Benches

B

BobZ

Guest
I would give everyone a real chuckle if I posted pictures of our Benches. I would appreciate some pictures and or descriptions of your club benches. I doubt that I will be able to get approval at my club for the fancy concrete benches on the club High Power Range. If any one has or knows of any plans out there for the construction of wooden benches please send me a link. There is another club in Houston that holds bench matches. In the past if a couple of air gunners showed up we could put up targets at 25 meters. I am now informed that we are still welcome but must shoot at 50 yards. So..... I have ordered a high power .22 and will just shoot with them. Maybe on some light wind days I can do the deed.

Bob
 
Holbrook Benches

Bob,
Here is a picture of the benches I made for my benchrest shoots at Holbrook.

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The club would not let me build any real benches as the covered firing line is used for everything.
The cement tops used five 80 lb bags of pre mix and 100 lbs of steel about 500 lbs total. With 4" wheels on both front legs and a $19.00 trailer jack I move them toward the back of the firing line when not in use. Takes me less than an hr to set up 9 benches. Cost me $100.00 using junk yard steel and $125.00 buying new steel.

The benches I use indoor are steel with a wooden top. They do move some, but it beats not shooting all winter. The indoor benches are only 29 inches wide to fit the 30" wide shooting stations. Have 6 benches Cost less than $60.00 / bench. (free wood top, no cement,and no trailer jack.
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Picture of Dan Brown the day he shot a 750 indoors.

Paul
 
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Greetings! I like what I see in your concrete top benches. We have a similar situation at our range in that, the bench cannot be permanent because the range is used for multiple disciplines. Do you have any detailed pics or plans like actual dimensions that you would like to share?

Thanks in advance.

-donovan

Hollywood Rifle & Pistol Club
 
jamdon,
Things I would have done different. At the worlds this summer the range had 15 permenant benches and 20 +
movable benches. They moved them with a pallet jack.

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I would have moved my T brace up so a pallet jack would fit under them to move the benches around. Saving $10- $12 for the pair of front wheels and $19-$25 for the trailer Jack. The pallet jack at Harbor Freight is a little over $200.00. I made 10 benches so spent $370.00 on wheels and jacks.
The legs are 30" long and I use what I find at the scrap yard. Square Tubing 1/8" 4"X4" or 1/8" 4"X 3" or 1/8" 3"X3". The T brace can be 1/8" 4"X2" or 1/8" 3"X2". The top angle Iron I use 1 1/2"X1 1/2" X 3/16 or 1/4"

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I pour the concrete top in my drive way. The top is up, when it sets up I turn it over and drill the mounting holes for the base. I mark where not to put the re-bar before pouring the top. I have an engine host to load the tops into my pickup. I take 2 frames and two tops plus the engine hoist to the range.

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If you want to use a wooden top? I would make the legs 1" longer . If needed you can fill the legs with concrete. I have used my indoor benches out side with no complants.
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Joe Haller made his benches with 6" Well casing for legs with wooden top. He is on the rimefire forum. He has to move them also.

My concrete tops are 40" wide 44" long, 12" at the back. And 18" from the front on each side tapers to the 12" at the back. I would copy the top that you have at the other range?

My indoor benches are only 29 inches wide to fit between a 30" shooting station.

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Hope this helps.

Paul
 
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Great ideas for moveable bench's guys. Especially the pallet truck idea.

Our bench's are in need of upgrade so lots of food for thought. Concrete filled legs and a timber top looks to be the way for us. Can you get away with using 4"dia pipe. will you get enough concrete down them to provide enough weight?
 
A couple of things you might want to consider:
The major design challenge is not building to resist downward force on the bench, but the torsional forces that are generated when one leans on it while shooting.
I suggest that you forgo putting any resilient material on the bottoms of the legs.
Be careful not to make them too low. 34" works pretty well. In order to have them fit a variety of shooters' shapes, adjustable shooting stools should be used in prototyping. It is easier for a short shooter to use a bench that is a little too tall for him, if a stool of the right height is available, than it is for a tall, or long waisted shooter to use a bench that is too short.
You may find it easier to fill legs that are otherwise rigid enough, with sand, than concrete. This will be particularly useful in testing a prototype since it can be undone.
Since shooters commonly put one knee behind the back leg of a three legged bench, perhaps the use of a pallet jack would have advantages other than cost.
Build a prototype, and be prepared to modify it. Not doing so has been a very common fault in bench building projects, resulting in many very durable monuments to bad planning.
 
I can envisage problems with torsional forces when using portable type bench's but not the semi portable types shown in the early posts. You would have to be leaning pretty hard to give those a twist IMO. Could be wrong though :rolleyes:

I like your idea of using sand rather than concrete. Easier to transport to site and install.
 
Benches are easier to move than you might think. The test starts with setting up the rest and rear bag with a Benchrest rifle in place, that has a 36x or higher scope on it. Some nice looking fixed benches show cross hair movement on the target when you lean sideways on the tail of the bench. To my knowledge virtually all portable benches do, the issue being how much.Years ago, we built some forms that were shared between the Fresno and Visalia ranges. The benches that came out of that effort are monolithinc steel reinforced concrete, poured in place, with the rebar set in holes in the slabs....fairly sturdy.
 

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"fairly sturdy." is that a local term for Earthquake proof ?

Not being picky but.The lateral movement observed with 200lb+ portable bench's is that torsional force or an inherent stability problem. Caused simple by the designs minimal baring surfaces. After all nothing is ever completely flat, certainly not concrete bases.
 
Would love to shoot off permenant benches but not an option at Holbrook, MA

At least we shoot benchrest at Holbrook on Concrete top portable benches that are fairly solid. It beats no shooting at all.
I have never shot off wooden top benches that didn't have movement. Even with a concrete block base.
I have also shot off monolithinc steel reinforced concrete poured in place permenant benches with the target frames flopping 6 inches in a light breeze.
I am just glad that 5 or 6 clubs shoot benchrest within 250 miles. The friendship of the shooters you meet is tops on my list.

Paul
 
If one of the legs does not come off of the slab, then I would not think that it was a inherent stability problem, and three lets pretty much solve the slab flatness problem. I think that one of the better features to incorporate in a movable bench is connecting the legs with tubing of similar size near their centers, or as has been shown in posts in this thread, just above their bottoms. Excellent groups have been shot from movable benches. I was just trying to point out that attention should be paid to certain aspects of design. I think that while concrete wins hands down for durability, for a movable bench, there may be some shooting advantages to something lighter, as long as the frame is sufficiently heavy. BTW, the picture is of an end bench of a row of 42. There are easier ways to build benches that are similarly sturdy. The prototype for these benches was built at the Visalia range by the late stockmaker Lee Six, who did a major part of the work involved in pouring and finishing the benches at that range, along with the current president of the NBRSA Dennis Thornbury. Those benches are seriously labor intensive.
 
Boyd
I agree bracing the tripod legs greatly enhances the rigidity of the base.

42 pour bench's, jeez! You'd need a good construction crew to get that done over a weekend.
 
great benches

All that sturdy and Heavy makes me wonder how I hit anything. At least nobody laughed!

Bob
 
We poured seven sets of six, one set per weekend, with volunteers from the club. Mixed the concrete on site from a pile each of sand and aggregate, and sack cement. We poured on Saturday morning, stripped on Sunday, cleaned, waxed and reassembled during the week. While that was happening, I got more cement, fabricated more rebar, and drilled the slab. When I said labor intensive, I wasn't kidding. A few years back, an older friend of mine, who is generally quite handy, built a pair of monolithic benches. He lives about an hour away, and during a phone conversation I offered to look his forms over before he poured. Full of confidence he brushed off my mention of important details, and declined my offer. Later he admitted that he had to destroy the base part of his first form, to get it out from under the top. That was the detail that I was trying to tell him about. I had figured a neat little work around, a couple of decades earlier. I suppose that if there is a moral of the story, it is that you really should talk to lots of folks who have experience in what you are about to attempt, and build one bench before you do the rest. Unfortunately, this doesn't happen very often.
 
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