For months, my punching bag has sat in a lonely corner in the garage, with ladders and push brooms leaning on it like it were a garbage sack full of leaves.  Before that, it lay in an even lonelier corner in a storage unit far from here.  It once held a position of honor, a place we went to create copious amounts of sweat and expend kinetic energy.  It was a staple of my workouts.

Once we built this garage, I didn’t think the joists would be strong enough by themselves to hold the bag up.  They probably were, but the engineer in me really likes to over-fortify things.  So I thought to make these large brackets to help spread the load out and stabilize the joists it hangs from.

I’ve got a plethora of scrap lumber, not the least of which a few 2 x 12’s just waiting to be sawn into something useful.  Some people pay extra money for wood that looks distressed or a little weathered; I got it coming out of my ears.

The piece on the left is as I found it.  The piece on the right is after sanding.  Turns out very nice.

Here they are being cut and sanded down.  No matter what you do to construction lumber, it’s always going to look like construction lumber.  But if you cut and sand carefully and give it some crisp edges and shape it carefully, it doesn’t have to look like you have 2×12’s sticking out of your wall.  I had some leftover sikkens, which is basically linseed oil with some pigment to it, and that worked great for wood treatment.

The final product works great.  I still need to adjust the chain a bit but otherwise the bag takes impact well and I don’t feel like I’m going to pull the whole roof down when I work out.