Triangle Tactical Podcast and Blog on Guns, Gear, and Competition Shooting
Getting started with dryfire is super easy. Tape some scaled dryfire targets to the wall, clear your pistol, maybe put a par timer app on your phone, and go to town.
I’ve been practicing with a handful of dryfire targets taped to my garage door for a few years now, but as I’ve gotten to the point of wanting to work on more specific things (like keeping the gun up while moving into a position where I’m going to engage a target I can’t see) I’ve found it increasingly difficult to setup those sorts of things.
The solution to this is to build some sort of target stand for my scaled dryfire targets so I can place them exactly where I want them. I’ve been wanting something like this for a while, but it wasn’t until today that a friend told me about the PVC target stands he made for his targets that it finally made sense to me.
After hearing about his target stands, I remembered I had 8′ of 1/2″ PVC in the garage. I ran to Home Depot and spent about $3.50 on tee fittings, and pipe caps. While I was there I checked the price on a 10′ piece of 1/2″ PVC pipe, and it’s about $2.50, so for $6.00 total you can build one of these.
Note: I know the pipe caps may seem unnecessary, but they’re worth it. Without them the stand will be wobbly because of the tee fittings.
For the stand part, I cut a piece of PVC 5′ long. The base is made of (6) 6″ long pieces all pushed together into the tee fittings.
Parts List
- (1) 10′ piece of 1/2″ PVC pipe
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(3) non threaded 1/2″ Tee fittings
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(4) non threaded 1/2″ pipe caps
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scaled dryfire target from BenStoegerProShop.com
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some tape to tape the target to the stand
Easy, cheap, breaks down so you can toss it in a closet, and it works great. What more do you want?
Me likee, nice job!
That is awesome!
Need some advice. I got the Ben Stoeger scaled targets. Do they fit into the Steve Anderson drills? For example, do I use the 1/3-scale cardboard targets at 10 feet, when dry-firing the 30-feet drills? Even though it’s 1/3 scale, it just seems like a whole lot closer than a full-size IDPA target at 30 feet is. Thoughts?
That’s how I do it. It’s not perfect, but its good enough.
I use PVC for outdoor target stands. I guess they cost about the same. I also hang medium duty clamps with nylon twine to hold the targets.
http : //i1074 . photobucket . com/albums/w419/gwk1951/TEMP/SN853642.jpg
Remove spaces.
Just what I was looking for! I went with 3/4″ for a little added stability. I’m putting another “T” on top for a short horizontal piece that I’m attaching a 1×2″ to to I can staple several targets in a row on it. Thanks again!
Drive around on bulk garbage day and salvage the old floor lamps. A couple of rare earth magnets and they can be target stands or barricades (with the addition of a piece of cardboard).
Driving around on trash day, tearing apart lamps, and then adding magnets seems like a lot more work than cutting a couple pieces of PVC.