Sunday, January 11, 2009

DIY: $50 Portable Pull-Up Bar

A friend asked me to help him make a portable Pull-Up Bar. After a few sketches and saw dust we came up with this handy contraption:

Stability
We found this setup to be surprisingly stable. You can swing your legs high, and thing will not rock.

Cost
We got all the parts at Home depot for about $53.00 including tax.

Parts
(4) 2x6 10ft length [we cut to needed height]
(2) 5ft lengths of light chain
(4) machine bolt eye hooks with nuts and washers
(1) 4 ft Heavy duty pipe with threaded ends
(2) Threaded pipe end caps
(4) small carabiners


Setup
The setup up only takes a few minutes and is similar to opening and lifting an oversize step latter. Having 2 people is preferred. Safety chains are attached at the base of both sides to prevent the legs from scissoring open under weight. Once assembled pull all four legs out as far as they will go in all directions to make the biggest base possible for stability.


Portability
The Pull- Up bar can be quickly dismantled into individual pieces and slide under a bed or couch. It can also be assembled in a back yard and left to use when needed.


Construction
just drill a hole in the 2x6s big enough to fit the pipe, and at the other end a hole for the eye hooks. Insert the pipe screw on the caps and connect the chains.

Its the new year time to get in shape, Here is a fun project to get you started.

6 comments:

dingas said...

great setup =)
I'm just finishing doing some squat stands just like this - http://www.casualhacker.net/cgi-bin/resize.py/album/blog/squat-stands/IMG_0795.jpg

and now I was thinking about doing some pull up bar like this. but your ideia just rocks. I guess i'll be doing some like yours =)

Sanjeev said...

I'm trying to put a pullup bar together, eventually to do weighted chins.

I can't touch the walls, so can't use stud or rafter stuff.

In this setup I don't see what's stopping it from crumpling to the left or right.

Say for example, instead of swinging your legs forward & back, you somehow got a side push - if you got a bad push-off or child came & pushed the whole rig from the right hand side towards the left

Unknown said...

If you put pipe cleats on each side and run pipe horz it should give give you complete stability.

Anonymous said...

Has there been any improvements to this design?

Thinking of building one and was curious.

Thanks

Anonymous said...

A possible solution for the side to side stability:

Keeping with his chain usage mentality I would put a cross section of chains. The bar is 4 ft across so I would use a slope of 1/2. If we do the math that would mean we would need about a 4.5 ft length of chain. I would buy 2 more lengths of 5 ft chains with 4 machine bolt eye hooks with nuts and washers. I would install the eye hooks about 2 ft up the inside of each board and about 4 ft up the inside of the board. I'd then hook up 4 small carabineers to the lengths of chains and make an "x" pattern across to each eye bolt. If the device swayed right then one length of chain would prevent that movement and the same to the left. My only concern is whether or not the carabineers would hold in the event of rigorous training like kips leading to muscle-ups. I am going to build this using this idea but I'm going to invest in some good carabineers for both the cross section and with his original chain usage idea.

Unknown said...

Did this mod solve the side stability issue?

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