PVC and Plywood Speaker Stands for Cheap

I needed some speaker stands for my home studio recently, but didn't want to pay retail for them. I did some searching on the internet and found some instructions for TNT Stubbies, but they were a bit smaller than I needed, so I scaled the design up to meet my needs.

The design is simple: A tube of PVC filled with sand sandwiched between two pieces of wood with all-thread.

These stands should be sturdy enough to hold a pair of full size bookshelves or studio monitors (10x12 footprint) at least 4 feet high.

Step 1 Materials and Tools

You should be able to find all of this stuff at a local hardware store:

~10 feet of 4" PVC (you can use smaller diameter if you like, I wanted a heavier look)
~10 feet of 3/8" All-thread
4'x4' piece of 3/4" plywood (I used some leftover birch plywood from a previous project)
6 3/8" nuts and washers
Sand
Caulk
Spray paint (I used Krylon Fusion for plastics).
Wood stain (optional)

Tools required:

Drill
Caulk gun (unless using squeezable caulk)
1" and 3/8" paddle drill bits (or equivalent)
hack saw (for cutting the PVC and all-thread)
circular saw, or something else to cut the plywood

Comments

[LKBamberg]

What I did is make a mortise with a router, and just put the caulk (in my instance, I used RTV silicone) in that. That way, the sand is sealed, with nothing bleeding out.

[Poultrygeist]

Instead of using the caulk I bought some PVC knockouts plugs/caps from HD for 35 cents. I drilled a hole in each so the threaded pipe is a tight fit and placed a rubber washer on the inside to keep the sand from leaking out. If you use the caulk it shows where the pvc contacts the base so the knock out plugs are a much better solution.