Been thinking about a target backstop project and have come up with this idea: There are a bunch of pine logs leftover from the road crew no one has picked up yet that look about 8"-10" diameter and maybe 16' long. My thought was to grab those and build a backstop in the shape below and fill it it dirt with a low board across the front. I was thinking of using t-posts on either side to make sure the logs stacked on top of each other to height of about 5'. I plan to interlock the sides and back similar to a log cabin corner. I'd like to flatten the top and bottom of the logs so they sit flush on top of one another. Without a saw mill, how would you do it? Thanks for the input or previous experience on similar projects.
Best thing I can think of it try to get a straight board, screw it together and rip it but a skill saw won't cover the whole diameter. I suppose you could flip it over and hope it meets close enough in the middle.
Ok kinda what I figured. Idk how you would get them flat without some sort of mill. Maybe free hand might be good enough for what it is. You might want to build it to 6 ft high if you'll use it for handguns. Some new people seam to shoot high. Helped my dad built one similar at his house. I think we used roofing rubber to line the inside before we filled with sand to kinda hold it back when you get a bunch of holes in it.
Logs will rot and then the backstop will fall. As said, ditch the logs all together and just use dirt with no rocks in it.
I'm only relying on the logs to hold the dirt and the dirt to actually be the backstop and hold a shape. Thanks for the input guys, as usual I'm overthinking things
Used railroad ties or telephone poles make good supports. Just a pile of dirt is fine if you aren't worried about aesthetics. As mentioned above...try to use clean dirt.
If you have some time on your hands and like working with hand tools, you can flatten the top part of a log using this. Many use this when building log cabins.
