How to Make Wooden Climbing Holds
by Tom-Savoie in Workshop > Woodworking
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How to Make Wooden Climbing Holds
I have an exposed beam in my room, and I wanted to create a training station, and instead of buying climbing holds, I've tried to make my own holds by carving some wood.
Supplies
For this project, I will be using an oak board. You can use other type of wood, but make sure that you are choosing hardwood (You can search for wood hardness scale on the internet)
We will also need some hexagonal head screws and flat whasers (photo 2). My screws are 5mm diameter
For the tools, I will be using a manual saw or a jigsaw (optional - everything is doable with a manual saw) and a drill (with drill bits - one fairly small with long screws that we will use to hold the wood, one at the size of the final screw, one of the size of the flat washer and another slightly smaller than the screw to mount on a beam).
To carve the wood, I will be using a chisel and a hammer/mallet.
Make sure you also have different sanding papers (I had 100 and 180). You can also use a dremel.
Planning
I plan every hold I wanted to create to make sure that I really knew what I want to do, with the dimension, in order to draw the plan on the wood board. (See photo for the example)
You can buy holds on Internet, but you can't really decide the shape, so get creative !
Preparing Your Hold
For this step, I recommend cutting a polygonal shape in which you want to carve your hold with a saw or at best a jigsaw (The more you get closer to the wanted shape, the fastest will be afterwards, but you can start with a rectangular prism). Drill the holes (the one you will use to attach the hold) with a fairly small drill bit, because we will later use a larger one to fit with screws in order to hang the hold on the wall. Use the holes created to put a temporary screw with a flat washer to avoid damaging the wood, and attach the hold to a scrap piece of wood. Hold this piece of wood tightly with clamps on a table/ on your workbench (see photo 2)
An example of a polygonal shape to prepare the carving (done with jigsaw) : photo 3
Carving the Hold
Before, make sure your chisel is well sharpened, it will be much easier.
The ways I used the chisel are the following :
-The flat size is not in contact with the wood, and remove important pieces of wood by hammering on the chisel.
-The flat size is in contact with the wood and one hand on the top of the blade and the other on the handle, push with your hands, and it will cut finer pieces of wood.
Start with the hammer method to remove most of the wood, then with the other method, remove wood to obtain a result close to the final shape. Try to make sure that all the corners are rounded. When working with wood, you realise that working with the grain of the wood is much easier, so take that in account.
(It was the first time I used a chisel, if you have any advice, I'm interested !)
Sanding
To sand, I started with a dremel, as it was much faster, but it is totally optional. I then sanded with a 100 grit sandpaper, and then a 180 (not for all the holds). Depending on the texture you want, you can decide or not to use the 180 paper, as it can be more slippery, I would strongly recommend you to try on a small scrap piece of wood.
The step 3 and 4 can be quite long, but they are the most important one on this project.
Drilling Holes
As we want to use these types of screw (see photo 1), we want to drill a larger hole on a few millimeters, so the head of the screw and the washer don't protrude from the hold. For this, we will use a flat wood bit (or spade bit), with a slightly larger diameter than the flat washer. For one of the hold, I have decided not to use flat washers, so I reduced the size of the hole.
Sand the corner of the holes that you just created to obtain something like in photo 3
You can then drill a slightly larger hole throughout
Corrected with https://www.corrector.co/the depth of the hold to match with your screws.
Application of Varnish or Oil
To protect the wood and give a more pleasant feel, I added oil on the hold, but you can also choose varnish. I reused an oil I have used for protecting parquet, but any oil can work as well, such as linseed oil. Once again, if you have several options at home, try them out on a test piece of wood !
Wait for a few hours, it depends on the times recommended by the packaging of your product. I have personally done 3 layers with a slight sanding in between.
Final Result
I am really glad about how it turned out! However, this process is very long (my first hold took me 2 hours, the two others 1h30), but this is cheaper than holds you can find on internet, and you can actually do whatever you want. If you have time and patience, this is a great project, especially to learn how wood can be worked. I will continue my oak board by creating even more holds, and I'll try to get more creative !
Mount to the Wall
To mount the holds on a fine wall, I would suggest using inserts, so it can enable you to change the holds whenever you want. However, my beam is quite thick, so I will be using a drill bit slightly smaller than the screw I have, so that it strongly fits.