Trees are not a target! You would wound and eventually kill them. Take care that you have a clear view of your surroundings. You should be able to see freely at least 10 m in each direction, so that you notice immediately if someone enters the dangerous throwing area. If you throw in front of walls, you have to know who is behind them (no one!). Sometime, a knife will fly over any wall. Corners are dangerous. If the grass is higher than 10cm, you will loose your knife someday. It will dig itself in the ground, and will be in an area different from the one you are expecting it to be. (You could try using a dowsing rod or magnets to find it.) To make for an easy stick, the grain of the wood should be running vertically (not from left to right), since the knives spin vertically. Thus, the wood opens up for the knife.

Target, front view.

Planks make the best target, the thicker the better. 4 centimeters are the minimum, or else you will have to replace the target constantly, and will not be able to turn it round to (ab)use the unbattered side. The wood used for the construction of railway tracks will make the best target you can think of. Simply mount the planks on some (wooden) rack and rest them against a tree or a pole. (Take some rope to make sure it won`t fall on the impact of the knives.) The target should stretch from the ground to about 25cm above your eye level and be at least 1m wide. You may use cheaper and thinner wood for the outer regions, they hopefully only have to catch stray throws :-)
Of course you can use multiple round wooden slices (mounted on a rack, again), those won`t insist on the knives arriving vertically. A drawback is that your thrower may fly through the holes between the slices. Do avoid wood of leafed trees, it tends to "throw back". Fir is better. Leave your target out in the rain, knives do really stick better in soaked wood.
Trees do not make good targets for several reasons: They would get cuts in the process, through which diseases can enter the tree. No tree holds up to this very long. And the throwing knives will sometimes hit vertically, bending to follow the round form of the tree. No throwing knife will support this for very long, either, but brake. Due to the cylindrical surface of the targets, knives will bounce back wildly in every direction.
Some people made positive experience using targets out of multiple layers of cardboard, especially when throwing indoors. But remember that when throwing indoors, the knives bouncing back from the target are especially dangerous, as they might ricochet from the walls, and you have less room to get out of their way. The best thing here would be an empty garage completely lined with carpet.

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This is the home-grown target of Jan Behrens. It consists of a tiny packaging palette with some timbers nailed on top. Jan used an electric planer to make it all the same height, so now he has an even surface. The target is about 1m x 1m wide an quite heavy, it can easily absorb the impact from the knives. The only problem here is the missing backstop, so one really has to be careful as to who is in the garden. The glass house in the background has survived so far...

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This rather solid target has been constructed by Rüdiger and Willi from Bavaria. They sent some thoughts on it: "As there are two little children in the house (4 and 6 years of age), we have chosen to mount the target in a way that nobody can get behind it unnoticed while we are throwing. From a do-it-yourself store, we got the metal mountings and matching timbers (4 mountings and 2 timbers à 3 meters). We bought raw timbers and planed them ourselves to fit the mountings, it is much cheaper that way. Then we cut the timbers in half and installed the zinced mountings in the ground with the help of concrete. After the concrete was solid, we could screw the timbers to the mountings. Then we added two layers of planks: one layer of level planks, 3,5 cm think, was fastened to the timbers. Then a second layer, 5 cm thick, was attached to the first, this time vertical. The screws (6cm long) went in from the back of the target to prevent the knives from hitting them. We still ponder if and how we should paint a bullseye on the target."

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This is my "portable indoor knife throwing target" for the winter. It is quite simple. With the two screws you can fix the target plank between the two pieces of wood. The backstop is a pinboard. I can easily carry it around in my car, then simply put it on a table and start throwing! I thought it would be more interesting to throw at a target where the points are not distributed circular around the bullseye (that is same number of points for each ring) but to make sections. Now I get less points if I score in the bottom, making me fight more against gravity. The target lines are simply drawn on a piece of paper that is covered with transparent tape to prevent it from tearing too much.    Philippe Catania

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These targets were used at the throwers meeting 2005 in Pullman City. They proved to be very robust constructions. The two side stilts were screwed to the target round, the third stilt rests snuggly fixed between them. The two planks that connect the stilts on the ground make the construction much more resistant to twisting forces, prolonging the life of the target. (This method is even more effective than using wire to connect the stilts on the ground.) Please notice that the targets are tilted a few degrees backwards, thus with the help of the prolonged planks preventing the target to fall forward.

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Some people just can't wait and have to throw even in freezing winters. Take a transportable target rest, pop two targets on top, and get throwing. With some well-placed axes, I guess you can set the top-target tumbling down.

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Yury Ershov (student of Y. Fedin) built this target, which he says is common in Russia. The frame squeezes the blocks of wood together so that they fit tight. The boards on the sides and on top can be closed for transportation to keep the blocks in, and provide handy protections to deflect knives that miss the target. If one of the blocks breaks apart from use, it can be easily replaced. The target is made wet before throwing so that the knives stick better.

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Using only some old wood, imagination and some iron, Stefan Roeder built a durable knife throwing target.

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For his big cellar, Martin Fischer constructed a target that is hanging from the ceiling on two big chains. On a backstop plank from soft poplar wood, four fir rounds are mounted. Because the target can swing freely, it absorbs the energy of the knives on impact, thus reducing rebounds.

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A short explanation on my knife throwing target. Up to now, I did not mount it on a base, since it is very stable as it is, leaning against the wall of my garage. The square-shaped timber balks are from a hardware store, they are normally used to construct fences. They measure approximately 90mm x 90mm (about a typical 4 x 4, for you Americans). For a start, I glued them together under pressure, then screwed planks on vertically and on top and bottom. Rock-solid now. Because the wood does not splinter easily, it should be good for quite some throws. Price for the balks: 49 Euros.    Peter Kramer

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My friends and I throw knives, hatchets and axes at this target. It first stood on an open field, erected for the occasion of our WildWest club meeting. Afterwards, we disassembled the structure and moved it to our club's area. Above ground, the target has a height of 1,85m. The three supporting feet (diameter: 8-11cm, length: 2,6m) have been driven 40cm into the soil with a sledge hammer. On the top, where the three feet meet, three chipboard screws 6x190mm are screwed in a triangle. The stiffeners between the feet are screwed on with chipboard screws 6x110mm. The stiffeners themselves were flattened using an axe to give them a better connection with the feet. On the front, a board (length: 115cm, width: 50cm, thickness: 4cm) was screwed on with 6 chipboard screws (6x110mm). On top of this, you can screw on any tree round you like (coming from behind, using chipboard screws 6x150mm). My round has a diameter of 60cm and is 30cm thick.    Christof Weese

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This knife and axe throwing target has been built by Holger Wycisk for the knife throwers competition in Herrischried, July 2010. The targets are tree rounds of white fir that had been cut 3 weeks before. The target holders were available in two flavours:

Extremely sturdy:		Sturdy but still transportable:

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Target sculpture by Bruce Reisner.