Day: September 23, 2026

Cheap Target Stands: Building Frames From Bamboo Poles

A target stand is one of those things you resent paying forty dollars for. It is two uprights and a crossbar. If you have access to bamboo, whether a stand of it on the property or a bundle from a garden supplier, you can build a light, stiff frame for almost nothing and stop caring when it gets chewed up.

One point before anything else: a target stand is a paper holder. It stops nothing. Your backstop or berm is doing all of the safety work, and nothing below changes a single rule about what is behind your targets.

Why Bamboo Suits the Job

Bamboo has very high stiffness for its weight, which is why scaffolding is still built from it in parts of the world. A frame tall enough for a full silhouette weighs almost nothing and carries out to the line in one hand. It is also modular in a way a welded steel frame is not: when a pole finally gets hit or splits, you pull that one piece and replace it instead of scrapping the whole stand.

Cutting Is Most of the Work

Here is the part people get wrong. Bamboo is a grass, not a timber. The fibres run the length of the culm with nothing crossing them, so any tool that crushes rather than slices starts a split that runs away down the pole. Loppers do this. Hatchets do this. A dull blade does this.

What works is fine teeth and a thin kerf, with the pole supported so it cannot flex as the blade passes through. A Japanese pull saw or a fine-tooth hacksaw blade both do the job. If you are working through a pile of poles and would rather buy once, it is worth reading up on the best tool for cutting bamboo instead of wrecking a dozen culms learning the hard way. Cut just above a node, where the wall is braced by the internal diaphragm, and the end will not open up on you.

Watch: Bamboo. How to Cut Bamboo. (YouTube)

Joining It Without Splitting It

Resist the urge to drive screws into it. A screw is a wedge, and a wedge in a hollow tube with longitudinal fibres does exactly what you would expect. Lash the joints with paracord or wire instead; it is faster, it flexes under a knock, and it costs nothing. If you genuinely need a mechanical fastener, drill an undersized pilot hole through a node and run a bolt with washers on both sides to spread the load.

Build Two

They take about twenty minutes each once the poles are cut. Make a spare while the saw is still out, because the day one gets destroyed is always the day you drove an hour to shoot.