches?
4. Does anyone have the deminsions of the bench tops at St. Louis?

thanks
Hovis
 
HovisKM said:
Hello,
I have a couple of questions and would like some opinions. I am getting ready to redo my benches and going to build a shelter cover. Here are the questions:thanks
Hovis
Click to expand...

1. What center to center bench spacing do most like? Your bench design will dictate that, you need to include room for bench width and assume a lefty and a righty will be shooting at the same time. Usually it is in the 5 feet on center range.
2. Building a lean to style roof. Would 8ft in the front and 7.5 at the back be ok for height clearance. Looking at a span of around 10 to 12 ft. Eight feet is OK but a little higher wouldn't hurt. The slope needs to work with your roof type. Anything less than 3" in 12" means a metal roof. Even then, I would keep the slope to 1" in 12".
3. How far should the overhang of the roof extend in front of the benches? Overhang increases reflected noise but reduces blowing rain. 2-3 feet at a minimum. The relationship shown below, which you may recognize, seems to work for us
4. Does anyone have the dimensions of the bench tops at St. Louis?

rb-cover.jpg
 
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Tom's point about a lefty and a righty is a good one. When we deal with numbers without doing a mockup, there can be problems that are not caught until it is too late. If you have the room, I would use 5' 6" as a minimum.
 
You also may...

HovisKM said:
Hello,
I have a couple of questions and would like some opinions. I am getting ready to redo my benches and going to build a shelter cover. Here are the questions:

1. What center to center bench spacing do most like?
2. Building a lean to style roof. Would 8ft in the front and 7.5 at the back be ok for height clearance. Looking at a span of around 10 to 12 ft.
3. How far should the overhang of the roof extend in front of the benches?
4. Does anyone have the deminsions of the bench tops at St. Louis?

thanks
Hovis
Click to expand...

want to consider a gutter on the front. That way in a downpour, you aren't shooting through a wall of water and it isn't splashing back onto the pad fromt he ground out front. --greg
 
Boy, this looks crowded. Do you walk over the benches to put out flags or swing around the far ends ??? Lights are a nice touch. Art

rb-cover.jpg
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abintx said:
Boy, this looks crowded. Do you walk over the benches to put out flags or swing around the far ends ??? Lights are a nice touch. Art
Click to expand...

No, we don't have to walk over the benches, we have a number of of indentured servants who carry shooters in rickshaws out to the target areas.
 
Hovis

At Rachels Glenn, I am sure I was not the only one that noticed that it is LOUD!!!! under that awning. Also, several times, I noticed that when you and the shooter to my right shot, my Rifle would sometimes shift a noticable amount on the target. Since I totally free shoot, that can present a problem. I am ceratinly not degrading Mickys range in any way, it ia a great place to shoot. But, that particular item is something you have to be mindfull of.

I personally think that 8 ft centers on Benches is desireable. That is what we have at Tomball, and there is never any problems with the shooters next to one another. Midland is also 8ft.

The righty-lefty thing can be a major problem if centers are much less than 8 ft. At Denton, where they use "H" shaped benches, I am not sure what the centers are, but a righty and a lefty on the same relay can be awfully close.

My advice would be to make them as wide a spacing as your space will allow. Shooters will thank you later.........jackie
 
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Table Tops are usually 42 inches wide, minimal spacing between tables is 2 1/2 ft(30 inches). more space is obviously a luxuary.
Hope this helps
DOC
 
Spacing

Ours are 6' on center and could stand to be a little further apart.
 
We used 6' center to center. I would not use less unless it was absolutely necessary. Our benches are 44" wide, modified "T" shape..........Donald
 
Jackie,

I thought some one of issues I've seen with a few ranges is the awning that comes down in front. I believe that directs more blast back to the shooter and those to each side and I'm not goin to do that. I'm going with a flat roof with the slant to the rear and that will eliminate a lot of noise I believe plus do away with the need for gutters on the front. Right now, my benches are eight feet centers, wooden in concrete and that was a test to vary designs, noise and bench height, etc. But after shooting at a lot more ranges this year, and the opinions of others, I'm ready to move forward with more construction. This is going to be range that goes out to 600yds, it has 18 inches of grade for the distance and I have room for about 40 benches but I'm going to start with somewhere between 4 and 10 because this is my personal private range. I've decided to build benches like St. Louis and I talked to Ron yesterday and they have a mold for the tops. I'm going to sink eight inch PVC pipes in the ground 3ft and fill with concrete for legs (Ron laughed at me when I told him it was to keep from scratching my legs cause I wear shorts...guess I'm getting soft) and then fill around the benches with gravel until I can beat in a base to pour concrete on. There is no power there but I have a generator and will have a area behind the benches and a bathroom/storage room. After I get this bult, I am going to work on a moving backer system that is expandable in case the range gets bigger (which I hope so), because there are very few places to shoot that are close and I believe that's why there just aren't many centerfire BR shooters in the area so maybe I can draw and convert some of the rimfire guys (a lot of them in the area). I gotta go a little slow as I'm paying for this out of pocket. A friend has loaned me a backhoe. I hope to have the range done by spring. I just think something like this is needed in the area to expand the sport.

Hovis
 
This is going to be in Southern Indiana. Zip code is 47581. I'm an hour and a half from either Evansville or Louisville at about a 25* angle.

Hovis
 
HovisKM said:
I'm going to sink eight inch PVC pipes in the ground 3ft and fill with concrete for legs

Hovis
Click to expand...

You will probably want a hole in the ground filled with concrete about 2 feet in diameter to put the base of the pipe in. Depending on your soil and compaction, just an 8" pipe in the soil wouldn't be very stable from forces from any direction. If you use PVC, stick in a few pieces of #4 bar. You could use thin wall filled 4" steel pipe too if it's well primed.
 
It's being dug in some of the hardest clay you have ever seen. I'll fill the void around the pipe in the hole with concrete also. Or I might just snug fit the pipe until I have to drive it in the hole.

Hovis
 
HovisKM said:
This is going to be in Southern Indiana. Zip code is 47581. I'm an hour and a half from either Evansville or Louisville at about a 25* angle.

Hovis
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Any chance of you building closer to Eastern North Carolina zip code 28384?

Possum
 
Possum,
Let me know the azimuth you need to shoot off your porch or backyard....I'll line the range up for you....I know that extra 792,000 yds wouldn't have any effect on YOUR groups :eek: :eek:.

Heck, I though I might bump into you at riverbend....your gonna have to pack that mule and get on up here to yankee land and bust some caps...:D :D

Keep in touch and keep that Grizzly down there.

Hovis
 
Our experience

Hovis:
Although We only shoot Rimfire at our range, I have shot at numerous CF ranges across the country and overseas. I would recommend 6 foot centers if you use T shaped benches up to 40 inches wide. Anything wider, go to 7 ft centers. Some ranges use the center cut out tops, and in my opinion, they need to be spaced so you have a minimum of 18 inches between the top edges for traffic back and forth to the targets. We set our leg supports, ( 3 ), in round tubes, 8", w/re-bar, set 18 inches below the top of the slab. We then pored the slap and the rest of the tubes at the same time. This gives us a very stable platform. You can view our RF bench set up on the Article's section of this site. The tops were formed and poured separately, and then set on the legs, and leveled with steel shims with glued w/special cement for concrete use.
 
I made 72" long and 36" wide T-shaped benches and put them 5 feet center to center and think thats enough. The trick is to design a bench that do not have to be wider only to make space for the shooters legs. I made my benches open underneath and only 12" wide at the rear end. You can find a picture of the benches at Bench Rest Central/Articles/A short sudy of..
With that design you can have room for more benches.:)
 
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