endlessscott
Blue Belt
- Joined
- Apr 29, 2007
- Messages
- 710
- Reaction score
- 0
Ok, so I recently got an Olympic barbell and 300 lbs. of weight. My dad has lifted weights for years, but all of his stuff is Standard -sized. We decided to build a squat rack for my Olympic bar, mostly because I miss back squats, and I'll be moving in a few months, and I lack a bench. I thought this would be cool to share with everyone, and maybe inspire someone who has no rack to go build one themselves. My dad helped me out immensely, but even though he's very handy, I feel the rack can be made by someone with much less experience.
The total cost of the rack has run me $53. I bought 16 2 x 4's, but we haven't used them all. Also, the rack might have some adjustments done to it, so the price isn't final, that's just what I spent to get things started. Along with the lumber, I bought 2 3' 90 degree aluminum ****l to cut into brackets for the rack, a box of 1.25" wood screws, and 8 2.25" lag screws.
For a bench, my dad has an old Weider bench he no longer uses. We hacked off the the bench press arms to transform it into just a flat bench, slid under the rack for BP.
The angle cuts for the bar up on the squat rack worked out nicely. We are going to put some of the ****l bracer material we bought in the crack, to keep the two 2 x 4's from splitting. We also added just a couple of ****l chunks up to act as guiding "ears" for racking the bar.
We planned everything out ahead of time, obviously, and really just pieced it all together. We put the brackets we cut up in all the corners. The stability comes from the cross beams on the back, but we will probably add on to the front for an even stronger feel. The cross beams got the lag screw, so we can take them out for moving purposes. The rack can just break down into two smaller pieces.
I haven't had a full workout yet, but from the sampling of squats and benching we tried out after we finished, the rack seems surprisingly strong. I'm pretty proud and very happy with what we did. It took 4-5 hours for us to put it all together, but we're very happy with the results. I'll put up some pictures for everyone to see. Please ask any questions you have, I'm more than happy to answer, especially if it helps some of you without a rack.
The total cost of the rack has run me $53. I bought 16 2 x 4's, but we haven't used them all. Also, the rack might have some adjustments done to it, so the price isn't final, that's just what I spent to get things started. Along with the lumber, I bought 2 3' 90 degree aluminum ****l to cut into brackets for the rack, a box of 1.25" wood screws, and 8 2.25" lag screws.
For a bench, my dad has an old Weider bench he no longer uses. We hacked off the the bench press arms to transform it into just a flat bench, slid under the rack for BP.
The angle cuts for the bar up on the squat rack worked out nicely. We are going to put some of the ****l bracer material we bought in the crack, to keep the two 2 x 4's from splitting. We also added just a couple of ****l chunks up to act as guiding "ears" for racking the bar.
We planned everything out ahead of time, obviously, and really just pieced it all together. We put the brackets we cut up in all the corners. The stability comes from the cross beams on the back, but we will probably add on to the front for an even stronger feel. The cross beams got the lag screw, so we can take them out for moving purposes. The rack can just break down into two smaller pieces.
I haven't had a full workout yet, but from the sampling of squats and benching we tried out after we finished, the rack seems surprisingly strong. I'm pretty proud and very happy with what we did. It took 4-5 hours for us to put it all together, but we're very happy with the results. I'll put up some pictures for everyone to see. Please ask any questions you have, I'm more than happy to answer, especially if it helps some of you without a rack.
