Great *CHEAP* WOB standard instructions

[Alan H]

Go check the "General" forum at NASGA. For about $20 at Home Depot, Orchard Supply or Lowe's you can easily assemble semi=permanent or easily removeable practice WOB standards that are adjustable up to about 16 feet. The stuff fits in a pickup bed, easy.

I'll be setting these up at our practice site at Stanford, for sure. If the Grounds guys take them out, I'm only "out" a few dollars.

[Alan H]

After reading this at NASGA I got to thinking how sick and tired I was of practicing WOB by throwing weights over tree branches, so I decided I'd make one. The basic principle is that you sink a piece of 1 1/4 inch pipe into the ground at foot or so....drive it in there with a sledehammer. Over the top of that you drop a piece of 2-inch PVC or ABS pipe. The inside diameter of the ABS is just a little bit bigger than the outside diameter of the steel pipe, so the ABS/PVC rotates and slides up and down.

Two-inch ABS is reasonably rigid, and of course the steel pipe is quite rigid.

You use some ABS/PVC fittings to glue in one or two pieces of pipe that stick out from the central pole. Make them 3 -5 feet long and now you have a cheap, adjustable WOB apparatus. This is what I determined to do.

However, I had some qualifications..

1. I don't have a drill press...I'm not drilling 15 holes in black iron pipe

2. I work out with beginners through advanced Masters...got throwers who are doing 8 feet and got throwers who are doing 15 so I have to be able to span that height range.

3. I want it to be portable, but I will put it in the ground (not in the grass) where we throw and leave it there. At the end of the season, it comes out.

4. It has to be transportable (at least once) in the back of my truck. I have a Chevy S-10 with a 6 foot bed. 10 foot long pieces of pipe stick out the back, but not too much so that's OK.

5. The groundskeepers at Stanford could yank the whole thing out and throw it away, so it has to be cheap.

Basically, I made what you outlined up there with a few variations.

Instead of a black iron pipe on the inside, I found a castoff 6 1/2 foot long, 1 1/4 inch galvanized fence pole. This was literally in the dump heap at the stables...there were four of them, and I didn't even have to knock any concrete off of the one I snagged.

To anchor the thing to the ground, I bought two, 3-foot long contractors stakes. These are steel stakes, about 3/8 inch diameter, three feet long, pointed at one end and drilled for nails every few inches. You could just as easily use rebar. Anyway, I pounded these two stakes into the ground with a 3 lb hand sledge. I knocked 'em in there absolutely right next to each other and straight up and down. The groud was wet so they went in easily. I bashed 'em in there about 2 feet, so that one foot was sticking up, still.

These stakes are about $4 each, BTW....

Over the top of the stakes, I dropped the galvanized fence post. It's pretty sturdy!

OK, the ABS part. I used ABS pipe since it's a little bit cheaper than PVC. ABS is the black stuff.

I bought two, ten foot pieces of two-inch pipe, and two T-fittings. I had the guy at Orchard Supply cut one ten foot pipe into two, five foot sections for the pipes that would be aligned horizontally. This is what we throw "over".

I had him cut the other ten foot section into an eight foot and a two foot section.

I then hauled the stuff home and dd some measuring, because I know that the T-fittings will change some lengths a bit, and I hacksawed off the appropriate amounts so that everything worked out just right. Upshot was, I have an 8-foot length of 2-inch ABS, that's glued into a T-fitting. The T fitting is set up so the "trunk" of the T is pinting out to the side...horizontally. The "Roof" of the "T" is aligned vertically. On top of the first t-fitting I glued in the two foot section....then the other T-fitting with the "trunk" of the T pointing out to the side, again.. The two T's are aligned so that they're 2 feet apart and face exactly opposite from one another. (OK, well, not *exactly*, but close enough)

The five-foot sections now go into the socket in each "T" that is sticking out horizontally. I was going to use screws and put them in with that so that I could disassamble the whole thing and no single part would be more than ten feet long, but I decided to glue them. The whole thing weighs about 10 pounds. I lifted it up and dropped it over the galvanized fence post. It fits, loosely so that the ABS rotates easily around the fence pole, but it's close enough that it doesn't wobble too much.

I now have two horizontal "arms" sticking out from a central pole. When dropped down to the lowest level, the lower arm is 8 feet off the ground, the upper one is 10 feet. I can slide the ABS up the pole and put a clamp wherever I want it, moving the two arms up in the air. Since the pole is about 6 1/2 feet, I can easily slide the ABS 5 feet up the pole and there's still enough overlap to be steady....and the higher arm is at 15 feet. I'm clamping it with a cheap gluing clamp, which lives in my truck so it won't rust out.

Total cost was under $35 (not including the hand sledge, which I didn't own, before) because I scrounged the galvanized fence pole for free.

HINT...use a metal pole for the "inside" pole I tried using a 1 1/4 ABS pole and it wasn't anywhere near rigid enough.

[Alan H]

Look at this video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOaxl...FB2B7A&index=5

That is essentially what I made except....

1. It sticks into the ground with those contractors stakes, instead of sitting in a bucket of concrete.

2. Mine has two arms sticking out, at different heights, pointing exactly opposite one another so that they sort of counterbalance each other and don't droop too much.. (they sag a little bit, it's not perfect, but it's better than tree branches)


3. Mine has 5-foot long arms, instead of what looks like about 3 feet, in the video.

[Alan H]

Regarding making your own....

If you have access to someplace where you can set up an apparatus and leave it, then you are really lucky. I spent about 4 hours thinking this over, and if I KNEW that the stuff I set up was going to stay where I put it, this is what I would do.

I would scrounge two, six foot galvanized fence posts. They're everywhere. Fence posts, traffic signs, Parking lot markers, these things are ubiquitous. Old ones get tossed all the time. An hour of looking will surely turn up one or two...you'll need two.

Now go down to the hardware store...Orchard Supply or Home Depot or Lowe's and get two, ten foot long, one-inch electrical conduit section. This will cost about eleven dollars, each. Get two, two-inch long , 1/4 inch bolts, and nuts to fit. Also get two light-duty pulleys (about $4.50 each) , 50 feet of cheap nylon rope (about $4.50) and a 5 foot length of PVC or ABS pipe, maybe 1 1/4 inch stuff (about $3.00). Get four of those contractors stakes I was talking about...$16.00 or even two, three foot sections of 1-inch rebar.

you're going to sleeve the electrical conduit inside the fence posts so theres' about a foot of overlap, drill through the sleeved section with a hardened 1/4 inch bit, and then slide the bolt through. This will make a 15-16 foot long pole, and you'll have two of them. Disassemble after checking the fit, while you're putting it together, and assemble at the site when you're ready.

OK, at the top of each piece of electrical conduit, about 1/2 an inch down from the end drill a hole and put in an eye bolt. You could also use a cable clamp to put a D-Ring up there. Now put a little pulley up there.

Haul everything to your site. Drive the contracters stakes/rebar into the ground absolutely straight up and down, about 5 1/2 or 6 feet apart.

Assemble your poles with the 1/4 bolt. Run the rope up one pole....through the pulley...down...through the pvc/abs pipe....up...through the other pulley. Tie it off to the galv. fence pole somewhere.

Now, two guys working together lift up the poles and drop them down over the contractors stakes/rebar that you drove into the ground.

VOILA.. WOB uprights, adjustable to 15 feet. The bar swings, because it's a 6 inches - foot narrower than the space between the poles. So if you smack a weight into the bar, it will just swing out of the way and won't break.

If you really have your stuff together, you'll paint marks on the poles every foot, so that you know how high the bar is.

This whole assembly is reasonably sturdy, cheap, and you can take it down at the end of the season and store it in the rafters of your garage, or throw on top of the roof rack and haul to the Games if you ever need to.