Pistol Racks

[JohnnyEgo]

Our last friendly get-together at Pawnee made me realize I had a need to get better organized when I brought a lot of guns to the range. Bench space is always at a premium, and magazines have a tendency to get everywhere. I had an upcoming shoot at the NRA Whittington Center that was very 1911-centric, so I threw these pistol stands together over the course of this week. Didn't take very many pictures of the process, but here are the intermediate and end results:


I cut a couple of templates for the sides out of plywood, and tried to find the balance between comfortable carry and ease of usability. I wanted to keep the height and length at 12" max, so that put some constraints on things. For the racks intended to be used at the range, the handle is biased about an inch and a half towards the rear, which makes it easy to remove and return guns in use.



The other two racks are for cleaning and transport between my garage and the safe. They are built around the Hyscore foam modular racks, and hold six guns at closer spacing. Wouldn't be ideal to work out of for two reasons. One is that the foam would probably melt if I put a hot gun in there. The other is that the spacing is pretty tight and I think the foam would wear quickly when guns were repeatedly moved in and out over a range session.



Pistol rack is 5 guns in 11 inches of space, solid rock maple. To make it removable and reinstallable without damaging the finish of the tote, the sides of the upper and lower rack are lined in felt. There is no felt in any of the notches, because I had concerns about scraping melted felt off my 1911s. Though I might later add felt to to notches of the lower racks, where they meet with the grips. However, the notches are well-rounded and sanded glass smooth, and do not appear to have caused any wear issues as of yet, so I may just let them be.







In use at Whittington. Definitely kept the shooting bench much cleaner, and way easier and faster to shoot than going in and out of cases all day.


I had mixed emotions about the taller stand with the shelf, but in use, it held plenty of magazines and left the bench clean. I came into this thinking I wouldn't really care for it because it was so tall, but when I build the next iteration of this design, I will definitely keep it.

Got a couple other thoughts to experiment with over the winter, including an iteration of the design with a tambour top so I can take the tote to the range already loaded.

Thanks for looking!

[Irving]

That looks incredibly handy. Nicely constructed and well thought out. Does the top bar slide out to access guns, but otherwise hold them in place when slid into position?

[JohnnyEgo]

That is the idea. Still working on the mounting mechanism, though. I was going to hinge it and use ball catches, but that might make accessing the drawer mildly annoying. I purposely mounted the rack components by friction fitting, with the idea that I could take them out and stack them next to one another in the tote, or leave them all together if I just wanted a general purpose range tote. But they were also just fine without the top gate at all, so I may just leave them off the shelf box entirely on the next version.

[Irving]

Well, with one gun out of the rack, can you just lay the bar in the empty spot?

[mb504]

That is the idea. Still working on the mounting mechanism, though. I was going to hinge it and use ball catches, but that might make accessing the drawer mildly annoying. I purposely mounted the rack components by friction fitting, with the idea that I could take them out and stack them next to one another in the tote, or leave them all together if I just wanted a general purpose range tote. But they were also just fine without the top gate at all, so I may just leave them off the shelf box entirely on the next version.

How about doing a vertical slot for the back piece to slide down into? Then embed some magnets in it and the front of the carrier to have a place to store it, when you are at the range.

[ChickNorris]

I don't see my favorite gal in that group ;-)

[ray1970]

Reminds me ever so slightly of my old bullseye pistol box from back in the day.

[Duman]

Nicely done.

[JohnnyEgo]

Reminds me ever so slightly of my old bullseye pistol box from back in the day.

Funny you say that. I love the old Pachmayr bullseye box design. Looked into buying one on eBay, but everything they have on there right now has been beat to crap. So one of my winter projects is to build a five-gun version of the old Pachmayr 400. Beautiful old cases!

[ray1970]

Nice. Mine was a custom build. Digital photography didn't exist back then so no pics.