Dumbell Pushup Spacers (Pallet Wood)

I was looking at some workout routines and chanced on a short one on the Livestrong website by Jordan Shalhoub, in the routine Jordan uses a pair of hex dumbbells which are used as handles when in the prone position of an exercise called a Man-Maker [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NRKWIONSxQ].

I thought I would like to try the routine but my problem was that I don't have any hex dumbbells just some standard spinlock dumbbell bars. On thinking about it for a while I realised that what I really needed was a couple of strong "spacers" that I could drop onto each of my bars when required.

Tools I used:

Planer Thicknesser

Table saw

Mitre saw

Pillar drill

Power drill

Impact driver with Pozidrive bit

Ruler

Square

Pencil

Forstner drill bit 25mm

Forstner drill bit 12mm

3mm drill bit

10mm Countersink bit

Materials:

1 piece of pallet wood, the pallet wood I used was around 3cm thick, 9cm Wide, 106cm long

You are using the wood to create 6 smaller pieces of 17cm long, this totals out at 102cm.

Note that for my original build I used 3 offcuts that I found lying around.

8* Pozidrive Screws 5mm by 70mm

I intended to use my design with 2 different diameter weighs 12cm diameter 1.25Kg and 16cm diameter 2.5Kg.

The idea was a simple rectangular piece of wood with a 25mm hole drilled in the centre for the dumbell bar.

My original intention was to use the spacers with the long end vertical so I chose to make my rectangular sections 18cm long to allow for some differences in the weight diameter as I just use low tolerance cast weights.

For my project I used salvaged wood, timber offcuts stripped from a pallet.

I first ran the wood through a planer thicknesser to smooth off the top and bottom surfaces; I was not concerned with having a precise thickness.

I did nothing to the pallet wood edges as they were already straight enough and smooth enough.

I marked 4* 18cm lengths along the wood with a ruler and then used a square to mark lines across the width.

I marked the centre drill point of each spacer using the ruler and square halfway down the long side of the spacer and half way across the width.

I used the mitre saw to cut across the spacers making them all the correct length

I cut the holes for the dumbell bar out using a 25mm Forstner bit.

A minimalist approach would be to sand the roughness from the wood, mark and cut the wood to the correct lengths and use a suitable size drill or hole saw for the holes.

I exercised with my spacers for around 3 times per week for around 3 months then I had a tip episode. I had 3 point balance with my other hand and 2 feet so I was ok but I decided some modification to my spacers was required. My thinking was to turn the long side of the spacers to the horizontal and screw on a strip of wood to build the spacer to the right height to rest on the ground. I worked out that the strip would need to be around 4cm high to clear the weight from the floor, luckily this is around half the width of the pallet wood I was using.

I located an offcut piece of pallet wood that had already been planed.

I cut the wood into 2 blocks which matched the length of the long side of my original spacer.

I then used a table saw to cut these 2 blocks lengthways.

I drilled 2 holes in each block with a 12mm Forstner bit to keep the screws away from my carpet then drilled a pilot hole down the centre before adding in a countersink for the screw head.

I clamped each block to 1 of my original spacers then drilled a pilot hole into it.

I extended the pilot hole down then used an impact driver to screw the pieces of wood together.

Finally I squared off the joint edges with a table saw.

My spacers were originally cut to 18cm as I intended them to stand vertically, after my modifications this became the horizontal width, reducing this width to 17cm allows you to complete the project from a single piece of pallet wood assuming a strip length of 106cm.

The spacers were a tight fit on my dumbell bars, strictly speaking the 1 inch bars require a hole slightly larger than 25mm (1inch = 2.54cm).

The spacers weigh in at around 270 grammes each.