Dan Willis builds a backyard axe-throwing target from scrap wood and supplies for about $150. He cuts logs at 45 degrees, assembles a T-frame with 4x4s, and adds a backboard and target boards. Safety rules matter, especially with kids around.
Chapters
Alright, so you wanna learn how to make an axe throwing target in your own backyard. Stick around, I'm gonna walk you through this. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Dan from millennialmotivator.ca, helping you learn how to create, engage, and inspire. You guys will know that for a little while, the videos haven't been pumping as they normally have, and that's because I've got a lot of projects that I wanna get done, I wanna get going, And to be honest, I'm juggling a whole bunch of different balls at once here. But today what we're gonna take a look at is something that I promised myself I would do heading into the new year. I am not a super handy guy. I'm pretty good with computers. I can do that kind of stuff all right. But when it comes to getting outside, playing with tools, building things, I'm just not that great at it. So this year I committed to actually doing some projects around the house, getting a little more familiar with the tools, building things, and I figured we love hatchet throwing in this house. So today, stick around, we're gonna take a look at how you can build a simple backyard hatchet throwing target. Doesn't take a lot of skill. We're gonna use what we've got around for the most part. Probably have to make a trip to the store for odds and ends, but we're gonna make it cheap. It's gonna be do-it-yourself. It's gonna be in the backyard, and by the end, hopefully we've got some axe throwing targets. Okay, so first thing that we know that we need, we're gonna need some lumber. We're gonna need some stuff. I know typically people would draw out their schematic how they're gonna build this thing first, but I want to know what kind of resources we've got to work with. Because we're trying to do this on a budget, do-it-yourself, I'm— I've got a buddy who's got a bunch of scrap wood kicking around, so we're gonna go over to his place and see what's up. When I say we, I mean myself and the handy person in my home, my beloved. Now, I am trying to get better with the building, so that's what this is all about, but she is gonna help kind of guide me through and make sure that I don't do anything crazy, cut off my arms, legs, whatever may happen. So off we go to my buddy's place to see what he's got. So big shout out to TJ Scrapper. Huge thank you to him. If you guys haven't checked out his YouTube video or YouTube videos, his YouTube channel, I'll send you the link. It'll be in the description down below. You can check it out. But he had a ton of scrap wood kicking around that he said we could come and just take our, uh, take our picking of. So we got a bunch of stuff here. Probably gonna go through this pile here, find anything that we can use. We got some stuff back here too that we can use. It'd be kind of cool if we could use some of those logs back there. That might be fun. So we're gonna pick through this, pick out some stuff, throw it in the van, head on back after we get all our tools and everything we need. We've got this stack of wood here, but what we decided to do was he has these kind of just logs kicking around. I thought that would be kind of cool for hatchet throwing. You would have logs, just give it that woody, foresty kind of feel. So we're gonna use these, and then we're gonna use these as part of our brackets on the bottom, these, these white pillars, something to just hold it together. So hopefully in my mind, this is all gonna work out. We're gonna throw one of those skids on the back of it, uh, We'll put these up, build some tees, and see if we can't make a hatchet throwing thing out of this. Now the only thing we got to go to the store to get is a decent looking hatchet and the nails and stuff. So we're gonna go do that now. Canadian Tire. This is a must if you're in Canada. Gotta go here to get your hatchets. All right, let's see what we got. Hatchet down. We got all of our free lumber that we're gonna build the the support out of. Now we gotta go in here and get the actual boards to build the targets into. So we're gonna grab that here from my buddy Dan that works at Bytown. So we got all of our pieces here that we think we're gonna need. We've got a backboard for the, the targets. We've got some wood here that we've picked up specifically for the targets. We're gonna cut it in half and make some sections with it. We've got all of the framework that we need. We're gonna use these timber logs that we had found as support beams. And most of all, we've got our little man who's gonna help, because whenever you do something like this with a family, it's always more fun when you get the kids involved. Whether that's, you know, nails or screws or whatever, of course with a parent, but it's more fun if they get to be a part of it. So let's go. Okay, so these are going to be our supports for the tees. We're going to use these and then we're going to cut them at a 45 and put them up against the wood, give it some good support so that the thing doesn't fall over when you're hucking hatchets at it. So we're just going to grind away at a few of these and then we will be good to go. Okay.
Okay, so I'm working on building the T-frames to hold up our big target. So here's, here's the pieces that are gonna be put together. We've got our log here, we have our base that will keep the target from moving forward or backward, and we have our extra support here with a 4x4. This log has a few knots in it, so I'm just gonna move the knots out of the way. Uh, make sure everything is, uh, in its right spot, and then I'm gonna just screw it all together once I get all the pieces. So we'll come back to you after that.
We've got the frame up. We're gonna put another support beam in behind, but for now it's sturdy enough that we're able to put the boards in. So we're going to put the target boards in. We're going to have one target on this side, one target on that side, and then we'll put the support beam in the middle, have a nice finished look to it, hopefully. And then all we got to do is paint the targets on these boards and we're good to go. So we got our boards in. We don't have the, the painting things for that today, so we probably won't get that done today. But at the very least, I want to show you that it was finished. We're able to huck one of these at it and it's gonna work. So here we go. Remember, when you're throwing axes, it's okay to do it as a family as long as you've got the rule set up that nobody is over there near it when you're throwing. Everybody's behind the person throwing the axe and nowhere near it. Especially important when you got little guys like this. You watch, you don't come near. All right guys, that's it. It's up, it's built in the back. Obviously that this little clip here is Tacked on to the end, a couple weeks later, we've been enjoying it. We've had neighbors over. It's been a blast. All in all, it only cost us about $150 to get everything said and done. That was with buying the hatchet, the spruce boards for the target, and nails, screws, whatever else we needed that way. So $150, we've got a nice-sized hatchet throwing range in the backyard. Could have done it cheaper if we had had, uh, just screws or nails kicking around. And if you already have a hatchet that you can just sharpen up and throw, that's That cuts back the cost quite a bit. If all we had to do was buy the wood, it probably would've been about $50, $60 in total to build that entire range. So let me know down in the comments below whether or not you're gonna build yourself a little hatchet range. Thanks again to TJ Scrapper. You can catch the link to his channel down below, and I will see you guys tomorrow with another great video. Catch you then. Bye.
