What does your Woody look like??? 2.0

Andrew Krajnikwrote:

What was week 1's sale? My basement woody is brand new, so I only started looking for holds this week.

Week one had 100 packs of lone stars half off and I believe Working-Class heroes, Friction Climbing Jurassic jugs, full-sized beta boards, all kingdom climbing inventory, screw-on jugs, and the Escape starter pack were also on sale. But, I don't think any of these are on sale anymore.

Brayden Lwrote:

I'm having issues with the holds pulling off paint around the bolt hole. Sometimes it takes a hammer to get them off, and it will also pull a thin layer of the plywood off with it! Any suggestions on how to prevent this?

I used high texture deck paint for my wall, gave it like a week or two then put holds on.  It didnt really pull off paint but I couldn't get the holds off when I went to reset the wall!  I got a rubber mallet but had to use a chisel and was able to work the holds off without damaging the wall or the holds.  After being reset the problem seems to be resolved, just needed to wait longer to get the holds on.  At least you wont get spinners!

I put a layer of chalk on the back of my holds before putting them on my wall, which is painted (I let the paint sit one week before putting holds on).  I took them off about a week later and they came off fine.  You could also try to put some sort of tape on the back of holds (scotch tape/painter's tape).  Paint can take a long time to fully dry, so I think the point is that you initially want a layer between the holds and the paint.

Okay, not exactly a wall, but hey, this makes me happy just seeing it! Beyond that bedroom door is a rowing machine, dumbbells, TRX straps hanging from the ceiling, a couple exercise mats, yoga ball, and a situp pad thingy.

Closets hold camping gear. Drawers hold gear for ice climbing.

Oh. Also a hideabed in that room. :-)

I hope everything in there gets used more in 2020 than it did in 2021!

Rock climbing gear is a different closet with the gurl clothes. I'll let you guess which predominates...

Best, Helen

I just posted up 44 rocky mtn climbing holds in for sale if anyone is looking for something a little different from the regular urethane or poly holds.  I have quite  few on my wall, but don't need any more than that.  

What do y'all use for pads? I've got a hodgepodge of bouldering pads and old matresses which work ok, kinda considering going with a large gymnastics style pad for a clean consistent surface and no gaps... anyone else go this route or have a product they'd recommend?

My buddy and I were just talking about how dialed our setup is. Base layer is thick old mattress. On top of that are mad rock pads connected with Velcro. On top of that is a blubber moved around to be where we need it. It feels super soft and very safe. Stiff enough to walk on and feel supportive with no holes to fall in. Added bonus is the mad rock pads can come outside bouldering when needed.

I have an old pad that the gym was throwing away that works sort of well except for the fact that the middle is missing. To fix this I just put a crash pad under and it works pretty well

Elijah Swrote: What do y'all use for pads? I've got a hodgepodge of bouldering pads and old matresses which work ok, kinda considering going with a large gymnastics style pad for a clean consistent surface and no gaps... anyone else go this route or have a product they'd recommend?

I originally was going to build some of my own padding, video here shows a method that looked pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBKw8e1eFs8

However, in the end I ended up just springing for a gymnastics mat from Mancino mats, 6'12', 8" thick - they're not cheap, but gives good peace of mind over a concrete garage floor, seemed more affordable than something like asana drag pads, which also look great and we considered.

There are some new escape deals if anyone needs some holds (they aren't as great as previous weeks unfortunately)

You know your buddies that had a kid a year or two ago? Or better yet a SECOND kid? Or the person who got reeallly into bouldering for six months in 2017 and then lost interest and took up kiteboarding or knitting or something? Offer to store their crash pad for them long term. They can come get it whenever they want! You'll bring it over if they ask! And they'll have more room in their house for bikes/strollers/gaming PCs or whatever people need storage space for. 

I have acquired several crash pads in this manner. 

I also have a hodgepodge of crashpads (all acquired in the manner suggested by Nkane 1) but I have also been considering picking up a bag of scrap from The Foam Factory and using it to fill up a full size futon cover, which would end up at around $100. My setup currently fits under my wall nicely but doesn't inspire confidence to protect more "exciting" falls.

Similar to others, layered hodgepodge of mattresses and bouldering pads. I put the pads on the bottom as they are stiffer than the mattresses. Blubber pad on top to cover the middle seam between the mattresses and then the whole thing covered with a painters cloth. 

I was using several bouldering crash pads, but I found this mat online ( akathletics.com/products/th…) - 4'x8'x6", good stiffness, no seam in the middle to fall into, very good price (as padding goes). Very happy with it

This is a good conversation and all but I’d like to see pictures of home builds again in this thread. Maybe we can have another thread for sourcing holds and pads and such since so many people are building home walls and crack machines for the first time? Remember the original thread? How cool that thing was? Page after page of cool builds. In this sequel you have to scroll through pages of advice on screws, t-nut questions, hold purchase options/discounts etc before you see another wall. It’s mostly good info but way less inspiring. 

Phil Sakievichwrote:

This is a good conversation and all but I’d like to see pictures of home builds again in this thread. Maybe we can have another thread for sourcing holds and pads and such since so many people are building home walls and crack machines for the first time? Remember the original thread? How cool that thing was? Page after page of cool builds. In this sequel you have to scroll through pages of advice on screws, t-nut questions, hold purchase options/discounts etc before you see another wall. It’s mostly good info but way less inspiring. 

My build is still in-process, but here's the current status.

Rough dimensions of the room will be about 15x14. Wall on the right is 8-ft wide of 45-degree, the left is 8-foot wide of 30-degree. The 4x8 section of ceiling between the walls will also be climbable, and the trapezoidal vertical wall will as well. The rest of the room isn't roughed in yet, but the near wall will be at an angle to the rest of the room, and the door will be roughly where the camera is located. So there will also be other options for climbable surface as well. (Thinking that the wall to the left of the door will be around 15 degree overhang, but that's still TBD.)

Josh Gateswrote:

I was using several bouldering crash pads, but I found this mat online ( akathletics.com/products/th…) - 4'x8'x6", good stiffness, no seam in the middle to fall into, very good price (as padding goes). Very happy with it

You have the 6”, do you think the 4” would have been adequate? And to keep this home wall relevant, here is a picture of my current wall

csproulwrote:

You have the 6”, do you think the 4” would have been adequate? And to keep this home wall relevant, here is a picture of my current wall

Depends how tall it is and what you have under it. Mine's 12' with mulch underneath, and I love it, but 4" would prob not be unsafe

Josh Gateswrote:

Depends how tall it is and what you have under it. Mine's 12' with mulch underneath, and I love it, but 4" would prob not be unsafe

Mine is more like 10 vertical ft and on a cement garage floor. My crash pads are all ~4” so if the density is similar, I imagine it’d be ok. I’m asking them for a quote for an 8’x8’ pad.

Montywrote: Here’s another Tension Board for the thread. Mine is fully adjustable from 20* to 50*. We got our pads from Asana which are 12” thick. Much like Greg Koeppen’s adjustable setup, I used a 2100 lb hoist but mounted it to the ground and used a pulley to adjust the board. Once adjusted, the board rests on chains. We contemplated climbing on the hoist, but I was always a bit uneasy about that. The room I built the board in has concrete under the carpet so I bolted the hoist to the ground with 1/2” by 7” expansion bolts. The ladders allow you to adjust the length of the chains. For one person to adjust the board’s angle from 20-45* takes about 2 minutes.

My build is way overkill, but I’m a mathematician and prefer to over do everything :)

Here’s the final product:

Drilling the holes: you can stack all three panels and use a drill guide to drill 90% of the holds. Just make note of the subtle differences between the three panels. This makes drilling all the holes a lot easier/quicker.

The support for the board:

Loads? My neighbor was nice enough to throw my design into solid works. He found that with a 200 lb climber and 450 lb wall there would only be 475 lbs of force on the chains at 45*. 

The hoist mounted in the kicker:

Getting the expansion bolts lined up was tricky but it worked like a charm!

6’ piano hinge and the finished kicker:
From here, we flipped the wall portion and used the hoist to line up the hinge and he wall. Then simply hoisted it into the air.

She’s up!

Climbing before the pads arrived:

Merry Christmas!

We’ve been really psyched with the board and the holds but like Eric K said, the ratings in the app are a bit misleading. I typically climb v7/8  in a few tries but have only sent one v6 and that took a lot of work. Not a big deal, just something to be aware of.  The LED kit works great and wasn’t too terrible to install either aside from the threading that Owen referred to.  I agree that the LEDs are mandatory.

 It took me about 7 hours to put all of the holds on the wall. With that being said though, the folks at Tension did a great job labeling all of the holds and the install was very straight forward — just tedious. We typically adjust our board once every session. We like to warm up at 20* the  dependending on what we are feeling, we will adjust it from there. I really like climbing the problems at 20*, but that could be because I’m more of a route climber than a boulderer. The workouts I’ve had so far have left me sore for days!

Specialty items:
- Hoist
- Hinge (free shipping)

Awesome design. What kind of bolts/screws did you use to attach the hinge, and how deep do they need to be? I’m space constrained, so I’m hoping to attach the hinge to a 2x8 that is laying flat on the ground, and secured to the wall studs with braces.