Home Shooting Gallery Becomes a Reality

I accomplished a couple of neat things today.

First, I made doro wat, which is a spicy Ethiopian chicken stew. It came out great. I also made fake injera. Injera is a type of savory pancake. You spread these pancakes on a platter and pour doro wat over them. Then you eat the doro wat by rolling it up in bits of pancake.

Real injera is made with teff, a brown grain that smells a little bit like cow manure. I have tried it, and I don’t think much of it. I have eaten in Ethiopian restaurants, and I haven’t seen real teff in one. I used flour.

Injera is supposed to be a little sour, I think. I tried to get buttermilk to sour mine up, but the stores were out. People hoard the funniest things. Today I added citric acid to my batter to make it sour, and it worked perfectly. Really nice.

Second thing I did: I finished my target array. Nearly. I made 6 stands for bottles or bowling pins or whatever else you might want to shoot off a stand.

It took me around half an hour to make 6 stands. Very easy. I bought 3″ squares of 1/8″ steel. I also bought 4′ lengths of 3/8″ rebar. I cleaned the squares up on the belt grinder. Then I welded the rebar to them. Simple. Some of the squares weren’t as level as I wanted them to be, so I clamped them in a vise and bent the rebar. When I was done, I sprayed the tops of 5 of the stands with truck bed coating. After that, I ran out. I will finish up tomorrow after a run to an essential store.

Here are a couple of photos.

Using these is simple. You drive them into the ground with a big hammer.

They’re a little small for big bottles. I just realized that. But then I don’t see myself shooting giant bottles. Shooting isn’t fun if you’re not challenged.

Guests may see things differently.

Maybe I’m making things too hard for visitors. I didn’t think about that. You have to stay a certain distance away from steel to shoot safely, but my targets are small, so people who don’t shoot well may be unable to use them because they’ll be too far away to hit.

I don’t know if I want guests shooting my steel as a general rule. They will tear up the stands when they miss. Also, they could get hit by fragments of bullets.

I’m all set for steel targets, paper target stands, and bottle stands. I may want to add something in the future, but I am doing great as it is. Didn’t take long at all. About four weeks from start to finish, including ordering stuff and procrastinating.

The last thing I really need is a portable shelter for shooting semiauto weapons. I need a shelter to catch the casings. Sooner or later, the pasture will fill up with casings if I don’t recover them, and besides, I want to keep my brass.

I was thinking of building a shelter from wood, but I’m considering weld one together now. Simple frame with metal roof panels screwed to it and a plywood floor. I may not be living here next year, so building a fancy shelter that can’t be broken down and taken with me seems like a bad idea.

Getting this done has taken a load off my mind. Now I look forward to improving my shooting.