A friend asked me to help build a home climbing wall.
This was the result and my design process - at the end there's a link to videos showing the wall in use
BACKGROUND
A few months ago one of my friends asked if I wanted to help him build a home climbing wall. I had previously made a wooden Hangboard (a climbing tool to help improve finger strength) for my roommate after we were severely disappointed with a free one he got from a website.
Hangboard I previously designed for my roommate.
During my research I learned that freestanding home climbing walls, also known as "woodies" are popular amongst climbers for training grip strength and move endurance, which is how many different moves they can make and hold on a wall before taking a break.
CONSIDERATIONS
- Manufacturability/Assembly:
- Since I had to build this wall upstairs, I had to design it so that its individual components could be machined and finalized in a garage or workshop before being moved and assembled upstairs. Parts needed to be easy to make and move, and should not be designed so that they rely on mid-assembly machining.
- The only tools we had ready access to were a Miter saw and some drills, so the parts had to be manufacturable with only these tools. No fancy joints, slots, etc.
- This wall will be divided into two parts- the climbing surface, and the support frame.
- User Experience:
- My friend and I talked back and forth and we decided on a 30° wall angle from vertical. This was a pretty common wall angle as it was right in between a wall being too steeped outwards to climb or too vertical to train bodyweight.
- Sufficient number of holds. The wall was designed to allow a large amount of holds to be installed. 7 staggered rows of 11 mount-holes were planned into the board to allow 77 holes per board, and the rows were biased to one long edge of the board so that they could be matched together and avoid an awkward gap in the holds where the boards meet.
- Addressable LEDs were suggested by my roommate to be installed into the climbing wall so that individual holds could be identified. This allowed for routes to be programmed into the board, and my friend would be able to save routes and hold combinations.
Climbing surface and hold layout, prior to LED holes.
Here was the first iteration model I made in Solidworks. I ended up adding some more structural features in the final wall.
My friend and I talked over a few safety considerations I had in mind when designing this wall. A lot of the home woodies mounted climbing surfaces to the support frames through bolts on the four corners of the climbing surface. In a lot of videos I watched, these walls would creep and sway during climbing, something I did not want to see in my wall.
The bottom will be held by carriage bolts into corners reinforced with wooden hubs for bearing surface.
The middle will be held by carriage bolts into the 45° legs.
The top will be held by carriage bolts into reinforced beams like in the bottom. I will also laminate the mating leg with an internal 30° cut piece of wood that the climbing surface can rest its weight on.
THE BUILD
"Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?"
- Kevin Malone, The Office
2x4s being cut to length
2x6s being cut for the support frame
This was our spur of the moment solution to trying to account for
warping in the wood to get accurate lengths.
Pre-drilling any assembly through-holes.
Clamped the surface plywood together so we could plot and drill both at once.
T-Nuts being hammered into the rear of the surface boards.
These guys have teeth that dig into the plywood to prevent rotation during threading.
Test fitting the LEDs. These guys are press-fit, and
conveniently use the same 7/16" hole as the T-Nuts.
Screwing the surface frame structure together. Construction and deck screws were used.
A friend specifically asked for torxhead screws for that sweet, sweet grip whilst screwing.
Laying out the vertical beams with the newly added horizontal support beams.
Like I mentioned before, these doubled as spacers.
Making pilot holes for screws.
Laying down the plywood climbing surface.
Full surface - 8ft x 8ft climbing surface.
Standing up the climbing surface. Notice the reinforcement hubs in the
corners and the horizontal beams added in between the vertical beams.
Another angle.
Putting together the frame.
Sliding plywood underneath the assembly for weight distribution.
Assembly went as follows:
1) Carriage bolt the bottom of the climbing surface to the bottom of the frame
2) Using step 1 as a hinge, lift the climbing surface and rest onto the 30° wood legs.
3) Carriage bolt the top of the climbing surface to the rest of the frame.
4) Install the 45° wood legs to the middle of the climbing surface
4) Install 2x4 bar between the front of the frame halves to join and set a fixed distance between.
Prelimary LED trial run.
If I were to do this again, I would probably improve on some of the structural aspects and try to make it even easier to manufacture. I think the support frame can definitely be improved, and I would like to figure out an optimal climbing-hold pattern that can fit holds and LEDs easily without the risk of holds covering LEDs.
All in all this was a super fun project and I was honored to get to design and help coordinate this. Honorable mention to the guys who built this together with me, there was a lot of valuable insight (and food) shared between everyone during this build.
If you want to see it in action, you can head over to my friend's public Instagram page @kl_imbing (https://www.instagram.com/kl_imbing/) to watch videos.
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