Later on, I made a set of my own farmers’ walk bars quite cheaply.  Until recently, though, I haven’t been completely happy with the handles.  So in this article, I’m going to show you again how I made a pair of farmers’ walk bars out of a couple of old pieces of wood I had lying around the shed.  But this time, I’ll put in an extra step where I detail the alternative handles I have now made.

If you read the article the first time round, just skip down to the middle section where I talk about alternative handles.

How to make cheap farmers’ walk 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.

Alternative handles

OK, so if you’re looking for a better (and more consistent) handle then this is the solution.  The handle is PVC pipe and the attachment is climbing cord. 

I used about 6 inches of 2 inch diameter waste pipe (PVC), which cost me about £2 from a hardware store and I got 2m, which should stand me in good stead for future projects.  I also used about 3 foot of climbing cord, which I think was about 8mm diameter.  You can usually buy this by the metre in any climbing shop.  They have reels behind the counter and you just go up and ask for a few metres.  It costs a few pounds.

The cord is attached to the bar using a prussik (lark’s foot) knot and then passed through the hollow PVC handle before attaching again to the bar with another prussik knot.  You will have to tie an overhand (obviously, a figure of eight would be better) to finish this second prussik.  The finished result should look like the picture below.

The next picture shows the PVC handle from the end view.  You can see that the pipe is hollow and that the climbing cord just passes through it.

I’ve field tested these new handles and apart from the 2 inch diameter pipe being a pain in the neck to grip onto, I am really happy with this new set up.  The weight is much more stable and the bars much easier to control.  The grip is also more of a challenge and more consistent each time I pick them up.

Back to the farmers’ walk bars

Once I had set up the bars with the dumbbell handles and the slings, 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.

I think the alternative handles took me about 5 minutes.  If you’re less comfortable with knots and rope it might take you little a bit longer but they’re very straightforward. 

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.