Build A Better Backstop!

Tim Finley’s here to make your back garden airgunning safer

The whole COVID-19 isolation thing got me thinking about how easy it is to set up a safe plinking range in your own back garden. A backstop 450mm high/wide is ideal for most back gardens where ranges are never more than 10-15 yards away and back in the day, the 1980s, my father made a back-stop against the back wall of our old house. That is a very smart move because if you live in a built-up area and you shoot back toward your own house, there is less chance of any projectiles leaving your boundary, and any neighbors will be less inclined to be nervous or even complain if they can see you are shooting toward your own property.

MINIMAL COST

I knocked together a back garden backstop for my own garden using some 450mm square paving slabs that I had leftover from laying my patio. Wooden stakes to hold the structure together were off-cuts from the decking I’d built and I had a bag of fine play-area sand leftover from filling rifle sand bag rests for my full-bore bench rest shooting. So, the whole thing cost me nothing to make.

IMPROVISATION

I’m sure you will have construction materials like I had lying , but if not, they’re cheap to buy and they last forever, and improvisation is the name of the game here, as long as it’s safe. I did need one other bag of sand to build up the 45-degree bank, then a 50mm layer of the fine play sand over the top of the coarse new sand. It only took 15 minutes to build the back-stop and the 450mm by 450mm aperture is ideal for my back garden. I can only get 15 yards away from it maximum anyway.