How to Build a Paintball Fort

Anyone who owns a few acres of wooded lot can open a private paintball field. The defensive advantages of solid cover coupled with the limited range of paintball guns makes wooden forts a serious tactical obstacle. With just a few basic considerations, these are easy to build out of scrap materials.

Things You'll Need

  • Fence posts (optional)
  • Post-hole digger (optional)
  • Mattock (optional)
  • Hammer
  • Nails
  • Handsaw
  • Coping saw
  • Paint (optional)
Show More

Instructions

    • 1

      Site the fort near a likely zone of heavy traffic. Except for "capture the fort" games, placing a fort in an isolated location is a waste of time and materials.

    • 2

      Keep in mind the local terrain when building the fort. It does little good to build the fort at the foot of a slope or in a ravine where opponents can easily shoot down into it.

    • 3

      Use pen and paper to draw up a plan. Most paintball forts are crude, but building a good one requires a little planning to match your materials to the site.

    • 4

      Try to include a protected entry point for the fort, either a door, a tarp-covered opening or a blind entryway.

    • 5

      Try to use trees in place of fence posts as much as possible. This will cut down on material costs and overall work.

    • 6

      Set fence posts where necessary by digging a 1-foot deep hole with a mattock and post-hole digger, setting the post, refilling the hole with dirt and firming it up with a tamping rod. People will be slamming into the walls of the fort, so the supporting posts need to be firm.

    • 7

      Use wood scraps to build the walls of the fort. Pretty much anything can be used in this role, so long as it fits between two trees or posts: old pallets, sheets of plywood and lumber scraps. Use hammer and nails to fasten them to the trees/posts.

    • 8

      Use a handsaw and coping saw to cut gun slits and crenelations into the wooden walls of the fort. These will provide protected places for shooting.

    • 9

      Paint your fort in camouflage colors if desired. However, a couple of years of weathering will probably do the same job for you, and the truth is that a permanent fort is always going to stand out on a paintball field.