New Shooting Benches (plural) Complete

From my last Shooting Bench post you saw the skeleton of a single bench without a top.  I finally got around to tearing up the old dog boxes to make better use of the DuraPlate (used for the walls of 'dry' semi-truck trailers - thin aluminum sandwiching a hard plastic).

I used the DuraPlate to make the tops of each bench.  A second bench, you say?  Yep.  Make a second one, exactly like the first with the exception of the seat.  The plan is to put these on the trailer and haul them to New Mexico to hunt prairie dogs.  Krueger wants to take his own seat, so the second bench has a removeable seat.  When down South, the seat is absent.  When shooting or spotting here at the Ranch, the seat is installed as shown in the pictures.

DuraPlate is white, shiny, and smooth.  Bad for reflection and holding your bipods.  I roughed it up with 80 grit sandpaper and then spray painted the tops.  See pictures below.  The colors?  I wanted something mute, non-reflective, and would not heat up too much in the sun, so lighter than darker.  I went with tan and green.

I left the elbow rest and the first 12" of the top smooth.  I mean you don't want to set your elbows down on something rough!  The remainder of the table, as I painted it, I sprinkled playground sand on top of the paint.  I did this three times.  Will some of the sand break loose?  Of course.  But that's why there are three layers of paint and sand.  If worst comes to even worse, we can always shoot off bags or a rubber block.

Originally, the thought was that we may have to put a fourth leg on the bench to keep it from tipping.  Not so.  With treated lumber, this thing is stout.  Besides, I wanted easy ingress and egress for the shooters - having a fourth leg would prohibit that.  Will it tip?  Sure, if you sit on the unsupported corner, but certainly not while under normal shooting conditions.

The final step?  Get them hauled back to the range and put them to use.  And then have a burning party for the old bench.  It has served us very well and owes us nothing.  Let's hope these two do the same!

Bench 2 with removeable seat
Still need to put on the cup holders

Finished Bench 1 with boat seat, cup holders, and gun rest

The two finished shooting benches.
Note the ease of which one can get into and out of the seats!

The blue line is NOT part of the bench.  I put that in there to show you
the smooth bit from the rough bit.  Everything forward of the blue line
from the shooter's perspective is rough as sand paper - because it really is!

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