My hoop making tips

You can read about my hooping adventure here.

Wanna make a hoop ?

I got my tubing for my hoop from Ebay, since that's the only place here where you can buy this tubing in smaller quantities. You need 3/4" 180 PSI Poly tubing (PVC tubing). In Germany that translates as PE rohr 25mm x 2,3mm 12,5 BAR. I bought insert connectors and tapes from fancy-tapes.co.uk and I can't recommend them enough. I did try to get tubing and tapes in the local Baumarkt, but it turned out that this kind of tubing is stocked only by agriculture supply stores. And the Baumarkt didn't have any nice tapes.
The total cost of making one hoop is 11€, however I did pay a bit more since gaffer tapes are available only in big rolls: enough for taping 10 hoops ! I hope to make some hoops for my friends though, who will (hopefully) want to start hooping after seeing my (future) hooping skills, after I show them my moves (when I stop losing the hoop all the time).

The basic hoop-making tutorial is *here*.

My hoop-making tips:

When measuring the tubing to cut, make sure that your "mock hoop" is round. Tubing comes rolled up tightly, and when you open it it will not be perfectly round at first. Most of us measure by holding the tubing in a way to mimic a hoop, that comes up to their solar plexus. But this "mock hoop" may actually be oval, and mess up your calculations. I check before a mirror, and try to hold it round.

Sandpaper the ends of the tubing after cutting, to make them straight and even. Otherwise you'll end up with gaps where the two ends join together. Place the ends against a flat surface to check it is cut straight.

Make sure the water is really boiling. Mine wasn't, and I had a hard time inserting the connector.

Put the end of the tube in the water for half a minute. Don't worry, it won't melt. But it needs to soften quite a bit, otherwise you might have problems with inserting the connectors all the way in.