I made a bunch of portable stands by getting a lot of 4' lengths of rebar (5 lengths per stand), and welding up 2 brackets per stand. The brackets are made out of 6" pieces of 1/2" diameter galvanized-steel electrical conduit. Each stand requires 2 brackets, one on each side, and each bracket is made up of 3, 6" pieces. I cut the ends at an angle so that the pieces mate up together at the proper angle. The setup is similar in setup to this. The brackets are obviously where the 3 bars meet on each side. If you don't have the ability to cut and weld, the same thing can be done with threadable plumbing pipe. This pic was taken from Google, but shows the general idea.
BTW, rebar has proven to be quite resilient to hits, and the great thing is that when you cut through a piece, it's only a couple of dollars to replace a 4' length.
