[tomtom]

Nearly finished - bar the kicker, foot holds and some wooden holds on order.

It’s 50 lower 54 upper section. 3m board length 1.2m wide. Went for 20cm across and 40 cm vertical for Bolt on spacing for now (I’ve only 40 holds). Thanks for everyone’s help and suggestions. Only been up once so far (screw on feet hopefully tomorrow) but climbs really well hard - but not impossible (with the big feet holds).

Feels great to be moving again rather than hanging.

[SA Chris]

Nice one! How long does a temporary feature have to be in place before it becomes permanent?

[tomtom]

Nice one! How long does a temporary feature have to be in place before it becomes permanent?

Shhh!

[lagerstarfish]

Looks great TT!

[Will Hunt]

That's looking very decent. Looking forward to seeing it with more holds. It looks like there could be some scraped knuckle/splinter potential when going for the top holds. It looks like you've got room for a little vertical panel at the end. What about that with some finishing holds on it?

[teestub]

You planning on using the top holds on yours at some point Will, rather than just jumping for the top of the board? 😄

[Will Hunt]

 
The two that are up there are a campus rung cut in half. Some problems do finish on them but it's more for doing some warm up hangs and pulls. I do think I need to fashion some wooden finishing holds to go up there though.

[tomtom]

Plan is to screw a cls strip Behind the ply protruding about 2cm from the top - smooth off the corners etc.. and there’s a nice finishing rail.

[Drew]

B&Q plywood will be fine, it completely rubbish stuff, but it is inside and you are essentially just drilling screws all over it.

Ok, so where does "good" ply? I'm potentially just going to get it from B&Q for ease, but if somewhere does better, and it's available, I might cost it up.

[JamieG]

I think the quality of the ply for most builder's or timber merchants will be a lot better. But a lot of them are only serving trade customers. Saying that I got ply recently from B&Q and was actually pleasantly surprised. It looks pretty good quality, so maybe they have improved the supply.

[Will Hunt]

If you google for your local timber merchants you'll find something. They'll probably do home delivery too if you're nearby.

[tomtom]

If you google for your local timber merchants you'll find something. They'll probably do home delivery too if you're nearby.

You’ll need to call them not go on line and good luck.

For me it was a no and a no in Manchester. Trade only. I’d expect it’s the same everywhere. I found one place - but when the guy found out how little I actually wanted - he didn’t laugh but fobbed me off and told me to call the next week etc.. all the timber merchants are only delivering to trade. One offered to ‘leave the stuff on a trolley around the back” etc...

All of which is fair enough. If I was having to sell timber at this time I wouldn’t piss about with tiny orders.

But try - if you get lucky 👍👍

[gme]

30+ sheets of ply and enough timber to build a very large board just got delivered to the house/building site next to my house.

A message from god me thinks. Pretty sure they wont miss a few sheets.

[SA Chris]

They've factored "contraction" of supplies into the calculations of how much they need anyway. Beware CCTV though.

[Andy B]

B&Q plywood will be fine, it completely rubbish stuff, but it is inside and you are essentially just drilling screws all over it.

Ok, so where does "good" ply? I'm potentially just going to get it from B&Q for ease, but if somewhere does better, and it's available, I might cost it up.

I’ve just built one out of the cheapest 18mm b and q softwood pine. It’s been up two and a half weeks and seems fine and solid so far. I didn’t have Paul’s orientation knowledge either, so it’s on the weak way, but no problems, touch wood.

[gme]

Dont get bogged down in this. The school was built with the cheapest shuttering ply known to man and some bent 3x2s and lasted years. The plys still going now in its new location.

Everyone gets carried away now with needing hardwood holds and special ply. We built boards for years out of off cuts from skips and they were fine.

If its indoors it will be fine if its outside it will rot whatever you buy.

[SA Chris]

Ok, so where does "good" ply? I'm potentially just going to get it from B&Q for ease, but if somewhere does better, and it's available, I might cost it up.

Make sure you look for marine plywood. Better quality apparently.

[gme]

They've factored "contraction" of supplies into the calculations of how much they need anyway. Beware CCTV though.

They have only just got colour TVs here never mind CCTV.

[Paul B]

Everyone gets carried away now with needing hardwood holds and special ply. We built boards for years out of off cuts from skips and they were fine.

If its indoors it will be fine if its outside it will rot whatever you buy.

Remove the rose tinted specs 

The school was literally tied to the tie members of the building; that doesn't make it desirable! It also deflected a significant amount (especially with a Seb or Busby in-situ). I've never climbed on another board that could be rev'd so much. Crucial holds have needed replacing / repairing (Stuey) or are just degrading with time (Basic-knitwear). Before the Crag-X board was binned, some of the holds (Stuperman) had degraded by the softer grains compressing leaving the harder grains like staggered razor blades. Nige sanded these off making the problem significantly harder but making it far more pleasant.

When it was salvaged (N.B. very few past users turned out), there was talk of it going to the Works and the consensus was that the holds/board would never survive the traffic. The other suggestion was a bonfire.

You can buy better quality ply for the same price as B&Q elsewhere so I've got no idea why you wouldn't do so. Likewise C24 is barely more expensive than C16 and is literally 1.5x better.

There's been some candidates for future Darwin awards with some of the recent builds!

[Andy B]

I agree about the holds. I got a kind head start from the worlds best fingerboard maker and those holds are obviously miles better than the ones I’m making, as you’d expect, but I’m using a mixture of softwood and hardwood to make holds (as that’s what I have available) and the hardwood ones are noticeably better than the softwood ones. As well as being more confidence inspiring when used for thin crimps.

I’m fairly confident that my incorrectly orientated cheap softwood ply panels aren’t going to rip off the frame any time soon though, and I ain’t a lightweight (unfortunately).
If you can get marine ply for a similar price then I’d go for that, but it was significantly more expensive when I bought it to convert a van recently. I obviously need better suppliers.

[tomtom]

I’m experiencing no flex - no creaking - and going by the specs of the screws holding it to the rafters its good for 1000kg.... (though the 11 bolts are not equally sharing of course).

B&Q ply was by availability rather than choice... in normal times I’d have got the same spec timber and boards for half the price at the local timber merchant (I checked).

It was also really tricky buying screws etc.. online - normally id go and look and make the decision that way. Still. It’s up now and I’m happy.

I had forgotten how fucking hot it gets up in the loft room on sunny days though 🤦‍♂️

[Andy B]

Likewise with regard to B and Q, although I’ve never found the price differences as stark as double, with the exception of more specialist stuff.
I found their customer service, over the phone, really good. They managed to pull forward my delivery by 4 days when I had a panic on about the potential for deliveries to stop if we got locked down.

[tomtom]

Hi Andy - the ply costs were double (possibly more) as I got four smaller sheets instead of one large sheet and an offcit. The other places would have cut the sheet for next to nowt...

But you know - needs mist and all that. I don’t begrudge it. Prefer to spend at the smaller place if possible. BQ were absolutely fine.

[Andy B]

Needs must indeed.
I hope you got some spare bits, cos I’ve since had to build a second board for my 2 year old. He thought my board was shit. The main issue is now that every new pair of holds I make he wants put on his board!

[jwi]

so.... anyone has any experience with small free standing walls that they can share? I am pretty confident I can make something that is not absolutely rubbish, but personal experience would be gold