Tire Swing Tutorial

Since Fall weather has been getting my family to enjoy the great outdoors, we thought it would be a great time of year to put up a tire swing. Every kid needs one! Although I think my husband and I enjoy it more than our two year old. 

I found a few Pinterest Pins on making a tire swing. This pin literally has all the information in the picture.

With my husband's help, we deviated from this tutorial a bit. Here is my step-by-step guide on how we built our tire swing.

Tire Swing (made with Rope)

Materials:

- 1 Tire [we used an old tire from when we replaced our tires, 16" ] - Saved $3.00 for disposal fee

- 1 Hollow Braid Poly Rope [50 FT, 215 lb safety load] - $6.48 from Lowe's

- 3 Stainless Steel Eye Bolts [5/16" x 3 1/4"] - $1.88 each from Lowe's

- 3 Fender Washers [5/16" X 1 1/4"] - $1.15 for a pack of 4 from Lowe's

- 1 Stainless Steel Quick Link [5/16"] - $6.94 from Lowe's

- Drill with a 5/16" drill bit

- Scissors or Box Cutter

- Ladder

This entire project cost about $20.00 (less if you count the savings in the tire disposal fee). Some of the pieces are a little more pricey because we went with all stainless steel. Since we live in Florida and it rains a lot here, we didn't want the metal pieces to rust.

1. The first step is to drill three holes in the top of the tire, equally apart. We just eye balled it, but you could meaure it out. Also (not pictured) drill holes on the bottom side of the tire so that when it rains the water will drain out, we drilled 6 holes.

2. Next you will put an eye bolt in each hole. Then on the underside you will put on the washer and then screw on the bolt.

 This is how the bolt assembly will look on the underside.

3. Now that all your bolts are in place, cut three equal pieces of rope (5' - 8' feet, how ever long your preference is). I cut at about 5' but once you tie the knots on each end it length up being about 3' long, and I wished I had about 1 more foot.

4. Next you are going to use the cut rope to tie an overhand loop through each of the eye bolts. Here is what it will look like.

In case you don't know how to tie an overhand loop, here is a tutorial. Basically it is a regular knot, but with the rope doubled. Make sure you put the rope through the eye bolt before tying. 

5. Now you will tie an overhand loop at the top of each of the rope pieces. So you will have 3 separate loops. Then you put those loops through the Quick Link.

6. Here comes the part where you might need some brawn. Now you will tie the remaining rope to the tree. We did an overhand loop, looped the rope around the tree, then put the rope through the loop. Since we have a younger tree, we used two branches to secure it to the tree. Less stress on the branches. 

7. Next you will cut the rope at the desired level to attach to the swing (leaving a little extra for your overhand loop). Then tie your overhand loop at the end, and add the loop to your Quick Link. It will look something like this. 

8. Now your swing is ready to enjoy. And you are that fun house that has a tire swing in your yard. :)

With my husbands help, this project was really easy. I probably would have died trying to get out of the tree, so thank God for him. The entire project probably took us about 30 minutes, we probably would have been done in 10 if we were better at tying knots, it took us a few tries. But now we are knot tying experts. This was a Pinterest Success, even if we didn't follow all of the directions of the pin.