Comments on: My Opinion on Rogue’s New F-Scale Durability Rating for Barbells

By: David Kiesling

David Kiesling — Fri, 17 May 2024 19:55:40 +0000

In reply to Johnny.

Yeah, I don’t see the F scale as being a big deal. It would be one of my last considerations, if at all, but then I don’t own a commercial gym. As we thought, it didn’t catch on with others. I’m glad they did the research to find a new way to compare their bars and provide some new information anyway. After all, that’s what I do here, compare stuff based on sometimes questionable criteria!

By: Johnny

Johnny — Thu, 16 May 2024 17:18:12 +0000

I think the biggest problem with the F scale is that it sets a standard that no one needs, and then says only their bars meet that standard for CrossFit type gyms. That, and when you actually do the math for the number of drops from overhead that they assert happen in a CrossFit gym, it’s extremely unrealistic. Even on the low end of 50k drops a year…that’s 135 drops from overhead, every single day. No gym on earth programs dropping a bar from overhead on every workout, every day.

Ultimately I think they spent a lot of money on barbell testing to come to the conclusion that almost any well made, 190k psi bar will perform well for the life of the bar. In some weird fringe 99.99% fringe case of a gym with a huge number of classes every day, running tons of high rep drop the bar from overhead classes…well they still don’t need anything more than F1. Any decent gym would replace bars after 10 years anyway simply because the coating and knurl starts to wear away and look bad…bending isn’t the first problem.

By: David Kiesling

David Kiesling — Mon, 14 Dec 2020 20:41:44 +0000

In reply to Mandricardo.

Yeah I don’t know, not many manufacturers seem to give both, making it hard to compare between them. Most seem to go with tensile strength now, for better or worse. Since originally writing this a couple years ago, it looks like my prediction was right (I think most people were saying the same thing) about the F-rating not catching on among any other manufacturers.

By: Mandricardo

Mandricardo — Mon, 14 Dec 2020 08:06:42 +0000

Why is the yield strength of a barbell rarely mentioned in its specifications, while the tensile strength usually is? I’ve read that yield strength is the real McCoy, and tensile strength, even though a more serious indication than the silly “maximum capacity” of the olden days, is nevertheless useful at best to infer what yield strength might be, as the two tend to be correlated. Why not provide data directly on yield strength?

By: David Kiesling

David Kiesling — Mon, 13 Aug 2018 22:16:26 +0000

In reply to Mark.

Excellent, thanks Mark! That makes sense I guess. I’ll do an update to this article soon to add this useful info.

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 13 Aug 2018 16:35:05 +0000

“I don’t get it, but they found that media blasting, which seems to mean blasting it with either sand or shot or something else to rough it up, extends the life of the bar. Someone want to explain this to me?”

Media blasting will work harden a metal. Think of the metal as a network of atoms that form a fairly consistent pattern (crystalline lattice). If a crack goes through a this network it will often continue until is hits an obstruction or variation in the pattern. These obstructions are usually in the form of what is called dislocations (of the crystalline lattice). So more dislocations can make for a stronger harder material that resists damage.

When you media blast steel (for example shot peening) it creates more dislocations as the media and metal collide, think of the impacts as knocking the atoms out of alignment. This will case harden the metal as only the outside is exposed to the work hardening. In bending the max stress on a bar or beam is on the outside of it so case hardening will help against bending. Other work hardening such as cold rolling will actually work harden the metal throughout.

I hope this helps. You can always google anything I mentioned for more info.