How to make cheap farmers’ bars

OK, so this is a follow-up to my article last week about how to make farmers’ bars out of dumbbell handles.  The main problem with those bars is that they don’t hold a lot of weight.  The other problem is that they can swing around a bit, especially if you are turning a lot of corners (like I do, because my garden is really small!).

In this article, I’m going to show you how I made a sturdier pair of farmers’ bars out of a couple of old pieces of wood I had lying around the shed plus my trusty dumbbells again!

How to make cheap farmers’ bars

First of all, you need a piece of wood.  I found a piece 6 feet long and cut it into two halves like this:

Then, I put the weights plates that I planned on using most at either end of one of the pieces of wood.  With the weights plates in place, I was able to mark on the wood where I wanted the holes to go.

Yes, I know, I’m not exactly David Bailey.  If you look carefully, you can see my toes at the bottom of the picture.  Once I had marked the wood, it was time to get the drill out!

I used the largest drill bit that would go into my drill and I drilled four holes next to each other.  With a bit of jiggery-pokery, I was able to knock the holes through to one another using the drill.  This then created a hole for the dumbbell handle.  I repeated this until I had holes at each end of both pieces of wood.  But before I put the dumbbell handles into the holes, I needed to make a handle.

Using a tape measure, I found the centre of each piece of wood and then put nails in 3 inches either side of the centre.  I then added another nail slightly further out and threaded a sling through the middle like this:

Then it was time to put the dumbbell handles into the holes in the wood.

Once I had that all set up, I added some weights plates onto the dumbbells.  I added the weights asymetrically so that the bars would hang predominantly to one side, making them easier to handle.

Then, I took them for a test drive round the garden!

And that was all there was to it.  I think it took me about an hour, including working out how to build them in the first place.  Obviously, there are downsides to this approach, like the fact that I need to dismantle them if I want to use the dumbbells, but to say that they cost absolutely nothing, I have to say that I am delighted with them.

I hope you found this helpful and, as always, if you know of any other tips or tricks to create strongman equipment on the cheap, please do let me know.

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