Wooden chinup bars

I have never used wooden rings but you usually hear of them being favoured over metal or plastic. I was wondering if wooden chinup bars would be preferable too. I have 2 rope loops on my regular chinup bar so I can slot in an tricep bar

And do neutral pullups, the bar is also able to spin so is unstable which some might like.

I am going to try a wooden pole through the loops, the longer the wood the weaker it will be, my loops are just outside my hands on the chinup bar so the wood should be able to handle it.

Here is one some guy made.

He has made lots of things http://www.flickr.com/photos/41740772@N06/page3/

I have heard of people wrapping bars in tennis & hockey tape. I was wondering about cycling handlebar tape and found brooks brand do a leather tape which gets excellent reviews, but is expensive. If you had some old leather you might be able to make tape or glue it on direct.

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Mode ... elID=28016

Doing pullups on stall bars is pretty decent. I don't regularly do them there but sometimes we have your kids do pullups on them as well as PB (though the bars are not really wood and are oval in cross section).

My first pull up bar was an oak closet rod hung from straps. The wood felt great to me, i preferred it over steel to be honest. However i would recommend using anything less than 42mm in diameter with wood. for pull ups ect i like the thicker bars, but most steel bars are around 30mm dia. so wood will be a good deal thicker.

I you decide to make a similar set up to the picture, go the extra mile, and use a hole saw the same size as the dowel then sink a screw in from the top to keep it from spinning.

I'm not a big fan of taping, and with wood it would be almost criminal.

Mr Brady said:

I you decide to make a similar set up to the picture, go the extra mile, and use a hole saw the same size as the dowel then sink a screw in from the top to keep it from spinning.

Good idea, my tricep bar spun easily since the load is off centre. I got my wooden pole, it was a broomstick handle and only about 20mm diameter. I sanded it down to remove the protective varnish/coating. It worked well, nice feel to it, I am about 90kg and it showed no sign of breaking (even though it even has a series of holes drilled in it). I am going to try and get a thicker one now. Curtain rails would be easy to find, I was thinking before that the curtain supports could be useful for people trying to may parallel bars, but the longer the bar the weaker it will be.

These are the supports I mean

Mr Brady said:

I'm not a big fan of taping, and with wood it would be almost criminal.

I was thinking of taping the metal bar I was thinking of. In the past I have put bicycle inner tubes over them, I also tried a paint on plastic/rubber coating which was not great.