Saturday, October 13, 2007

The making of a pull-up bar

Well, I've been getting some requests to see our homemade pull-up bar. We basically designed it after looking at a variety of different designs on the crossfit.com forums. Our final design was a really simple. It was easy to put it together. The most challenging part was the installation, but only because our stud finder was crap. It took us Saturday evening & Sunday morning to finish it up; had our stud finder been better, we could've finished this puppy in 2 hours. We've since purchased a Zircon 60371 i65 OneStep Wood, Metal, and Live Wire Stud Sensor from amazon.com, which is great! We've had our bar installed for a little over a month, and I use it frequently (am currently going through a P90X rotation, which is very pull-up intensive). The best part about the bar is that we designed it to meet our exact specifications. We can also add to it later on if we want to make it versatile for use with more clients. We also installed a 100lb heavy bag that day that I purchased from Craiglist (gotta love it!).

Here's our Home Depot shopping list for the bar:

Qty Descr Total Price
---- --------------------------------------- ------------
1 2x6 Piece of wood $3.98
1 8-pc drill bit set $4.97
2 3/4" galvanized 90-degree elbows $2.00
2 3/4" galvanized flages $6.54
1 3/8" drill bit adaptor $2.48
4 Wood Lag Screws $3.92
2 3/4 x 18 Black Pipe $6.86
1 3/4 x 48 Black Pipe $5.98
8 3/8 x 31 Lag Screws $2.70
----------
$39.43 + tax




My make-shift block diagram:






Pictures of the work in progress:




The final product!


9 comments:

Jennifer said...

Totally sweet, Nia! Thanks for the post. Hope all was well the last month or so you've been "away."
Jen

Claudia said...

Hi, Nia!

I have been reading your blog, which I found through the AOS forums. I don't post... just a lurker for now as I am just starting my fitness journey with kettlebells. Anyway... thanks for all the very useful information on your blog. I am in Houston and would love to keep in touch with you. Did you make it to the RKC certification this past week?

Shadowphone said...

That's cool; I'm thinking of putting up a black pipe pull-up bar, but I was worried about how strong the stuff is. How much weight has been put on it, and how often?

Shadowphone said...

Sorry... forgot to check "email follow-up comments".

Sedul said...

Hello, i've stumbled across your pull up setup just now and was wondering if you could post step by step on how you set this up? Do ALL the screws including the 4 wood screws (how long were they? roughly?) and the 8 3/8" lag screws for the flanges go into the ceiling joists?

Thanks!

Felix

Anonymous said...

Hi,thank you for sharing. This is a great design. I wasn't sure how to safely mount this to the ceiling, so I had a handyman come over and help me. It works great!!!

There are a couple of suggestions that he made that I thought I would share:

1. To mount the flange to the 2x6, use 2" wood screws (8). These do NOT go all the way into the ceiling (they just connect the flange to the board to distribute the load)

2. To mount the board to the ceiling, use 1/4" x 4" wood lag screws (at least 6)

2. For maxium safety/hold, try to mount your 2x6 IN-LINE with the ceiling joist. this way, you can run a line of screws straight down the center of the 2x6 into the joist.

3. Use at least 6 of the lag screws. Place one about 1" on either side of each flange (4 total) and space the other two evenly in the 4' spacing between the flanges....

I hope this helps. I'm using my bar now and I love it. Thanks for the design Nia.

Sandy Sommer, RKC said...

I'm gonna have to make a similar pull up bar. Nice work. Hope to see you soon!

Katherine said...

Thank you so much for sharing this!! I am just curious about how the pipe stays in place in the 90 degree elbows and the flanges...

I am definitely going to make one of these for our gym! Thanks again!

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