club dreher!

"HI! im josh!, it's my turn to get my very own treadwall Project post.... so what to talk about? i guess i could tell you that i dont like to be interrupted whiled in mid-meal! i also, like you, love the rock climbing and recently rediscovered my balls... thus i have made my triumphant return to the trad climbing! did i mention i sent the egg? no? ...oh yeah i sent the egg..."



"...and ...i love ladies! cause im a maaaddddd, pimp of love!"

"but i guess since this is a site dedicated to the projects, ill let alex tell you all about the sick wall he built for me. i mean he helped me to build, look... i designed it! im the engineer! i make schematics!"

.....ohhh-kay? ...thanks josh for that odd intro. but like you said we should get down to telling people about that project.

in all honesty this went down a while ago, i actually took time out from building my stuff to help josh make this miracle of science. he was kind enough to look over my shed drawings and in the same visit gave me a look at his design for a new bouldering wall. in truth, when i saw the computer generated design (yes..he did it on a computer... nerd) it looked like hardly more than a bunch of lines to me. but he was so very excited about it that all i could say was... "yeah man! that looks sick! let's build it... what does the wife think?" (note: he aint married but she knows who the boss is in that bis-natch)

he then explained the design to me. turns out the wall would not be nailed or framed to the garage... it was gonna be suspended by cables... i instantly distrusted this idea, but it's not my house so, F-it!, ill watch a wall fall down on josh. cause what are friends for?!

step one to building a bouldering wall, for any engineer is... get a couple of dummies to do all the work. enter myself and J-rod! ...stage left.

step two for the overly engineered super over hanging boulder wall, built into a rented property where your only allowed to have four anchor points to the entire building is... get a big beam. cut it to exactly the width of your rented garage and using a concrete drill blast some holes into the foundation. then using angle brackets, bolt the sucker down, like soo....

(oh and if you look back at the dummies pic above you can see it already in behind us on the ground)

this will serve as a stop brace for the bottom of the wall to lever against as it is suspended from above... again im skeptical yet optimistic! and let's not forget i have no deposit so "F%#@ -it! Doc drill!"

next we framed up a 12x8ft wall. there was a couple of errors made in angling the ends. it need bevels so the wall could sit flush to the footer beam and have an addition head wall added but... come on?! it's not like we had an "ENGINEER" on this project.

ill also suggest that before you put the plywood to the frame, stack it up and drill all your t-nut holes at the same time. we used the chalk line method to plot the 6" spacing we wanted. if you start 3" off the edge it works out. given that you dont drill the holes the same exact size as the t-nuts your gonna put in. in that "unlikely" event you may need to, at some later time, go back and drill slightly bigger holes so the t-nuts fit, but im rambling...

step four: drill a couple of holes into that burly ass glue-lam in the ceiling. then put a huge eye bolt in there and crank it down. then you swag a couple of cable into the eye bolts like so...

YES! those cables are going to be used to suspend the wall, tah-dah!...

lift it up, clip it in... and.. and... "...go stand under it."

"...uh, no dude!",

"...dude it's safe",

"...then you do it!" ...eventually josh did this, with only one cable attached!

to all of our amazement it held. then he hopped and we all cringed a bit. (is it just me or can you still see the edge of terror in his eyes?!) a few minutes later it leveled out and got way cooler as we added the second cable, balanced out the lengths and the set it back against the footer beam.

to finish it up we added an additional four foot head wall. the bottom of it is attached to the main wall and the top has two more cables running back to the same two eye bolts.

again we all dared each other to test it out. gingerly, like little girls dipping our toe in the pool we took turns pulling down on it. it was so basic, it shouldnt have worked. but it was solid, the weight of the wall itself keeps it from bouncing. and the lack of excess framing makes it practical to hang! the only thing left was to set the problems and start to crush!

if you need any extra specifics to build this monster yourself ... get yourself an engi-ma-neer type!