My Practice gear, ’cause I’m CHEAP
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Forum Name: Newbie
Forum Discription: This forum is for those new to Highland Games athletics and looking for ways to get started.
URL: http://www.nasgaweb.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=7924
Printed Date: 3/26/26 at 6:47pm
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Topic: My Practice gear, ’cause I’m CHEAP
Posted By: Alan H
Subject: My Practice gear, ’cause I’m CHEAP
Date Posted: 10/13/08 at 12:42pm
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This is just for newb's 'cause I thought it was helpful.
I got started by looking Here: http://highland_tools.tripod.com/ Stones: I went down to Lyngso, which is a garden material and landscaping materials place near where I live. They sell landscaping stone, patio stone, gravel, topsoil and stuff like that. they also have a drive-up bin with good sized round cobblestones in 'em. http://www.lyngsogarden.com I just found a couple that looked like they were about 15 pounds and then hauled them over to the scale. I brought home an 11 pounder and a 15.5 pounder. I didn't bother with a "Braemar" stone. Total cost was about eight dollars for my two practice stones. Hammers: Orchard Supply and Lowes and Home Depot all carry 4 foot lengths of gray, threaded ABS pipe in 1-inch thickness. It's probably not sched 80, but it's a lot thicker than sched 40. One length costs about four dollars. It's threaded on both ends. I buy a few of the white PVC threaded end caps (98 cents each), and a can of PVC cement (about $1.75) Daub some cement on one threaded end of the pipe and thread a cap on there. Now take 2-3 turns of duct tape around that end. Drop 3, 5 lb dumbell weights on the thing and duct tape it on there. Now get a piece of sandpaper and rough up the other end a bit and get a little bit of "tacky" (pine tar) on there. VOILA....16 pound hammer, or close enough. The great thing is, when you bust the pipe, it invariably breaks right by the cap, so you throw away the cap, sandpaper down the jagged edges a bit, thread/cement a new cap on the other end and keep throwing. Weights: I can't explain it better than this: http://highland_tools.tripod.com/saacc/id4.html I used the small galvanized ring that Orchard Supply sells for about $12 for a year until I finally got sick of it and bought a D-handle from the Old Celt. Aside from the handle, the entire cost for the pipe and fittings to hold the weights is about ten bucks. In time you will strip thread out of the galvanized pipe, or break it, but they cost about a buck and a quarter, so go buy a new one. Caber: I went down to my local lumberyard and told them that I was going to do manly stuff like throw rocks and lumber around with a bunch of big blokes wearing kilts and they thought it was cool. It probably helped that I'd just dropped about $800 with them, to build a deck. :lol: Anyway, I told them I wanted something about 14 feet long that weighted about 75 pounds. They sold me a flawed 6 x 6, 12 feet long, for $20. I took it home and spent 3-4 hours rounding off the edges and sanding it with a belt sander. I didn't get it "round" I just rounded off the corners so I wouldn't get splinters off of it. Then I went to town on the bottom 3 feet and rally DID taper/round that off. It's still bigger than a real caber, but what the hell, it's close enough. I'm gonna bust it, soon, the flaw was a big crack, but I could wrap the middle in duct tape or a few wraps of fiberglass tape and squeeze another season out of it, but it's cheap, so whatever. It weighed almost exactly 75 pounds when I got it home, it probably weighs about 65-68 pounds, now. That's a bit light, but it's hella better than having nothing at all to work with. Total cost of all my implements is under $100 for sure, 'cause I got the weights for free off of Craigslist. That $20 handle from the Old Celt was a big splurge. ***** The next generation One of these days I'm gonna go down to the Metal Supermarket, where they have steel rod in diameters up to 6 inches. I'm gonna have the guys haul a big chunk of 4-inch or 5-inch stuff off the shelf and weigh it. The I remember Mister Selvigs algebra class. If two feet of five-inch steel rod weighs 50 pounds, then how much rod will weigh 25 pounds? You get it? I have them cut me a length of steel rod that weighs right around 25 pounds. That will cost me right about $40.. Next door to Metal Supermarket is a guy who does some welding. I'll have him weld a medium-sized D-ring to the top of the cylinder. This will cost me $5.00 and a 6-pack of beer. A quick-link and Old Celts D-handle, and I'm stylin, and it'll never break. But is gonna cost me $50, which is a LOT OF MONEY as far as I'm concerned. 
Anyway, I hope some newbs found this useful. |
Replies:
Posted By: Detroitpete
Date Posted: 10/23/08 at 11:20am
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Alan, I like how you think! My hammers are pvc handles, cut to length with a collar at the end--screws through the collar and the pipe. I either slide plate weights down it (5lb plates) or I have about 25 lbs worth of tow chain I 'donuted' together with a cable 'stiched' through the length. When you clip it to the collar it hangs like a bag of chain a bit larger diameter than a hammer head--but it makes me work . I use a similar chain bundle that's about 50 lbs with a D ring as a WFD/WOB. The D ring Is actually a large fence C lock threaded that I put a plate on and added tape to increase the thckness by the handle. Right now for caber practice--because I'm just working on picks and carrying--I have a monster log thats only about 6 feet long but weighs close to 100 lbs. I had to chop away at the bottom a bit. The log was originally 'sleeping' as a parking lot pole in a park before I rescued it ;-) This was all very cheap--and considering I practice out in the middle of a public park--training expenses are pretty low for me. Have a few burlab bags from the garden supply--a see a sheaf in my future:) |
Posted By: Ak thrower
Date Posted: 10/23/08 at 4:03pm
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Alan ... If you go to the steel store in your area ,, they should have a book that will tell you how much each Dia. weighs by the foot ! If not pm me and I'll get you that info ! Bret ------------- Remember when mom told us never throw stones ? |
Posted By: Ak thrower
Date Posted: 10/24/08 at 11:46am
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FYI .... 5" Dia round cold roll weighs 66.7 lbs per ft 5 1/2 " 80.7 lbs per ft 6" 96.1 lbs per ft
Hope that helps ! ------------- Remember when mom told us never throw stones ? |
Posted By: Alan H
Date Posted: 11/07/08 at 9:01am
Hey, excellent...Thanks! So six inches of the 5 1/2 stuff is going to be just about right for a practice 42 lb Masters weight. |
Ak thrower wrote:Posted By: Alan H
Date Posted: 11/07/08 at 9:03am
| Anther dirt-cheap weight-training implement I use and like is a 50 pound bag of sand. They cost about $4-5 at most big-chain hardware stores. You'll find them in among the mortar and cement bags. Wrap the high-holy hell out of the bag with duct tape so the bag won't break when you use it and do all sorts of lrge body motion exercise with it. |
Posted By: ROB EVANS
Date Posted: 11/20/08 at 7:06pm
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found the following info at this website
http://http://www.piercespafford.com/tech-st-wght-rnd.htm - http://http://www.piercespafford.com/tech-st-wght-rnd.htm
http://www.piercespafford.com/tech-stweight.htm - FLATS • http://www.piercespafford.com/tech-st-wght-rnd.htm - ROUNDS • http://www.piercespafford.com/tech-st-wght-sq.htm - SQUARES • http://www.piercespafford.com/tech-st-wght-hx.htm - HEXAGONS
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Posted By: Alan H
Date Posted: 12/21/08 at 6:40pm
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Thanks to Rusty Price, I now have a 21 lb Braemar Stone, and it was free. Then again, as Rusty says, he lives in Braemar Heaven.... Thanks, Rusty! |
Posted By: verewulf
Date Posted: 6/26/09 at 9:24am
| i havent tried to make much yet and what i have done is crewd at best. I took an old solid steel dumbell handle sanded off one of the rings dropped 55# worth of plates on there drilled a hole behind the second ring put through a 1/2-13 bolt with nuts incase the ring gives put a hole at the end and attached a ring i had laying around to it via bolt and chain weighs in at 58 but thats close enough. found a rock out in the street and hammered it to 22# thats all i have for now |
Posted By: One Norse
Date Posted: 7/25/09 at 1:56am
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For what its worth, your local bowling alley will probably have old 16 lb bowling balls lying around that they are going to throw out some day. I got a few for free and used them for training: If you learn to put a bowling ball, any odd shaped stone will seem easier. Also, if you drill a hole with an appropriate sized wood bit all the way through, they make great practice hammers. The diameter is larger than a competition hammer, so if you learn to keep the bowling ball off the grass during winds, you'll have no problem in competition. They also make shallower, wider divots in the yard. ------------- Steve Jystad You are only given a little spark of madness -- you mustn't lose it. Robin Williams |
Posted By: Windwalker
Date Posted: 8/07/09 at 3:28pm
| That is just stupid simple! What a great idea, now to find the local bowling alley! |
Posted By: Alan H
Date Posted: 8/17/09 at 4:05pm
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Variation on the weights... OSH (I spend a lot of $$ at OSH) and Lowes and Home Depot and Ace all carry really big bolts. You know, like 3/4 inch diameter. You could also just cut yourself some 3/4 inch allthread. Crank two nuts together (ouch!) on the end of the allthread. See, you were smart, you measured your stack of 10 and 5 lb dumbell plates, and either bought a bolt that was about an inch and a half longer than the height of your stack, or you cut a piece of allthread that was about 1.75 inches longer than the stack. I'm just gonna write about the bolts, now. You're smart, if you have allthread, then adapt. OK, so pile the weights on the bolt, with the head of the bolt keeping the weights from falling off. Crank two nuts down on top of the bolt, flush up against the top weight and mark where they end on the bolt. Now take everything off the bolt.. go to the grinder, or the bandsaw if you've got one, and cut the end of the bolt so that instead of being round, when you look down on it, it has two parallel faces, and the end of the bolt is about 3/8 of an inch thick from one face to the other. If you're careful, you won't prannggg up the threads too bad and you can put those nuts back on. Now drill a 3/8 or 7/16th inch hole through the part of the bolt that you ground down. That will leave lots of metal around the hole, it'll be beefy. Now assemble everything. The weights go on the bolt so that the head of the bolt stops them from falling off. You thread two nuts down on top of the weights and crank 'em hard against each other so they lock in place. Now you get a 3/8 inch anchor shackle, and put the pin right through that hole that you drilled. Tighten the shackle with with a wrench. Use a couple of quick-links to attach the now solid weight to your handle of choice and your'e stylin' for cheap. ****** BTW, I finally did visit Metal Supermarkets and made a 28'er weight like I described above. It's 5 inches of 5-inch diameter steel rod with a two solid bits of steel "L" extrusion welded on top. I drilled the parts of the "L" that stick up to take a 3/8 inch shackle. Two quick links from that shackle to another shackle that's around the Old Celt handle and I had a weight that was 27.8 pounds and 17.5 inches from the end of the handle to the end of the weight. I epoxied on a little circle of scrap 2 inch rod that the guy at the shop gave me and now it's spot-on 28 pounds...a regulation legit 28 pound weight for about $45 plus the $20 Old Celt handle. It's indestructable. |
Posted By: Alan H
Date Posted: 8/17/09 at 4:13pm
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Cabers... surely in your area there are companies that trim trees? You know, like landscape companies, arborists, stuff like that. OK, so call them up and say "HI, I throw heavy stuff, like small trees, you've seen it on TV..." and so on, and then ask real nice if they're cutting any little-ish doug fir or pine in the next few weeks. Hell, our intermediate stick/ladies stick is eucalyptus. It's splitting something awful but it's fine for practice. Be ready to drop everything when/if they call back and go get your stick (s). |
Posted By: Old Dude
Date Posted: 8/20/09 at 3:54pm
 Old iron barbell plates @ $0.10 a pound...mostly 2-1/2 and 3 lb plates Gray sched 80 PVC conduit cut to 50" measured from the conduit bell Duct tape wapped around the handle just above the plates or even around the plates. No glue needed. Scottish hammers on the cheap. ------------- Over Fork Over |
Posted By: ksims3254
Date Posted: 8/22/09 at 3:09am
| Ok, this is my first post so be gentle. Would an appropriate sized kettlebell be a good tool for a newbie to practice height and distance? |
Posted By: Alan H
Date Posted: 8/22/09 at 7:00am
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ksims3254...yes and no. Yes, because a kettlebell is hella better than not practicing at all. No, because the handles on the weights for height and distance are flexibly attached to the weight, while a kettlebell is rigid. If you've got some decent kettlebells, and that's what you've got and $$ are tight, them heck yes, start practicing with them. |
Posted By: FlyinFree
Date Posted: 10/06/09 at 3:59am
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helped me! thanks! ------------- Todd Reese "Max the Body to tap the Brain, deplete the Brain for Spiritual Dependance |
Posted By: myshillelagh
Date Posted: 10/12/09 at 1:14am
Here is a caber that I found out in the woods and with a little bit of time sanded her down and gave her a name. Shes not quite competition size but great for practice. Cost $0. She measures 10.58ft, weighs 90lbs, and scores in at a 416. http://www.new.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31044314&id=1308240610" id="myphotolink"> http://www.new.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31044314&id=1308240610" id="myphotolink"> http://www.new.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31044314&id=1308240610" id="myphotolink"> http://www.new.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31044314&id=1308240610" id="myphotolink"> http://www.new.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31044314&id=1308240610" id="myphotolink">  |
Posted By: West
Date Posted: 10/12/09 at 5:07pm
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pretty cool myshillelagh ------------- Drink to the fame of it, honor the name of it, The Tartan. |
Posted By: Alan H
Date Posted: 10/27/09 at 9:10am
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I just called the group at my work...I work at a big, famous University here in California...that does landscape maintenance. I talked to the head arborist and he says he'll keep an eye out for 14 - 16 footers for me. It's likely that what he'll mostly have is eucalyptus, which will split like nobody's business, but if I can get a decent stick that will last a season, then it's all good. Keep an eye out around your town. For example, I just picked up a practice caber that will be good for me, from down the street. I'd driven by it for two months, and finally I stopped the car and rang the doorbell at the house and asked them. Would they part with the chunk of wood they had lying out in front of the house, sort of as a parking spot marker? Sure they would....so I loaded it in the back of the truck...damn thing was heavy and got it home. Two hours with the electric chainsaw, the circular saw and belt sander and I've got a 12' 6", 90+ pound practice stick. It's cypress and very tapered and it cost me nothing. It'll be good for explosiveness work. If I can do this, you can do this....find a caber, even if you have to go buy a 12-14 foot 6 x 6 and whale on it with power tools to taper and round-off the bottom 5 feet. ------------- Alan Hebert Geezer-In-Training |
Posted By: Alan H
Date Posted: 10/27/09 at 9:20am
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I will probably make a womens LWFD this winter for my practice group. How? See next post for how I actually did it. .....Now I put everything together, and hand it to some Amazon Goddess to hurl for great distances. hopefully this Amazon Goddess will think I'm cute and be grateful for all my work and reward me for my labors... ...but I doubt it.....well, the reward part, anyway. ------------- Alan Hebert Geezer-In-Training |
Posted By: Alan H
Date Posted: 1/06/10 at 6:50pm
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OK, handles and the womens LWFD I made for the ladies that throw in my training group. I really like the Old Celt handle I got for last season. I've got it on my 28'er. Still, that's $22 plus shipping. I wouldn't have spent that, my first season. So what did I get for the ladies LWFD? Well, I was at the metal shop and I noticed that they had 6-inch ID galvanized thickwall pipe. So I had 'em cut me a 3/8 inch slice off the end of that pipe. Cost? $1 for the metal and $1 for the cut...two lousy bucks. I got it home and smoothed off the inside and outside edges with a file and about 20 minutes of vigorous emery paper work. Then I wrapped part of it in duct tape, 'cause I thought the edges would be hard on my hands. (They were). It works absolutely great, it's light and it cost a rip-snorting two dollars.. How'd I make the womens LWFD? Well, I inherited a beat-up 10 pound sledgehammer head. It's destroyed as a sledgehammer, so I knocked the handle out of it. Then I melted down a bunch of those scavenged wheel weights I wrote about up above, over a camp stove, and filled up the hole in the sledgehammer head with the melted lead. Now the thing weighs an honest 10 pounds and I have not spent a dime.. At the metal shop, I got a piece of square-section steel tube. This is just like a round tube except.. *Duh*....it's square. The sledgehammer head just barely fit in it. This cost me four bucks, it was on the remnants shelf. I took it home and put the sledgehammer head in it and then took a small 3 pound sledge and a big piece of rod I had lying around and I just hammered a bunch of wheel weights in wherever I could jam 'em. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't sophisticated, I just beat the shit out of the lead weights until they deformed and stuck in there. OK, so to tie it all together I cut a few squares of fiberglass cloth, just the same size as the square rod. They got laid down on top of a piece of wax paper. Then I mixed up a mess of epoxy and poured it in there. The epoxy has bonded the sledgehammer head to the steel rod, the lead is all bonded in place, and the bottom of the weight is now epoxy with four layers of heavy glass tape. It's indescructible. I took it to a welder and he welded a split chain link I got for free at the hardware store on the top of the whole thing for the exorbitant sum of twenty bucks. couple of quick links, the handle I just wrote about up above, and the damn thing is 17 3/4 inches from the end of the handle to the butt end of the weight and it weighs 13.9 pounds. We're stylin. Total cost was about $30. If I coulda schmoozed the welding, it would have cost a lot less. ------------- Alan Hebert Geezer-In-Training |
Posted By: Alan H
Date Posted: 1/06/10 at 6:59pm
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Oh, I have a new practice caber. I've been driving by this chunk of wood for months, a neighbor was using it as a parking delimiter in front of his house. I'd even stopped once and stepped it off so I knew it was about 12 feet long. So one day I stopped and knocked on the door and asked him if I could have it. He said "sure". So I picked it up....about gave myself a hernia, the damn thing is only about 12' 8" but it weighs over 100 pounds, and wrestled it into my truck. I got it home and went after it with the electric chainsaw and the surform plane and the drawknife and so on and got most all the bark off of it (it's Cypress and already dry and NOT CRACKED!) and knocked off the little stubby bits of the branches so it won't cut me up and now I have "The Beast". It's shortish, but then it fits in the back of my truck without sticking out too much. It's heavy (for me) so it's good for developing explosiveness. It's tapered, so even though it's heavy I can actually get the damned thing over about half the time. Hell, I do squats with it in the driveway. And I wonder why my neighbors look at me funny.  Cost? Nothing. If I can do it, YOU can do it. ------------- Alan Hebert Geezer-In-Training |
Posted By: BenEdwards
Date Posted: 7/24/10 at 7:12am
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Thanks for the info, it's already helping me figure out a plan of attack for my training! ------------- http://goalorientedtraining.wordpress.com/ |
Posted By: Alan H
Date Posted: 8/18/10 at 5:55am
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I will say that after you've gone the cheap route for a while with hammers, you will finally have to break down and BUY a hammer head. There's nothing quite like a real hammer head, and you don't go through PVC handles every 2-3 weeks like you do with the stacked plates. Don't forget Craigslist. I scored my Masters 42 WOB weight off of craigslist for $30. It's regulations size and everything. ------------- Alan Hebert Geezer-In-Training |
Posted By: Alan H
Date Posted: 8/18/10 at 6:17am
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cheap uprights for WOB. Go down to Orchard Supply or Home Depot or Lowe's or Fred Meyer. Here's your shopping list. 1.) 2 lengths, 2 inch galvanized steel electrical conduit. They come in 10-foot lengths. If you don't care if your WOB uprights will go above 14 feet, you can buy just one and hacksaw it in half. You can also use 2-inch galvanized steel fence post. 2.) 4 steel contractors stakes...or even just 1/2 inch rebar. 4 pieces, 2 feet long. Make sure that two pieces laid right next to each other sleeve inside the electrical conduit. 3.) 3, 2 1/2-inch ABS plumbing pipe, 10-foot lengths 4.) 2, cheap pulleys that will take at least a 75 pound load. 5.) 1, 50-foot length of cheap rope. I'd stay away from the uber-cheap yellow poly stuff, get something a little bit nicer like woven rope but just get stuff that will fit through the pulleys. You're going to cut it in half to make two pieces 25-foot long. 6.) 2, spring loaded gluing clamps like this: http://www.woodpeck.com/media/main_411_clamp.jpg Total cost for all this is going to be around $40-$50 It's going to be infinitely adjustable from ground level up to 18-19 feet. It will fit in the back of your pickup truck, though it'll hang out a couple of feet. It's totally portable. It will weigh about 20 pounds, total. I happen to use two pieces of scrounged galvanized fence post instead of electrical steel electrical conduit. The fence post pieces are about 6 1/2 feet tall so my apparatus is limited to about 15 1/2 feet. The day I start throwing WOB over 15 feet, well....I'll go buy new posts. Pictures soon. ------------- Alan Hebert Geezer-In-Training |
Posted By: Alan H
Date Posted: 8/18/10 at 1:37pm
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I promised pictures, but instead, you get video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCMOyb5JB-c ------------------- The first time I did this, the video had a major disconnect between the audio and video when YouTube processed it, grrrr... so let's try again. ------------- Alan Hebert Geezer-In-Training |
Posted By: =Travis=
Date Posted: 8/20/10 at 1:44am
| Nice video. |
Posted By: Throwgrl
Date Posted: 8/21/10 at 7:33pm
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I practice with a kettle bell for now, and like it. For hammer I use round weights on a 40 grade electrical pvc pipe. The regulation hammer ball gives me better balance, so I'll be ordering one from Bobby Dodd when I get the money. When I first started training I used a paint can pinnined onto the pvc pipe with duct tape around the lid, filled with pea gravel. I started light and built up the weight. It worked really good. ------------- You can overcome adversity! |
Posted By: Old Dude
Date Posted: 8/23/10 at 5:25am
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Nothing like primitive homemade weights to get a person started in the games. You throw girl.
------------- Over Fork Over |
Posted By: Neeb
Date Posted: 3/10/11 at 8:07am
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I walked in to a local landscaping place here in Loveland(Crystal Landscaping Supplies for those nearby), told the lady up front what i needed in a stone, she lent me a golf cart to go look through the pile, 5 minutes later i had a 21.4lbs stone for free. Some times it doesn't hurt to tell em what its for, they even let me throw test it to be sure it wouldnt break right away(as i know nothing about stone hardness). ------------- I'm a lot bigger than I am strong. |