Climbing walls

As our daughter started to train and compete in sports climbing, I’ve decided it would not be a bad idea to build something simple at home as well. It should not be that hard, right? Well it’s not rocket science, but it is expensive material-wise. I build one in our gallery, then one for a friend and then added a proper mini-overhang (30 deg) in our guest room.

It always started by a lot of thinking and planning. Then a simple drawing, or drawing into a photograph taken, just to imagine how it would turn out. And to discuss with the “business owner” (my wife and the friend, respectively :-) Then a lot of measuring, to get an idea of the material needed, converted into sort-of plan to build the whole thing. Iterate over few versions if needed. Adjust as you build, don’t overcomplicate things.

Picture is worth a thousand words (sometimes), so here are some images:

TODO our wall gallery TODO friend’s wall gallery

Material

For beams, I chose to buy the KVH wood. It’s mainly for the precision and planed surfaces, so that I could use these even on the outside without any further planing. But it’s for the precision mainly. Still, make sure to check each beam before buying it as, especially the small-ones like 4x6 cm, are often bent slightly.

I built the frame of friend’s overhang wall from 12x6 beams. It was most likely an overkill, but the thing is sturdy as shit, few extra bucks really did not matter in the final costs. I chose to built mine at home with 8x6, which was still plenty.

For the large surfaces, I chose plywood, 20 mm thick, birch. I was lucky to buy decent quantity from a carpenter outside of Brno, for about 1000 CZK per place (220x 125 cm). He had some leftovers from in his shop. Great quality(A/B) and a great price, where in a wood shop you typically can buy one of these for about 2700 CZK.

For joining, I used M10 screws, wood screws (5 and 6 mm diameter, various lengths).

Tools

Nothing fancy, just some basic power and hand tools:

  1. Circular saw,
  2. japanese hand saws for some minor cuts or high-precision ones.
  3. Table saw
  4. Sander