Getting Your Kicks

You already know this, and I already knew this, but the last few days of climbing on my semi-completed wall has confirmed a basic fact- without some seriously stupid foot holds, getting a start on a 40-degree overhang is tough work.

I don't want to put anything bigger than a foot chip down low, so that means a kicker- a small section of flat wall at the bottom of a steep bit, for starting your feet on. I put this in yesterday.

I guess I could just use this as a foothold. If I was LAZY.

First, I put up some wedges to support the kicker, one on each end. These triangular chunks are actually the discarded ends from the 2x6s I cut to make the side supports- waste not want not, and they are already at a perfect angle!

Look how clean it is!

Likewise, the plywood I used is a cast-off bit from one of the wall panels. The panel is really short, about fifteen centimeters. This is fine, as it just needs to provide a surface for foot chips/smearing, and the smaller it is the longer the main climbing surface is.

Ready 2 Climb

I threw on a few chips- these tiny-ass holds are basically useless on anything much steeper than vertical, and would be unusable (by me) on this steep of a wall, or even on the 30 that hasn't gone up yet. But they sure make it easier to start a problem!

And that's that- short update, but things are progressing. I'm nearly done putting the T-Nuts in the 30 degree section, at which point I'll put it up as soon as I can get the help. This will involve getting behind the wall for the last time and (hopefully) squeezing out over the top at the end- it should be a great time. Until then!

Little Garage of Horrors

Spring is here. How can I tell? Because spiders are alive. If you want to know how I can tell that, well, it's because I've been spending a lot of time in the garage, like all proper young men.

Here it is:

Who wants a snowboard??

Yes, it's awful. I'm working on it. The shed where a lot of this crap is destined to live is still covered in snow, however, so for now it all floats around like a herd of awkward, unwanted children. That you found left behind when you moved in. Everyone's been there, right?

Oh yeah, you can see the frame that will support the wall. We built that over the weekend. The whole thing is made of 2x6s, and in these pictures the bottom supports- what keeps the legs from coming apart like those of an overeager gymnast- haven't been put in yet.

Yeah, none of this would pass mustard in an inspection.

The little support tying the two legs together is a placeholder, but I do want to put another one like it further down. The bulk of the weight of the wall will be held up by these legs, and the force will want to push them apart; better safe than sorry.

Note to self

Well, I do

And then, last night, I finished putting in the base supports and added in the first wall piece:

It's aliiiive!

It fits! I was kind of holding my breath, imaging that we wouldn't be able to get it in there. It took some wrestling but we managed to get it in place, more or less.

Not approved for climbing... yet.

Right now, the wall is just sitting in the frame, not actually fastened in. When it does get attached, it will be pushed flush against the side, and I want to add some additional reinforcement before that happens. In this picture you can see the bottom support, which is just a really long 2x6 that both legs of the A-frame are attached to. This makes the side a big triangle, and I have it on good authority that triangles are totally legit.

There's still a lot to do, but it's really starting to look like A Thing. I have to restrain myself from jumping on it every time I walk by. I know this because I tried (see holds) and the thing shifted a little too much for comfort- remember, it's not actually attached to anything. There's also some outward bowing of the top bar from the weight of the wall/climber, so I might run another beam along it to reinforce.

We're getting there!

Just hanging around

Hey ya'll, just a miscellaneous update and assorted picture dump. In preparing to assemble my wall, I've had to consider which holds will be usable on the horizontal roof section, and make sure enough I have enough good jugs to make it climbable. What I realized was that I can test this out myself on my adjustable hangboard-thing, Kuraimu V2. It can go nearly horizontal, but I've somehow never tested it. Hold testing proceeded:

Hmm, yes. I see.

And, as things do, quickly escalated:

The first version of this picture had visible panties. Yowza!

End conclusion: A lot of the holds I ended up with are usable even at a totally horizontal angle, but require careful movement and thoughtful feet to avoid coming off. Very few of my holds, as it turn out, are the sort of bomber roof jugs that guys in toques like to do pull-ups on.

I do have a package coming in from Element containing a few good jugs that I hope should add options. Once those come I want to take a big shot of all my holds in a group- probably the last chance I'll have to do it!

Speaking of Element holds, I want to mention-

Element has some sweet customer service!

Element offers free shipping over a certain amount, like most hold companies. In putting together my latest order I sent an email asking if there was any amount I could spend that would result in free shipping- you never know. I got a very prompt response from a sales rep who told me that the free shipping was for U.S. addresses only, but that he could give me a discount code worth half of the hefty Japan shipping cost. Totally unexpected and cool! Along with the sale on large-size holds I got a sweet deal. And of course, the Element holds I have so far are high quality and I expect no less from the next set. Great experience!

Last, I want to show off this sweet mug I got from my lovely climbing friend:

The hold isn't any better than it looks

Hand-made and one-of-a-kind! Now everyone at my office will know that I'm a climber! I mean, they already knew since I talk about it incessantly, but now there's extra evidence.

Stay tuned for some pics of the framework currently making my garage unusable.

Stress-Testing for Fun and Relaxation

This weekend, a new milestone was reached in the construction of Kuraimu v4- an adult human being hung on the wall and didn't die. Multiple adult humans, actually! Not only that, but nobody sustained grievous bodily harm and the wall didn't break. Things are looking up!

Pictured: Me, alive

It all started when I invited my dear friends and climbing buddies over for a pleasant lunch breakfast-y burrito-things. If it doesn't taste good, I always say, just add more sriracha.

No, it doesn't include the honey.

Once I had my guests fed I sprang my trap: T-nuts, and lots of them. 

Pictured: T-nuts and Element Formula K-2

holds, aka bugs

Just like that, I had a work party going, making good progress on the 200+ T-nut installations I still have to do. Between the three of us, we finished at least fifty of the little buggers, along with a good number of beers. We eventually called it a day and turned to focusing solely on beer, but that didn't last.

Hmm...

We had a big, structurally-complete segment of climbing wall lying around. Our eyes kept returning to it. The framework that eventually hold the wall sections up hasn't been built yet, so I hadn't planned on doing much with the wall other than getting it ready... but we soon decided to have a test. If the wall itself wasn't strong enough to hold up climbers, we reasoned, wouldn't it be better to know now, when reinforcing would be easier? When you've made a decision, it becomes easy to justify.

So we hoisted the wall up against the, uh, wall. The wall of the house. We did so in a controlled and thought-out manner.

I didn't make this face for the camera.

Functional Stength

And then we had a wall, propped up in a very secure and not-at-all life-threatening manner.

Note the highly technical support 2x4 wedged

against the bottom

So now the critical moment came... would the wall hold? Or would there be a cracking noise and a visit to the hospital? This thing weighs well over 200 pounds, a thought that was at the forefront of my mind as I got into position. And...

Yes, I know I already used this picture.

Success! I was able to get all my weight onto one hold, with a minimum of flexing. The wall felt surprisingly stable. I had my (taller, heavier) friend get on after me.

"I'm scared"

I'm now going forward with a great deal of confidence, knowing that this thing is capable of staying rigid. More testing will have to take place, of course, but for now I'm thrilled with this weekend's experimenting.

Stay tuned!

Fantasy Gym: The Starwhal

Heya, folks, I'm back with another addition of Things I Wish I Had, aka Fantasy Gyms. Like last time's Rock Box, this wall is defined by a space constraint- in this case, height. The Starwhal is a simple one-wall training area, primarily useful for traversing. It is 12 meters in length and fits in a room with a three meters roof- only slightly higher than usual. This time I haven't made an actual gym with check-in and amenities- the Starwhal would be suited for a large home wall or for a sports club or training center.

As you can see, this wall isn't tall and it isn't very deep, either- the wall projects out 1.8 meters at the deepest, making it suitable for a long room that otherwise doesn't have a lot of room to spare. At no point would climbing the wall take more than two or three moves, but hey, that's what traversing is for!

I tried to pack in as much as I could in a limited space. The two major overhangs are at 15 degrees and 30 degrees, and the whole wall features a number of mini-arêtes and dihedrals.

Between the 15 and 30 degree segments is a flat bit with a tapered mini-chimney- this area could be used for all kinds of challenging reaches and backwards movements.The name "Starwhal" is, of course, taken from the big star-shaped feature in the center of the 15 degree area and the fact that naming climbing walls is pretty arbitrary. This feature can be used to change up a wide variety of holds- the bottom is nearly a roof, and the top is a mini-slab for difficult negative holds to be made usable.

This was a quick wall I put together to experiment with packing features into a small traverse wall and in making a wall that was visually appealing in a room that might serve other purposes. As you can see I tried spicing it up with colors, the colors here are more or less the theme colors of my village, but could also be great if you happen to be a Packers fan.

I think you could do a lot worse than a design like this if you found yourself with a single flat span of wall to work with when making a climbing area!

Interior Decorating for Climbers

Just a quick update to show off my new piece of furniture:

As it turns out, storing a 2.8 meters chunk of climbing wall can be, uh, challenging. This is the 40-degree segment's semi-permanent home, until the snow melts enough to get it out the window and into the garage. In the meantime I'll be installing T-Nuts and adding additional reinforcing to the back of the wall. This isn't the best place for the thing but I had to get it off of the kitchen floor, and my ceiling is too low to stand it upright.

Yes, my place is a mess. It usually is, and shifting things around to get this beast situated didn't help matters any.

Fantasy Gym: The Rock Box

Welcome to the inaugural edition of Fantasy Gyms! This feature has absolutely nothing at all to do with my home bouldering wall project. Instead, I'll be introducing walls I've designed using The Magic of Sketchup. The gyms I make will generally follow some sort of restriction or theme in their design.

As a disclaimer, I'm an absolute scrub who's "experience" in this field is limited to one janky-ass demi-wall, visits to a few small-scale walls, and a lot of time on Sketchup. It should go without saying that I have no idea what I'm doing and my idea of what would make a good retail wall is basically based on me going "Oh that seems like it would be cool" or "I like climbing on this" or, in some cases, "What the hell can I even fit in this space." In no case should I be taken for an expert, and needless to say none of this stuff is intended to be, like, up to safety code or anything.

That said: Here's The Rock Box!

The idea for this wall was to make a full-featured gym in a concrete cube measuring 7.5 x 5 meters, with a height of 4.5 meters (to the lowest part of the roof). Obviously the "correct" way to build a gym in this sort of tiny location would be to expand the building, but I skipped that option here. Maybe the place is surrounded on all sides by, I don't know, historically-significant McDonalds locations or something. I don't know. This sort of small storage building is fairly common around Hokkaido so working with one of them is vaguely feasible. I guess. Needless to say, a facility of this size is going to be bouldering-only!

This location is not going to be heavy on the amenities, but in order to include as much floorspace as possible I added a second floor above the wall. Upon entering, we see a door to the main climbing area and a staircase to the upper deck, where the check-in desk will be. Space under the stairs can hold shoes and other storage, although this will necessarily be limited; behind the stairs is the bathroom. I'd like to note for the record here that I did include a fully-modeled sink and toilet, but didn't want to include a screenshot of just that. Oh well.

Entering through the main door we come onto the climbing floor. The climbing space is laid out in a fat L-shape, which as it turns out is hard to depict in screens. Inside the door we have a bulge wall with a 90-degree corner. One side of this corner is a 30 degree overhang, while the other is a 20. Originally, these were steeper, but they hung out into the rest of the room too far. The top of this wall is at three meters, and unfortunately working in a top-out was unfeasible (the check-in desk sits atop this segment).

This bulge adjoins the side wall of the gym, a vertical wall just over 3.5 meters in height. Nothing fancy here.

The side wall. You can see the bulge from the previous shot to the right. The side wall adjoins the back wall, which starts with another 20-degree overhang up to a short roof and flat finishing section. Were this wall ever to be built, it's possible that this wouldn't work, as climbers struggling for to stick holds on the finish might potentially swing out and fall off, potentially hitting the bulge or climbers on the bulge. But that's the joy of Fantasy Gyms!

Finally, the back wall. The 20-degree wall on the right of this shot is the same one as in the last shot, adjoining the side wall. The 20 degree transitions to a short vertical section and then into a 50/30 overhang. The vertical segment on the side of the steep overhang can be used for arete and side-reach moves, but mat coverage on this side isn't deep enough to allow for straight up climbing here (the door isn't very far from this bit). On the back wall, a support girder for the building structure is covered in a short sheath of plywood. This probably isn't much good for climbing, but is better than having an exposed metal girder. I can see some really godawful sit starts using this segment, as well.

Hopefully the layout of the wall is easy enough to visualize based on these shots. Here's an overhead of the climbing area:

The purple stuff is padding. The entrance to the climbing area is to the lower left. The bulge is in the center, with the overhangs of the back wall visible up top. Hey, there's that toilet I mentioned. Looking at it from this angle, the vertical segment of the big overhang might be climbable - the padding extends out about two meters. In a gym this size, every bit counts.

Last, here's the top deck. Stairs from the entryway lead up to the reception desk, which is the only really important thing up here. The rest of the top deck is simply there for relaxing and waiting; a walkway takes a climber over to the top of the big overhang, which is just large enough for a bench or a few seats. The reason I included all this is that the climbing floor is really too small for anybody who isn't actively climbing; if you aren't on the wall, you're in the way. The top deck was meant to alleviate this. It's not an ideal solution, but in a box this size it's probably the best you could do.

And, well, that's The Rock Box. I hope you enjoyed this exercise in theoretical bouldering gyms! Join us next time on Fantasy Gyms when we stick gyms in places they shouldn't go!

(I don't have any updates on my actual wall because I am currently installing 150+ T-Nuts on the 40-degree segment. I have to get this done before anything else can proceed because the damn thing is taking up nearly my entire kitchen and I don't want to store it until I've got the nuts in. The process is as exciting as it sounds.)