No Olympic weight sets to be found? - stupid covid

Completely unrelated to permaculture, but I'm finding it incredibly frustrating that it is near-impossible to find a simple Olympic weight set for sale for anywhere near a reasonable price right now.  As soon as life gets back to normal, gyms open up, and factories are in full production, everyone and their brother will be selling their weight set, or trying to give it away.  Right now, if you can find one for sale, it is just ridiculously priced.  I'm sure there are other areas where the things people need are just not available, and I'm not the only person experiencing this.  Argh.

Unless you work in retail, you simply have no idea just how much/what type of stuff people have been buying this year.

Time to break out the 1 gallon milk jugs. they must weight around 8 pounds each with liquid in them. Tie a few together and you have 24 pounds. Hang three from a piece of 1 inch pipe an you are able to bench press 24 pounds!

Check out this sight on homemade weight set

jordan barton wrote:Time to break out the 1 gallon milk jugs. they must weight around 8 pounds each with liquid in them. Tie a few together and you have 24 pounds.

I have a 400 lb set. I'm just trying to add a few more plates. I'm a little past the milk jug stage :)  

There are a fair number of very good web sites for people that like to make their own equipment. I've made some of mine in the past. I left them with a friend when I moved last. I'm going to make a set of farmer's walk handles soon, but the weight plates themselves aren't practical to make.

Trace, I don't know what it's like where you are but where I live gyms are still required to be closed, it's led to all sorts of strife, but the smart folks are renting out their equipment to make a little bit of coin during this big drought. If you have a gym nearby, might be worth asking. Especially since you're talking about plates instead of say, fancypants stairmaster machines, the risk to the owner is pretty low and you could always sign a contract, leave a deposit, etc. Just an idea.

I heard lot's of gyms are "secretly" opened for the most loyal clients. It's always worth a try to speak with gym owner.

Tereza Okava wrote:Trace, I don't know what it's like where you are but where I live gyms are still required to be closed, it's led to all sorts of strife, but the smart folks are renting out their equipment to make a little bit of coin during this big drought. If you have a gym nearby, might be worth asking. Especially since you're talking about plates instead of say, fancypants stairmaster machines, the risk to the owner is pretty low and you could always sign a contract, leave a deposit, etc. Just an idea.

That's an excellent idea, thank you.

Monika Sarang wrote:I heard lot's of gyms are "secretly" opened for the most loyal clients. It's always worth a try to speak with gym owner.

I can see that working in some areas.  Where I am, it's a very small community, everyone knows everything, so unless the police were on board with just not enforcing the rules, it wouldn't last long here.  

Cement Blocks.

Woohoo!  A fairly local Dick's sporting goods finally got a shipment in.  I've been on a list to get an email notification when they were in stock.  They didn't have just plates, so I had to buy sets, but maybe I can sell the extra bars off.

I colect old sinkers at the beach and cast them into plates the bonus is that being lead is around 30% more dense than steel you can fit that much more weight on your bar.

Brian Karlsen wrote:I colect old sinkers at the beach and cast them into plates the bonus is that being lead is around 30% more dense than steel you can fit that much more weight on your bar.

Aren't you concerned about lead poisoning?  I would think sliding the plates on and off the bar would cause lead to wear off in small particles.

lead poisoning is somthing thats verry much overhyped its almost imposabe to get it from contact with the base metal in a lot of places lead water pipes are stil in use with no ill efects the isues normaly come when using lead in combination with acidic foods when using pewter cups and plates. on my ones though i used a short piece of steel pipe to form the whole where it slides onto the bar this pipe forms part of the finished plate so there is no contact between the lead and the bar to wear down also i dont move plates verry often just add them as i get stronger and then they live on the bar