sungazer wrote:Have you found the MDF board the best as back boards for targets or just plain target boards. If painted are the weather proof. I was also considering ply, but think the exit would be really messed up and the form ply perhaps a bit expensive, chipboard I dont know either. I have been using an old door that I tied to a tree and kept patching with putty and repainting but the cows got to it and trashed it. Its good for new load development then I can move on to the gongs, then the range.
I just tape my targets to the MDF with insulation tape, but I can also simply stick adhesive dots to it if I want to. Generally though I prefer to tape four or six A4 pages up so any bullets that miss the target don't disappear among the plethora of pre-existing bullet holes in the board.
I put a fresh 600x1200mm sheet of 3mm MDF up on my new rubber bullet trap two weeks ago. It's had so far, 1630rds of .22LR, 65rds of .44 Magnum, 15rds of 8x57mm, 10rds of .303, 12rds of 7.62x54R and ten 12-gauge slugs, and has tons of life left in it yet. After a few hundred rounds at targets, most of your bullets are simply passing through the existing holes rather than making any new ones. I buy the sheets ten at a time as it's always useful to have on hand anyway, and it's about $3.50 a sheet from Bunnings.
I have shot at a variety of other boards as lots of junk gets brought out from town to the farm, like furniture, white goods, computers and such. Ply works okay but the grained surface doesn't take tape very well, and it tends to throw splinters when shot. Chipboard blows apart pretty badly, as does solid timber, which also makes big splinters. Sheet metal is quite good but will throw pieces of metal around. Formica and plastic sheets blow off pieces of plastic which then need cleaning up. Cardboard works in a pinch but doesn't stand up to wind or rain very well at all unsupported.
I shoot on my own property and don't want to leave a mess, and the MDF debris pretty much just turns to mush after a while, similar to layers of paper. As I also recover my bullets I don't want bits of metal debris laying about, which also messes up the metal detector. But even worse are splinters of wood, very annoying when sifting through dirt looking for bullets, particularly in our clay once it's wet.
As for weather-proofing it, I've never even considered it. It would probably cost more than the board costs anyway. I have some unpainted MDF that has been out in the Gippsland weather for exactly three years now. While the boards have certainly swelled significantly, they still protect the contents from the weather just fine. I think I'll have shot a board away long before the weather wore it down.
and she is not a shooter, had to remind her of the storage requirement laws.
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Fantastic condition too! 
