Multi Grip Weight Bar From Metal Scraps!

Some know it as a multi grip bar, some as a football bar or maybe even a Swiss bar. Either way this useful weight training tool allows you to chose multiple grips thus relieving pressure on your joints such as the wrists. Whether you use it for a heavy press, curl or pulling motion, this bar will help with many exercises and is worth making over using the standard straight bar.

You will need all your personal protective equipment for this project; nice heavy gloves, safety glasses, hearing protection and even a dust mask.

Supplies needed:

- Scrap steel / Steel scraps

Tools needed:

- Metal cutting tools such as hacksaws, angle grinders, reciprocating saw, band saw, cutting torch etc... I used a reciprocating saw and angle grinder with a cut off wheel.

- Metal grinder to square everything up.

- Welder of some sorts, I used a mig welder with flux core welding wire.

Step 1: Find and Cut Your Usefull Pieces

So for this project I utilized the left over scrap pieces from my previous squat rack project I built prior. All this metal comes from me dismantling used ATV shipping crates which have all these random fun steel bars to chose from and get creative in your gym making.

After you found your metal, you will need to cut all the pieces, I went with a wide grip, a shoulder width grip and a slanted close grip because the angle helps with my wrists. You can add as many or little grip positions in your bar as you want, that's the beauty of custom building your workout gear.

Up next prepping the bars!

Step 2: Grinding Away!

Now the fun bit, taking off all that rust off and grinding everything square.

I start by using my grinder to square off everything and make sure it all fits, then I use the angle grinder with a grinding wheel to get any left over pieces from the ATV crates off. You dont want to skip this step because the last thing you want is to be ripping up your hands while weight lifting because you were too lazy to clean up your bar.

Next you'll want to use an angle grinder with steel wire brush attachment to get all that rust off and any little bits of metal from grinding earlier. It's important to get all the rust off as it will allow you to get cleaner welds later, prevents the metal from rotting away on you and it looks really nice all ground up.

Step 3: Start Putting This Beast Together!

First measure up the center on the furthest bars and line up the bar ends that you will put your weights on. Make sure you have them on there square so you don't have weights falling off the bar while your using it.

Once you have them centered it's time to take out the welder and start securing the pieces. Start with a small spot weld on the weight bar then take out your square and make sure it's square all around. My metal ends warped a little from the heat so I squared them off with my good ol' hammer and anvil before continuing to the next step, this was also a good test of my welds lol.

Step 4: Now Too Assemble the Meat and Potatoes

With your bar ends all welded up and squared off, it's time to mount your long bars to make the main frame.

Same as before start with small tack welds or spot welds whatever you want to call it, this allows you to make adjustments to the bar before you weld it solid.

When you happy with the bar and you squared it up, now weld it solid!

**Remember you want to keep this as even as possible so the weight will distribute properly on the bar and not over load one of your sides while exercising, which could leave to injuries**

Step 5: Get Your Grips Going

Ok with the frame all done, now you have to figure out how spaced out you want your grips.

I first found center on the frame and stood in front and put my arm out at different lenghts to find what distances I wanted for my bar. Star with the end grips (wide grip) first, I went 10.5cms from the frame then spot welded the grips in place. Moved onto the next widest grip winch is slightly wider then shoulder width apart, turned out to be another 10.5 cms from my wide grip, now spot weld those grips.

Now is the time to hold onto your bar to see if you like the spacing, the spot welds should hold if you did them properly.

Add your close grips, I found these tricky with the angle, but we got it anyways. I again just put them in the frame, held onto them to find the right spacing and spot weld them into place.

Now is the time to hold onto your bar and try it out a little with no weight on there just to see if you like the spacing and it feels right to you.

If your happy with the results then weld it up solid and enjoy the fruits of your labour!!

Step 6: Have Fun, Be Safe!

Your all done, you could grind your welds and clean it up a little but I'm going for a rough look so as long as it's not sharp I leave it ugly.

Now go out there and lift something heavy with all your different grips!

Please be safe and lift within your capabilities, always wear all your PPE while working on this stuff including the respirator while your grinding and sanding the rust off.

HAVE FUN!

If you enjoyed this project please vote for it in the Scraps challenge!! Thank you for checking this out!