Introduction: How to Build a Hula Hoop

By The Spinsterz
About: The Spinsterz is your source for top of the line hula hoops and flow props. We've been in business for 14 years because we ship faster than anyone else, have amazing customer service and offer the best warrant…

This tutorial aims to be the best and easiest tutorial you can find on how to make a simple hula hoop with supplies you can buy at a hardware store.

Hi, my names Brandon and I'm the owner and founder of The Spinsterz. I've been hula hooping for 20 years and building hoops professionally for 14 of those years.

I've made and sold tens of thousands of hoops and in that time I've learned what makes a great hula hoop as well as how to teach you how to easily make one at home.

The hoop you are about to learn to make can be made with simple items you can find at most hardware stores and it will be cheap too!

The total cost of materials to build approximately 10 hoops is only $52.84

Step 1: Gathering the Supplies

Just as any good cook knows, before you start cooking, you should prep all your supplies.

Let's look at what supplies you need to gather to build your first hula hoop!

Materials Checklist

  • Polyethylene Tubing - 3/4" 160 PSI
    • Sold in 100' rolls at Home Depot and Lowes
    • Usually costs around $50
  • Grey Barbed 3/4" Connector
    • Sold at Home Depot and Lowes
    • Costs about $ .26

This will be enough tubing to make approximately ten hula hoops. Now that we have the materials, we need to gather our tools.

Tools Checklist

  • A way to cut the tubing
  • Cloth measuring tape
  • A pot of hot water or a hairdryer

Step 2: Wrangle That Tubing

Once you have your supplies all gathered and ready, it's time to start having some fun and creating magical circles.

  1. Get your tubing and cut off any tape holding it all together.
  2. Allow your tubing to naturally start unwinding and "relaxing".

Step 3: Determining Your Hoop Size

While your tubing is relaxing you can think about what size hoop you want to make and do the math so you know what size you are going to cut.

If you are a brand new hooper, I'd suggest making a hoop somewhere between 38" - 42" in outside diameter. For the purposes of this Instructable, our diameter will be measured from outside edge to outside edge. If you are unsure of what size hula hoop to make, click that link and read this article to find out what size hoop is best for you.

Once you know the hoop size you want to make, it's time to do some math and convert that size into something we can use with your measuring tape.

I'm making a 38" diameter hoop.

We need to find the circumference that we going to measure and then cut. The formula for finding the circumference of a circle is pi (3.14) * Di (diameter). In our case this is 3.14*38 = 119.32". We're going to round this number to 119" just to make it easier on ourselves.

Step 4: Measure and Cut Your Tubing

For this step, you will need your measuring tape, tubing cutters, and your tubing.

Tips

  1. Hold the measuring tape really tight as you are measuring around the tubing.
  2. Cut into your tubing just a bit and then spiral your cutters, this makes a more even cut.
  3. Watch your fingers when you are cutting in the above step!

Step 5: Inserting Your Connector

Tools needed:

Rubber mallet, hairdryer or a pot of hot water.

You can use a grey barbed connector or one of the white HDPE connectors.

If you are using the grey barbed coupling, you are going to need a bit of assistance in getting the coupling into the tubing as it is a tight fit because it's meant to stay inside the tubing and not come out.

Step 6: Finishing Your Hoop

You've got one side of the connector in and now it's time to complete the hoop.

This step is really easy, you just do the exact same thing you did for the last step and heat up the tubing enough to push in the connector.

Viola! You've got a usable hula hoop!

Step 7: Wrapping Up

That's pretty much it ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, you've just built yourself a hula hoop!

This hoop may be a bit slippery when using it as there is no "grip" on it. One of the ways a hoop becomes easier to use is by putting some grippy gaffer tape on it. Gaffer tape is a cloth tape used by all sorts of industries to make things grippy. If you watch our How to Tape a Hoop video, you'll see gaffer tape being used there.

If you are interested in learning How to Hula Hoop , we'd love to share with you a series of 5 videos that will take you from never hula hooping to being able to do a few basic moves. You can view these how to hoop videos here.

If you've got any questions or comments you can leave them below or hit us up on Messenger to get a super-fast response.

After all that, if you'd rather just buy a hoop from The Spinsterz and save all the hassle, you can use the code "INSTRUCTABlES10" to save 10% on your purchase.