Bend the rod ends into a half circle, large enough to hold the PVC pipe. We used a piece of shrink tubing from the Electronics Technicians to do the same thing. The 2 inch hook is used to attach the hanger to the scale. Configure the scale The scale I purchased had a plastic cover which I removed to gain access to the face. I removed the dial pointer of the scale and repositioned it so that it read zero when the empty tube was hung from it.
Most scales have an adjustment screw on the hanger to fine tune the zero reading.
Read the instructions with your unit. I initially made a hand drawn conversion scale for the face. The ESA here is working on a better version using CAD software, which I'll post here when finished. A tamper is a useful tool to help take your snow reading. If the snow is dry, or if the lower layers have turned to loose corn snow, you can leave snow on the ground when you remove the tube.