How we test

We are BASALT, a small company in Newtown, Pennsylvania, run by one person and a scale. We are getting ready to sell budget iron: 5, 6, and 7 ft standard barbells, a 50 lb hex dumbbell, a 44 lb kettlebell, and a pair of 25 lb bumper plates. The difference is that we will weigh what we sell before we sell it, and show you the number. None of it is for sale yet, because none of it has been measured.

Budget iron is often sold on the label alone. Plates can run a few percent off the number cast into them, and some bars sold as Olympic have 1 inch sleeves. We started BASALT to be the company that checks and tells you.

How a product gets measured

Every product will go through the same five steps before it lists.

We buy samples at retail, the same units you would get. No factory samples. No units hand picked by a supplier.
Each sample goes on a calibrated scale, on camera. The calibration weight sits in the frame, so you can see the scale was checked before the sample went on.
Critical dimensions get the calipers. Sleeve diameter on bars. Hole diameter on plates. Overall length. Handle diameter on the kettlebell.
The numbers go in the Basalt Ledger with the date they were taken. When a number is ugly, we will print it anyway.
We remeasure every product quarterly, and the moment a supplier changes anything. A new mold, a new coating, a new box. A revision counts as a new product until it has been weighed.

A Ledger entry for a dumbbell will read like this made-up example: label 50 lb, weighed 50.2 lb, measured on the date shown. That is the entire method. It is not complicated.

See the Ledger, where the measurements will go

Put one on the scale

Tap a product. The readout climbs to an example weight and settles, the way a bench scale does. The label weight sits beside it so you can see the gap.

Example figures. The iron lists after the measurement session. Until then every number in this demo is a placeholder, shown so you can see how a Ledger entry reads.

Scale readoutexample figures

On the platform: 6 ft standard barbell

Label: 15 lb
Sample: 14.6 lb
Deviation: 2.7 percent under
Measured: Session date, example

2.7 percent under puts this example outside the 2 percent line. A real entry like this still gets printed: the product page carries the measured number, and the guarantee runs against that number, not the label.

Example note. A real entry says whether the length and sleeve diameter match the listing, and the Ledger number is the one the product page will carry.

Example: 6 ft standard barbell at 14.6 lb. Label 15 lb. 2.7 percent under.

See the Ledger See this product

What the numbers mean and do not mean

A number in the Ledger means one thing: the sample we bought weighed that much, on our scale, on that date. It is not a promise that every unit off the line is identical. Cast iron varies. Rubber coatings vary. A 50 lb dumbbell that weighs 49.4 lb is normal. One that weighs 48.6 lb is not, and that is where the guarantee comes in.

The Ledger is a record, not a rating. We do not score products. We do not weigh five samples and publish the best one. We publish the sample we got.

You can run the same check at home with a bathroom scale. How to weigh your weights shows the method, and are weight plates accurate covers what gap is normal.

One more thing you should know today. The iron lists after the measurement session. Until then the product pages show what is coming and what is still pending, with no prices and no measured numbers, because none exist yet. The one product in the store right now is a free PDF, The First 90 Days.

The guarantee

Every unit we ship is guaranteed within 2 percent of the published number. On a 50 lb dumbbell that is 1.0 lb either way. On a 25 lb plate it is 0.5 lb. If yours falls outside that band, we make it right with a replacement or a refund. We pay the return shipping. There is no restocking fee.

To claim, email a photo of the unit on a scale. Any scale. A bathroom scale is fine. We are not going to argue with you over a tenth of a pound.

The other numbers, stated plainly. Prices include shipping to the lower 48. Returns are accepted for 30 days. If the unit is out of tolerance, we pay return postage. If you changed your mind, you pay return postage. Both are printed here so you do not have to hunt for them at checkout. The full policy is at shipping and returns.

Who we are

The "we" on this page is mostly one person. Christopher Fox, 22, Newtown, Pennsylvania.

He has sold online since he was 16, starting on eBay with arcade prizes and then crypto miners. That paid for his first car. At 18 he did about $40,000 of Amazon sales in three months. He finished a business degree, kept selling, and kept noticing the same thing: budget iron reaches the buyer with nobody along the way telling them what it actually weighs. The label is whatever was printed on the box.

So he built the company around a calibrated scale and a set of calipers: weigh it, measure it, write the numbers down, then sell it. That is the company.

BASALT is the trade name of Basalt Fitness LLC, a Pennsylvania limited liability company, entity number 0015688021. Every email gets answered by a human, usually the same one who will weigh the samples.

See what is coming to the store

Basalt Fitness LLC
20 Terry Dr #834
Newtown, PA 18940
support@basaltfitness.com