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Plans for a Folding Gun Stand

The Honeywell Sportsman Club is a small group of shooting and outdoor enthusiasts in the Phoenix, Arizona area. Our website is ad-free and completely free to use for everyone. But we do have expenses that we need to cover, such as the web hosting fee and our liability insurance. If you find this gun stand plan useful, please consider tipping us through our PayPal donation jar below. Thanks for visiting, and come back soon.


All dimensions are in inches, angles in degrees. Click drawing if you want a .pdf.

This gun stand was designed for use out in our desert sporting clays course. It will keep up to five guns off the ground and out of the bushes. The neat feature of this design is that the gun stand will fold up into a rather compact package for storage. Two prototypes of this design have been built out of straight, clear redwood 1x4's. The wood and the hardware cost about $35, then about another $10 was spent on sandpaper and finish.

In use, a possible weakness in the design has shown up. The upper wood pieces that the hinges attach to, have a tendency to split. This is caused when someone just lets the hinged legs fly open when unfolding the unit for use. If the legs are opened in a gentle and controlled manner, there isn't a problem. We repaired the two protos by glueing the pieces back together at the split, and then driving long screws into the wood to reinforce the cracked area.

Not shown in the drawing, but implemented in the prototypes, is the use of small trunk latches to lock the tops of the two legs together when in the open position. This has proven to be a pretty good solution for locking the unit open. Also, a carrying handle was attached to the top for easy portability. We use a mini-bungee cord to hold the unit closed in the folded position. This really isn't a very good solution, and can definitely be improved upon (more trunk latches?).

If you build one, please drop us a line, let us know how it went. Send us some photos. Did you solve the problems of locking it open and closed differently than we did? Why did you decide to build one in the first place? We'd like to know if there are any more like this out in the world!

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- Mike Wilensky -

I have made 3 stands. The first was with red oak, but too heavy. The others were with pine. One was for 7 guns, 18 inches wide. The 3 gun stands were 15 inches wide which is more stable. I locked them closed with gate latches. I used carpet for the gun butts to sit on. I lined the barrel supports with felt. Thanks for the plans.

Mike Wilensky M.D.
Louisiana


- Lance Pyne -

I stumbled upon your gun stand plans while searching online. Thank you for posting this. We use this stand for informal trap shooting on private property. One of the luxuries of a proper range that we were missing was a secure place to put our firearms other than laying them on the ground. I went with your design because of the way that it folds up. This compact design allows me to easily fit it in the back of my car without having to lay it on top of everything else. I did make a couple of changes:

I added a couple of inches to the width. This allowed me to add one more barrel notch, bringing the gun count up to six. I added some strips of leather to protect the gun barrels.

My solution for locking it open and close was to use hook & eyes. Hopefully you can see it in the photos. I use one hook under the hinges to lock it open, and another that connects the legs together to lock it closed. This seems to work well, but we will see how it holds up over time.

The change in the top of the rack made it difficult to position the carrying handle, so I moved the handle to the side. I thought that this worked pretty well. It makes it shorter when carried so it is less likely to bump something, and it helps to eliminate the problem you described about the stand cracking when allowed to slap open. Since you put it down on the side, and my latch is on the bottom, people are more likely to fold the legs down when the stand is on it's side.

We used to bring a card table to put the shotguns on, but that is not the best solution. It seems that the guns take up more room than you expected, then they end up bumping into each other, and you always have that one guy who doesn't pay attention to where he is pointing his muzzle.

Thanks again for sharing your idea

Lance Pyne
Upstate New York


- Capandball.eu -


(click image to watch video)

Capandball.eu
Budapest, Hungary


- Joe Szwed -

I came across your folding stand and I really liked it. I also liked how someone did a version with a shelf on it for muzzleloading. What I did, was make my shelf differently so when it is folded down, I can still use it to hold guns on both sides. I also made the shelf surface recessed so things won’t roll off onto the ground. I also put holes in the top so that when the shelf is pulled up, it provides a place to hold your ball starters and range rods for the muzzleloader.

Joe Szwed
Flemington, New Jersey


- Jim Fenderson -

Well thought out design. Folds up nice. I added a shelf that can be put on either side for use or not used at all.

Jim Fenderson
Southwest Arizona


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