Product Review: The Last Stand

Assembled with 4 foot rebar and 15 inch Steel Target

I don't have a lot of money to throw around on hobbies, including shooting. So it is always nice to find a less expensive solution to a problem. I've been wanting to get a steel target for some longer distance shooting for some time, but the prices have always put me off. I'd been thinking of getting some steel plate and then fabricating something, but hadn't gotten around to it--too many other projects. This weekend, I happened into a shooting supply store that I visit infrequently, and came across The Last Stand system for $39.95 and decided to give it a go.

Basically, The Last Stand product is two plastic brackets (green in the picture above) that hold together pieces of rebar (which you supply yourself) to form a target stand from which you can hang a steel target (which you also must supply). Here are a couple more pictures of the brackets:

Outside of bracket

Inside of bracket

The plastic appears to be made of the same "self-sealing" plastic that you've probably seen for other types of targets. While I didn't test the self-sealing properties, I've used targets of the same material, and confident that it could take a hit from most types of firearms and still function.

As you can see, you push two pieces of rebar into each bracket to form the legs, and then use another two pieces to form the center support. The pieces of rebar that form the legs are actually pushed straight up into place, and then pulled apart at the base to lock the rebar into channels that form the A-frame. When you disassemble the stand, you can just squeeze the legs back together--they will pop out of their channels--for compact storage. I took a rubber mallet with me so I could remove the center support from the brackets.

The steel target is a 15-inch diameter, 1/2-inch thick plate. I've just used a couple of large carabiners to connect it to the support rods, which I also picked up at the hardware store.

As the shadows in the photographs tell, it was getting late by the time I was able to get out into the countryside to try they system out, so I didn't have a lot of time to use it. Although the rebar legs seem flimsy, they were fine when put on the soft ground and with the weight of the steel target.  The manufacturer's instructions call for 5-foot pieces of rebar, but the longest pieces at the hardware store were 4 feet long, so I used those and they seemed to be satisfactory for the area in which I was shooting and the size of steel target I was using. If I were to use this for handgun practice, I would want the target higher off the ground, and probably would look around some more to see if I could get the longer pieces of rebar. As it was, my sons and I were shooting from kneeling or sitting positions using rifles, and the height seemed about right.

After our shooting session was over, I did finds bit of lead splatter stuck into the side of one of the brackets. This simply brushed away, so I don't think it will be an issue. Although we had some wind gusts towards the end of the time we were there, the frame was steady.

In short, the system worked as advertised, and I appreciated the compactness when it was all put away. For someone on a tight budget, it was a satisfactory solution to putting together a relatively inexpensive system for hanging a steel target. And, because of the self-sealing plastic and inexpensive rebar pieces, I'm not as concerned about the consequences of an errant bullet destroying part of the stand.

Although I used carabiners to attach the steel plate, the store owner where I picked this up said that the manufacturer was working on some straps using the self-sealing plastic. These aren't out yet, but just a heads up.