A Carpet Archery Target

So this weekend I decided to start working on Susanne's archery target as her bow should have been arriving Monday or Tuesday.

What I needed material-wise was two 8-foot 2x4s, four 3-foot threaded metal rods, 8 washers, 8 nuts, some nails and a crap load of old carpet. I got everything at Lowe's with the exception of the carpet, which I was able to easily get from my hotel as we are re-carpeting all the rooms and still have some left for my pell (next project).

Anyways, cut the 2x4's to a length of 3 feet each so you have 4 of these. Then use the scrap for smaller braces, I went with 9 inches for these and you will want 6 of them. Then using half of the pieces you cut you are going to make something that looks like a small ladder which I spaced mine 6 inches in from the end and one in the center. And then make a second one.

Then on the ends of the ladders, you will want to drill holes the diameter of your threaded rod, which I placed mine about an inch and a half in from the end. Put the rods through one of these ladders and place your washers and nuts on them. I tightened them down until I had about an inch left of rod past the nut.

After this, its time to cut the carpet, and this is the longest part. All of the rolls of carpet I had were about 2 1/2 foot to 2 foot in width. The distance from rod to rod was about 9 3/4 inches. So with the carpet I cut them into a width of 9 1/2 inches each. When it came to the thinner pieces I had, I would take one 2 foot piece and cut them into 4ths and add it to a 2 foot piece to try to keep to a uniform 2 1/2 foot for each piece of carpet. In the picture below you can see how this was done, but also you can see where toward the center it starts to shrink inward. I resolved this after I was done with all the cutting by re-stacking them. I also stuck the upper ladder on the threaded rods to give me an idea of how much higher I needed to go.

I also took some strips that were too thin for a sheet and placed one on the very top and bottom with enough sticking out so that it could be nailed to the wood to provide a little more protection to the wood and to the arrows and just nailed these down. Now when it came to re-stacking the layers of carpet, I put down two full length strips, followed by the 2-piece strip, followed by a short strip, then a long one again. I continued this all the way up to the top until it became more uniform. Then just put the top half of the washers and nuts on the threaded rods and tight down. When I tightened them, I made sure to tighten them evenly down, meaning if you were to look at your number pad, I did 4 turns on 7, then 4 turns on 3, followed by 4 turns on 1 and lastly 4 turns on 9 and kept repeating until I felt the carpet was well compacted.

Then lastly I took some more scrap pieces of carpet and wrapped them around the threaded rods and taped them into place to further protect arrows from being damaged from striking the metal.

Now, this thing is very heavy and I recommend having two people to move it around. We tested it late last night and arrows from her long bow (which arrived Monday) would go about 3 inches into it.