Necessary materials
To make two dumbbells I needed:
- Two 3/4 steel tubes about 50 cm long with threads on both sides.
- Four regular 3/4 tees.
- One rubber stepped cuff (adapter) and one clamp along the diameter of the sides of the cuffs.
- Cement with river sand.
- A little silicone grease to treat the rubber.
Making dumbbells
In fact, the idea is very simple:
- I screwed a tee onto each end of the pipe.
- To make the first part of the dumbbell, I built a kind of tripod so that the handle of the future dumbbell could be fixed in a suspended state.
- I installed a rubber cuff on a piece of foam backing so that the handle was located in the center, but did not rest on the foam backing.
Then I mixed the cement mortar: 1.5 parts of fine river sand, sifted through a sieve and 1 part of cement, with which I carefully filled the cuff with a pipe placed in it with a tee at the end.By the way, I lubricated the inside of the rubber “mold” with silicone grease so that the cement would not stick to it too much, since I planned to use it again. The poured workpiece was left for a day for the solution to set. After a day, when the solution had hardened well, I removed the workpiece from the tripod and cut the collar to remove it from the cement.
Making the second half of the weighting material
I coated the edges of the cut cuff with instant glue and joined them together. After the glue had set, I put clamps on the ends of the cuff so that it would not unravel when pouring cement. Since the previous tripod would not support the weight of the dumbbell, to fill the second part I hung it between two handles laid on cinder blocks. Then I repeated the process: I adjusted the restored form for the weighting agent on the foam backing at a height so that the tee did not reach the base by about 1 cm, mixed the solution and carefully filled the cuff. After 24 hours, I removed the rubber cuff, and one dumbbell was completely ready.
In the following days, I made the second dumbbell in the same way.
When the dumbbells were ready, the thought occurred to me that if I had 4 cuffs, then I wouldn’t have to remove them - I would get dumbbells with rubberized weighting. Therefore, if you decide to repeat, consider my experience.
Original article in English
