After reading this at NASGA I got to thinking how sick and tired I was of practicing WOB by throwing weights over tree branches, so I decided I'd make one. The basic principle is that you sink a piece of 1 1/4 inch pipe into the ground at foot or so....drive it in there with a sledehammer. Over the top of that you drop a piece of 2-inch PVC or ABS pipe. The inside diameter of the ABS is just a little bit bigger than the outside diameter of the steel pipe, so the ABS/PVC rotates and slides up and down.

Two-inch ABS is reasonably rigid, and of course the steel pipe is quite rigid.

You use some ABS/PVC fittings to glue in one or two pieces of pipe that stick out from the central pole. Make them 3 -5 feet long and now you have a cheap, adjustable WOB apparatus. This is what I determined to do.

However, I had some qualifications..

1. I don't have a drill press...I'm not drilling 15 holes in black iron pipe

2. I work out with beginners through advanced Masters...got throwers who are doing 8 feet and got throwers who are doing 15 so I have to be able to span that height range.

3. I want it to be portable, but I will put it in the ground (not in the grass) where we throw and leave it there. At the end of the season, it comes out.

4. It has to be transportable (at least once) in the back of my truck. I have a Chevy S-10 with a 6 foot bed. 10 foot long pieces of pipe stick out the back, but not too much so that's OK.

5. The groundskeepers at Stanford could yank the whole thing out and throw it away, so it has to be cheap.

Basically, I made what you outlined up there with a few variations.

Instead of a black iron pipe on the inside, I found a castoff 6 1/2 foot long, 1 1/4 inch galvanized fence pole. This was literally in the dump heap at the stables...there were four of them, and I didn't even have to knock any concrete off of the one I snagged.

To anchor the thing to the ground, I bought two, 3-foot long contractors stakes. These are steel stakes, about 3/8 inch diameter, three feet long, pointed at one end and drilled for nails every few inches. You could just as easily use rebar. Anyway, I pounded these two stakes into the ground with a 3 lb hand sledge. I knocked 'em in there absolutely right next to each other and straight up and down. The groud was wet so they went in easily. I bashed 'em in there about 2 feet, so that one foot was sticking up, still.

These stakes are about $4 each, BTW....

Over the top of the stakes, I dropped the galvanized fence post. It's pretty sturdy!

OK, the ABS part. I used ABS pipe since it's a little bit cheaper than PVC. ABS is the black stuff.

I bought two, ten foot pieces of two-inch pipe, and two T-fittings. I had the guy at Orchard Supply cut one ten foot pipe into two, five foot sections for the pipes that would be aligned horizontally. This is what we throw "over".

I had him cut the other ten foot section into an eight foot and a two foot section.

I then hauled the stuff home and dd some measuring, because I know that the T-fittings will change some lengths a bit, and I hacksawed off the appropriate amounts so that everything worked out just right. Upshot was, I have an 8-foot length of 2-inch ABS, that's glued into a T-fitting. The T fitting is set up so the "trunk" of the T is pinting out to the side...horizontally. The "Roof" of the "T" is aligned vertically. On top of the first t-fitting I glued in the two foot section....then the other T-fitting with the "trunk" of the T pointing out to the side, again.. The two T's are aligned so that they're 2 feet apart and face exactly opposite from one another. (OK, well, not *exactly*, but close enough)

The five-foot sections now go into the socket in each "T" that is sticking out horizontally. I was going to use screws and put them in with that so that I could disassamble the whole thing and no single part would be more than ten feet long, but I decided to glue them. The whole thing weighs about 10 pounds. I lifted it up and dropped it over the galvanized fence post. It fits, loosely so that the ABS rotates easily around the fence pole, but it's close enough that it doesn't wobble too much.

I now have two horizontal "arms" sticking out from a central pole. When dropped down to the lowest level, the lower arm is 8 feet off the ground, the upper one is 10 feet. I can slide the ABS up the pole and put a clamp wherever I want it, moving the two arms up in the air. Since the pole is about 6 1/2 feet, I can easily slide the ABS 5 feet up the pole and there's still enough overlap to be steady....and the higher arm is at 15 feet. I'm clamping it with a cheap gluing clamp, which lives in my truck so it won't rust out.

Total cost was under $35 (not including the hand sledge, which I didn't own, before) because I scrounged the galvanized fence pole for free.

HINT...use a metal pole for the "inside" pole I tried using a 1 1/4 ABS pole and it wasn't anywhere near rigid enough.