Introduction: Expand Your Woody
As before, here's what you'll need:
- Some 3/4" plywood (subflooring grade) - $20-ish a 4x8 sheet
- Some 2x4s (or 2x6 or 2x8) for framing and such - $2-ish per 8'
- 2" (or so) wood/drywall screws
- 3/8" t-nuts (about 70 per sheet of plywood) - $0.15-ish a piece for galvinized
- 3/8" hex cap bolts
- Drill, hammer, saw
- Something soft to work as a crash-pad
- Beer...lots of beer
Step 1: Framing
Some things you might want for the framing:
- Nails and a hammer (we had a pneumatic nail gun - yay)
- Nail-plates - good for joining 2x4s
- Skillsaw or a handsaw and a lot of patience
- Level
- Tape measure, square
In the photos you can see how we framed out the invert. wall, extended the crack machine into the ceiling, and added an angled box to the roof. The angled box serves two purposes - it adds a great feature and it avoids the careful task of moving a gas line.
Step 2: Sheathing
In this step, you'll prepare the plywood with t-nuts and then install it on the frame. As before, we're using 70 t-nuts per sheet of plywood placed in a uniform but random pattern. We are careful not to put t-nuts where the studs are, and put fewer near the bottom where foot jibs are usually screw-on.
Attaching the plywood is where the 2" screws come in. One screw every foot-or-two is about right. For the horizontal portion of the ceiling we were able to screw directly to the rafters.
Lifting heavy sheets into position can be a bit tricky and you will be rewarded by your resourcefulness. We used a truck jack and a ladder to position one roof sheet, the rest got positioned with a little bit of elbow grease and sometimes a couple shims.
Step 3: Finishing Touches
- Entreprise Holds - A nice small company in Bend, Oregon with cheap holds. The red holds you can see in the picture are theirs - the Chain Reaction set.
- Metolius - Another company based in Bend Oregon, which is quite a bit bigger. They have a line of wood holds (made in Korea...) which are pretty cheap and are okay. The laquered finish is slippery but gets a little better with use (and chalk). They have some nice plastic holds too, but they are expensive. We have some of each.
- You - Make your own damn holds! See here and here.
Used mattresses make pretty good crash-pads.
You might want to install some lighting. We had to remove one fixture and install another one.
A full bar and a stereo are also nice additions.
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17 Comments
the other comments about the title cracked me up =D
i am an advanced climber and i am making a 10 foot climbing tower in my back yard I want it to have slopers and lots of small med holds. I will need about 200 holds where do you think I should buy them?
i have a 30 ft wall in my barn and only used like 150 holds then removed some for more challenge. it has maybe 100 now and i made a grid so i can easily change out holds
Dude, you're only going to need 200 holds if you have a small gym. The point is to mix up the routes. The best wall is the one with the most interesting problems, not the one with the most holds.
I am an advanced climber also, and I have a wall 12 feet high and 8 feet wide and I only needed 50 for 2 1/2 routes( thats just my needs) and some left over. I got the holds at 3 ball climbing.
You might be able to get some sort of bulk discount on that many holds, I'm not sure. To start, I'd give these guys a call and see what a 200-hold set would cost: http://www.epusa.com/. You might also call metolius, etch, so-ill and other hold makers too. It's gonna be spendy. You might also consider just getting a 30 or 50 piece set from one of those guys and then buying more later, once you have a good idea of what you like and need to place. Good luck!
lol, Woody, expand, dirty mind...
Nice! Might want to change your title...
omfg rofl the titles so f---ing funny
Could've been worse...he could have said "erect"...lmao