Garage Archery and Bowcrafting with Stick Part 1

**W. Rabbit** · Posted On: 1/14/2013 4:33pm

Stick, any thoughts on materials for an effective crossbow backstop? I need something that will stop bolts without stripping or bending them. I have lost too many...

This would be for a heavy crossbow....116 ft-lbs, 350 fps velocity.

**Stick** · Posted On: 1/14/2013 5:33pm

I haven't sold any yet, but that'll come soon enough.

I don't know, Rabbit. What have you tried?

**Permalost** · Posted On: 1/14/2013 5:46pm

My eccentric dad made a target out of duct taped together discarded boogie boards, for a compound bow with a 60lb draw.

**Diesel_tke** · Posted On: 1/14/2013 8:53pm

I don't know where you live, but bails of hey work well. My brother uses that with the side spray painted. I've got a target that I got from academy a few years ago. Its called the black hole. Take broad heads, field tips, and stops the arrow well.

**Stick** · Posted On: 1/15/2013 12:26am

350fps though, that's pretty damn fast. I mean, I don't have a chronograph, but I'm fairly certain my bows shoot around hafl that.

I just use denim, towels and other rags packed tight and duct taped into a box. If you used a wide box- mine's only about 6" wide- like say just a big fat cube a few feet on each side and stuffed it well with denim, towels, other tough scraps and packed them very densly that might work. Apart from taping the box shut, use ratchet straps to crush the thing down, compress it.

Speaking of ratchet straps, have you tried layer paper or cardboard? You can stack paper- printer paper, newspaper, anything- and make a big fat tower. Stack a few toside by side and set them so you'd be firing at them edge on. Ratchet tie the whole mess as tight as possible and on the back side slather the thing in glue and put on a plywood backing.

Something like this.

**W. Rabbit** · Posted On: 1/15/2013 9:35am

Originally Posted by Stick

I haven't sold any yet, but that'll come soon enough.

I don't know, Rabbit. What have you tried?

I've tried pillows, hay, old blankets. The bolt tends to just blow through it and still get lodged behind it in the mountainside. Usually that means I need a shovel to dig the bolt out (if I can even find it).

I'll take your other suggestions and see what works.

Originally Posted by Diesel_tke

I don't know where you live, but bails of hey work well. My brother uses that with the side spray painted. I've got a target that I got from academy a few years ago. Its called the black hole. Take broad heads, field tips, and stops the arrow well.

What's inside this thing do you know?

**Stick** · Posted On: 1/15/2013 10:21am

Those are basically just a big block of foam, not dissimilar to the foam in wrestling mats. You could stack and compress scraps of mats or use puzzle mats like in this instructable.

**Diesel_tke** · Posted On: 1/15/2013 11:57am

Originally Posted by W. Rabbit

I've tried pillows, hay, old blankets. The bolt tends to just blow through it and still get lodged behind it in the mountainside. Usually that means I need a shovel to dig the bolt out (if I can even find it).

I'll take your other suggestions and see what works.

What's inside this thing do you know?

I've seen a couple different ones. A friend of mine has one like in this picture, and it has some type of woven burlap on the outside. I don't like that one because it is hell pulling the arrows out. It is made for field tips only. Mine is like compressed foam, but super dense. My bow has a 75# draw on it and I can't shoot through it. I don't know how fast they are going exactly.

I don't see the one that I have any more but it is just like this one:

http://www.academy.com/webapp/wcs/st...__?N=297525499

Block Black 18 target. You can shoot on any side of it. When you pull the arrow out, it just pushes back together and you can barely see where it was.

**Stick** · Posted On: 1/15/2013 12:30pm

You shouldn't use broadheads for anything but hunting; field/target points fly just the same so long as you use the same grain weight head. Why risk ruining a more expensive hunting point on target practice?

... I ask with my months of experience...

**Diesel_tke** · Posted On: 1/15/2013 1:07pm

Well, I have muzzy tips that I use for gator hunting. The muzzy tip has a broadhead but there is a line that attatches to the tip then goes along the shaft of the arrow. That way when it penetrates into the gator, the line stays either attatched to the boat or to a bouy. Then you can use the line to track or reel in the gator. Similar arrows for Bow fishing.

Those arrows don't fly the same way when attatched to the line. You also have to get used to shooting the arrow with your bow and line attatched and make sure your rig is functioning properly. Sometimes, if you don't have everything worked out correctly, the line gets caught up, you may snag yourself, the line with the whisker biskit may not go correctly through, lots of veriables.

BUT if you have a target that you can shoot broad heads into, you can work all of this out without screwing the whole thing up with a gator right in front of you that it took you all night to find.