wooden climbing holds and hang board

Climbing is fun, so is making climbing holds. Its also a good way to make good use of scrap wood.

Here’s one with a finger pocket.

Because of its shape, there’s no material for the forstner bit to center on, so I cut a sacrificial piece to help the bit center until it cut deep enough.

We tried some unique textures, but we decided it looked kind of gross.

A belt sander quickly removes the unwanted texture. The canvas is blank again.

On a different day, I also made a hangboard. Forgot to take any in-progress photos – sorry, but below is the final product. The pockets were made by drilling a line of holes with a forstner bit and then cutting away the rest with a chisel. I then used a 1/4″ radius router bit to round all the edges. I don’t have a router yet, so I (ab)used my drill press as a router. This mostly worked because pine is so soft.

The sloped holds on the top are 2×4’s cut on a compound miter saw and covered in  some grip tape material, which is like sandpaper with adhesive on the back – like what is on skateboards. All the pieces are glued and screwed to a piece of 3/4″ plywood.

To mount it to my wall, I bolted some 2×4 rails into the studs of the house, and then screwed the hangboard to those rails.