Plate Measurement Discrepancies

[musclemilk]

Hey guys,

Did you guys make the effort the actually weigh your plates and if so, were there any shocking results between the weight marked and the actual weight?

I'm planning on marking the real values like Mark did in his dumbbell rack video, as some weights are a pound off (one pair of 45's are actually 46's, while another pair are 44's) The biggest shock to me was my "standard Olympic bar" that I bought for $175 is actually a 32.6 pound bar. I'm assuming it was meant to be a 35 pound bar but like the plates, it's off the mark.

Any other stories??

[frosty-g]

most of my plates are pretty close to the mark, although some 25kg york plates range between 43 and 44.5cm in diameter (meant to be 45cm)
like you mention, definitely weigh the bar too, there will likely be a much bigger difference between different bars and general discrepancy in between an individual bar's stated and actual weights:
capps texas power bar 19.6kg, fair enough. chinese "bodymax" bar 17.4kg! hadn't realised this when i got the new bar, the TPB, and it screwed me up on the press & bench as instead of adding 2.5kg weight it was actually 4.6kg, a fair old jump!

I reckon i might "calibrate" some of my plates by sticking something onto them (pretty rare that any are OVER, the companies obviously aren't daft enough to cost themselves extra in material...), dunno what yet, maybe glue some washers on to the plate to make up the difference? could shave some rubber off the rubber coated ones i have that are 100g over.

anybody done this sorta thing themselves? and how about with bumpers? what if a cast plate is over?

one thing to try and do is even if the plates aren't all bang on, try and pair them with plates that are out in the same way, eg. two plates that are both 46lb (if you have them).