With a design and basic parts list in hard from my previous post, now is the time for me to head out to our favorite orange hardware store and buy some raw materials for the next section of the climbing wall. I threw in a side trip to our local green sports store and picked up a large pack of new holds and assorted hardware at MEC. Now to assemble this beast.
The first part that I really thought would be hard was the two side boards for the peak. Setting up the notch for the bottom is easy and I cut that out using the skill saw. I was expecting the top where they met to be a challenge, but after some testing with some scrap pieces I just set the saw to miter the cut at 45 degrees and cut across the boards at 60 degrees(Inside of the triangle is 180 degrees, minus 90 for the right angle, and minus 30 for the angle from the wall, gives me 60 degrees on this angle). This worked surprisingly well, and with some help from my shop assistant, I was able to get them matched up and screwed together quite quickly.
Then there was the hard part. I wanted the face of the two diagonal boards that go to the corner of the room to be parallel to the face of the plywood that would be on it. I spent a lot of time trying to get a good set of calculations on what this would be, but nothing was working. I could visualize it, but not quite get the numbers to work when I tested on scrap wood. Eventually I just used a piece of scrap, placed it where I needed the proper part to go and roughed out the cuts in pencil. A few cuts with a few saws later and I had a notch that worked. Copied that to my intended board and it fit. The other end just needed another 60 degree angle, only this time as a bevel on the face of the board. Did a mirror copy of this and the two boards setup my diagonal support perfectly. I added some scrap blocks of wood to keep them aligned at 90 degrees to each other on the back.
For extra support I added a quick piece going up the back of each piece of plywood, just notched and beveled on the face at 60 degrees again. That was easy. I also added horizontal boards from the peak to the walls on either side of the peak in order to stabilize that. Once those were on I cut off the top of the peak, it didn’t really add anything anyway.
One final challenge, I needed to cut the 4 x 8 plywood in half, but in order to enable me to screw it and join them close, I needed to keep my saw at a 45 degree bevel as I cut it across the diagonal. I used a long board to give me a straight edge to follow with my saw, but unfortunately I didn’t do a great job of following that. A few strategically placed clamps later and I had each piece on the wall and screwed down. This thing is ready for some holds.
Next time: Installing climbing holds.