Goal Hoops

Hoop-shaft mounting scheme.

It hasn’t been built just yet, as we’re still looking for an affordable base and the PVC pipe diameter needs to match the base’s hole (since a workaround would probably take all the stability away).

But the point of this concept is the upper ending of the pipe:

– A little piece of wood would be glued inside the PVC pipe, matching its diameter as well.

– Bolts would have been attached to it before then, and tightened with hex nuts and washers. One would have to make sure the excess of the bolt lengths are upwards, not downwards.

– The upper ending of the bolts would remain sticking out from the wood piece, and one would be able to insert the hoop on top of it, so that the bolts would fit right into two of the hoop holes. (The point of having two bolts is preventing the hoop from spinning on top of the axis that would be a sole bolt, if it’s hit on either side.)

– Finally, when the hoop is sitting on the bolts (granting the set horizontal stability), washers and wing-type nuts could be further attached, thus giving the hoop vertical stability.

– When one builds it all, the excessive part of the bolts sticking out upwards might be much longer than enough to steady the hoop and hold a washer and a nut (and perhaps it would even block scoring a bit), so it is possible a little sawing would be needed. Of course, this step would be done only once.

– By the way, we bought six 26″ wheel-less aluminum bike hoops. They have holes already, but I don’t think that would be a problem for any other kind of hoop. We thought hula hoops would be way too fragile, especially if we made holes this next to each other.