What Would Kettle Do?

It’s always awesome when Dolby comes to Oaksterdam for a little work and a little fun! We spent a lot of time working on our upcoming workshops in North Carolina and Columbus Ohio and we actually had the time to get some good training in. It is always nice to have the Caveman to throw stuff around with!

On Saturday we went caveman trolling at the Home Depot and came up with the idea to make a strongman log. I have been doing a lot of overhead pressing lately and I really like it. The problem is my hands are at the wrong angle. When I am pressing a barbell my palms are facing forward. When I am locking out my kettles (or trying to) they are at (or should be at) 45 degrees with my palms facing towards each other (not entirely facing each other but you get the idea).

So I have been dreaming of getting a strongman log for pressing because at least the handles are facing in and not facing forward. These logs cost a freakin’ ton so we thought “Caveman see tree, Bigman carry tree home”. So, we started looking.

We went to a few different places before we found a huge post sitting in a bin outside a hardware store in Berkeley. We told the guy we really wanted it but we only needed about 5 feet. He said he couldn’t cut it because his saw blade was not big enough (seriously!) so we asked if he had a handsaw. He started laughing at us but sure enough he had one, a really REALLY small one and gave it to us to use. He actually sat there watching us cut cut cut

Not really, difficult.

We picked up some other accoutrements to make her pretty/keep giant splinters out of our mitts, and we were off.

So this is what we’ve got so far.

It weighs (I’d have to guess) 120lbs or so. I will be drilling out the ends to jam some plate bars in there soon and I need to do something about the handles. Right now it feels like a “bottoms up” log. But whatever, it is still freakin’ awesome!

If anyone has any ideas on where to get some better handles please let me know.

Other than that, I love it. The handles are a little wider than my lockout but as I get more flexible I will move them in.

For now I will store it on top of the squat rack because when I lean it against the wall it looks like a cat scratch post thing. The boys will destroy it

Making this was super fun and I can’t wait to make the next thing which will involve, well, powertools that’s all you’ll get out of me for now because my landlord may be reading this LOL.

Thanks Jason for the awesome weekend of building/lifting/throwing.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I’ll keep you posted on any alterations!

Kettle,