Fitness Equipment: Homemade Power Rack and Lat Tower

Homemade Power Rack and Lat Tower

Article, photos and construction by a reader of this website, Dave.

Your website is great. I found it last year and was inspired. I wanted to get a powertec power rack like yours but could not get the wife to go for it. I showed her the plans for the homemade one you posted and she agreed.

I have a bunch of pictures that I can send and you can post on your site. It ended up costing me about $350 once it was all said and done. The reason being that I designed and added on a high and low pulley system on the back like many commercial racks for lat pulldowns and cable rows.

Homemade power rack and lat tower pulley system:

The pulleys are 3" heavy duty ones rated for 800 lbs. The bolts through them are 7/16"x6". The eyebolt on the weight carrier is high strength rated at 1000 lbs. These along with some of the other hardware were purchased at my local hardware store. Lowes and Home Depot don't carry these specialty items.

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I used the drawing tools in excel to generate the plans after multiple hand sketches to ensure everything would fit. I have plans for future modification which I will be willing to send once I complete them. Thanks for the interest. As before, feel free to ask any questions you have. Dave

Have any questions about this homemade power rack and lat tower? Leave them below, thanks!

Read COMMENTS or jump down to leave one.

Barry C. I know someone will ask "What is the capacity of the lat tower"....and the answer is ...dunno....

Joseph Does your eye bolt screw into the pipe holding the weight or does it screw into the wood structure housing the pipe? I am thinking if I can connect the cable to the actual pipe holding the weight, you could really pile on the weight without worrying about the wood structure pulling apart. What do you think? Do you have any of your plans for this project available to email?

Joe I believe the eyebolt screws onto the pipe with a pipe clamp which are rated up to at least 200 lbs.....

SalbaheAko Wow!..great job Dave...love the Lat tower.. this will be my next project..

Jerry B That looks great

polas How much does the weight holder for the lat tower weigh?

Dave The weight holder for the lat tower is about 15 pounds. The outside diameter of your standard 1.5" ID pipe is so close to 2" that it is perfect. The wood is the majority of the weight though.

Rob Any measurements for the Lat Tower? How do you like the power rack overall? Would you build it the same way again? I've seen some made with 4x4's instead of doubled 2x6's. Any thoughts on that? Thanks in advance Rob

River Do you experience any friction or drag between your metal guide posts, and the wood weight holder/carrier during use (especially with heavy weights, 250 lbs + )? I was planning on building a lat tower similar to what you have pictured only using shafts and high quality bushings, but then I stumbled across this site, and what you've done would be a substantial savings in cost over what I had planned out, so I thought I'd check to see if you're happy with the motion. I'm not above saving myself some sweet cash . Haha

Joe I just built a tower like this one and as long as the pipes that guide it are level/plumb there is 0 friction...... no need for bushings. It moves as smooth as a steel one at the gym....

River For anyone thinking that wood might not be strong enough for a power rack, you can build much more strength into the design above (which is already quite good) simply by using some relatively inexpensive plywood. By using plywood gussets at all your connecting corners and laminating your 2x material with plywood, you can build a rack capable of carrying any amount of weight that a human can lift. Be sure to use construction adhesive wherever possible (you won't be able to take it apart) like liquid nails in addtion to your fasteners. Anybody not familiar with them yet, just do a google image search on "plywood gussets" to get an idea of how they're used. We use plywood extensively in framing houses, as sheathing, gussets, and laminated to 2x headers as a cheap way of adding a lot of strength and stability.

Joe Do you have the plans to the lat tower yet i would appreciate if i could get them.....measurements for instance

Mal fantastic work :) love it Please email me the plans malskitt@internode.on.net

Joe If you have the plans, can you please send them to me, my email is josephsmarz@snet.net, Thank You, It looks Awesome

Robert same here iwould really like to get my hands on the plans for this magnificent build. ostmanrobert@hotmail.com

Barry C. Everyone: I have emailed the builder of this rack (Dave), asking for dimensions and plans...no response yet.

Zoran Dacevic if you get response , leave it here ;)

Joe Well I'm giving it a shot and building this lat tower on my own....

Joe Well things worked out excellent on my lat tower I will post pics as soon as I take them...

pictures? can you post pictures?

Guest Hi, could you email the plans to me. siblack4@hotmail.com thanks Simon

Joe My plans aren't really the best just a lot of notes and sketches - pictures:

Dan Could you email me the plans for this? It look great! Dan.rich2010@yahoo.com

Barry C. Dave, the builder of this rack provided the plans. Here's his email to me: Barry, I am sorry it took so long to get back to you. Your email, among others, got put in a folder I intended to get to and lost track due to family, our 1 year old, work, etc. Anyway. What I have is an excel spreadsheet with drawings. I used the drawing tools and scaled all the objects. The scale works like this; a rectangle may be in the picture that measures 0.73"x3.75" It is a 1:10 scale. This means the rectangle represents a board that measures 7.25"x37.5". I had to round to nearest tenth of an inch to get excel to accept it (7.25 = 7.3). Looking at the other view, you see that this particular rectangle is a 2x8 that is cut to 37.5" (this is due to the true dimensions of a 2x8 being 1.5"x7.25"). I have not fabricated everything drawn. Please feel free to ask any further questions you may have. I will try to reply to the website questions when I can. Thanks for your interest. Dave

Power rack and lat tower plans (zip file) After downloading this zip file, use Excel to view the plan

Power rack and lat tower plans (PDF) The lat tower plans are not the best, it's better to look at the photos

Power rack plan screw pattern (PDF)