Im building a homegym but can’t find fully stainless steel bars- shaft plus sleeves. The only Ive seen is rep fitness but the sleeve length isnt enough. Most sleeves stop around 41-43cm. The cerberus squat bar has 50s but its has a zinc coat. The bastard squat bar has 46 but it uses nickel coating. I dont want to spend hundreds on a bar and still deal with rust. It seems like the only coat that lasts is cerakote but I haven’t seen any with the loadable length and that coat cant be on the shaft for racking.
The reason I need longer sleeves is plate thickness. I cannot get rubber coated plates at a good price with covid&shipping. I secured some but the plates are about an inch thicker than average so for 8plates thats 44cm @5.5 each.
Umm, yeah. Stainless doesn’t have the tensile strength to make a decent bar. You should absolutely not buy one that is all stainless, it’ll just bend permanently if you get strong enough to lift weight. Look for something with Cerakote like the Rogue Ohio (Not saying to buy that particular bar, just an example).
Whereabouts are you that barbells burst into rust like this? I feel lucky I can brush down my bare steel bare every sesh and oil up every month and be fine. If rust is a big issue wherever you are at stainless steel won’t be 100% effective. You’ll still have to do maintenance things just less and less often.
Maybe instead of spending more on a full stainless steel bar buy some powerlifting style plates witht extra money that are thinner maybe one or two to fit more weight along with your existing plates. Doesn’t have to be legit calibrated plates but if u cut straight steel at standard diameter they are going to be 2cm thick. Bonus is that powerlifting style plates keep their value well over time an you’ll be able to sell em off later and make your money back
I may just be a petroleum engineer, but I am deeply involved in the construction of a lot of facilities and know my steel and pipe well.
I don’t think you can find, or would want, a true stainless steel bar.
There are a lot of alloys people call “stainless steel.” I suppose one of them may be OK for a barbell. But most alloys are super brittle, such that they almost shatter like glass under tension, get micro-fractures under fatigue/tension pretty easily, and it would be a very bad idea to use them like this.
More common would be a more traditional steel alloy, with a coating of boron (like with a gun barrel) or chrome or the like. A boron slurry coated bar would be near rust-free for a life of heavy use.
There may have been some confusion on either end about stainless steel. The bars mention steel and also stainless but I see they don’t mention load capacity on stainless. In the end, I was just overly concerned about rust as the ones in the gym are good enough and they occasionally have a little. I do live in a high humidity area. I got a bar in the end, don’t remember what kind of steel and the sleeves are better than average but not ideal. In future I’ll probably just get 2-4 thin heavy plates. The bar hasn’t rusted yet but has yet to be used. It’s been unpacked and sitting on the floor many years
