A blog about Grip Strength, Dinosaur Training, Feats of Strength, Stonelifting, Kettlebell Training, Strength and Conditioning for Martial Arts, and the Paleo Diet.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

(English) How to make your own Strongman log

This lovely but cold Sunday morning I put the finishing touches on my first homemade Strongman log. There it is:


Ain't she a beauty?

If you want to make your own, here is what I did:

I phoned a couple of lumber mills to check which one sells log without bark. I found one, went there and purchased a 6 1/2 feet long, 1 foot diameter spruce log (these where the dimensions I found on the Internet for an empty Strongman log of about 155 lbs). 25 EUR.

I have to admit, it seemed awfully heavy. At home I weighed it: about 300 lbs. What was wrong?

Of course, the wood was rather fresh and full of water. To let it dry would take about two years. So I searched for another lumber mill with a drying room and found one. Fortunately, they let me put the log into their chamber for a week. This cost me another 20 EUR I didn't want to spend, but next time I will be wiser.

When I picked it up, it had almost exactly 155 lbs. So the 20 EUR eventually saved me a lot of time.

Then I began by cutting two square holes into the log with a chainsaw. About 8 by 7 inch, with the centers of the holes (where the handles would be) about 2 feet apart.

Be careful when working with a chainsaw, by the way, they can be dangerous.

Then came the hardest part: taking the wood out of the holes. At first I used a pick hammer for the rough work, then a chisel.


This part of the job took most of the time. Luckily a friend and my younger borther (here in the picture), lent a helping hand.


The rest was easy. I drilled round holes through the center of the log where the square holes are, and two holes into the ends of log. As I wanted to use an old iron pipe for the handles and loading bars with a diameter of 1.06 inches, I used a drill about 1 milimeter less in diameter.




Then I hammered the end pipes into the holes at the ends of the log and decided they would hold.

With the handles I was more cautious and put some extra strong glue into the drill holes before hammering the pipes through to make sure they would resist the strain put on them during a heavy clean.


Then I hammered the handle pipes through.



This is how you put additional weight on it:



There you go. Looking forward to my first workout with it.

Good luck with your own!

Best,
Robert

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