How Climbing Gyms Are Made

Hi, my name is Clint. I'm one of the owners and team lead here at the Commons Climbing Gym in Boise, Idaho. This is Gary Matos. He's our head rootsetter and big boss man in general. And we're going to do a little tour of what our walls look like from the backside. Everything is made with true three-quarter inch 12 ply, I think, Baltic birch, 11 ply Baltic birch plywood. It's all CNC'd in factory and shows up like pre-cut, pre-angled. Everything is then laid out on the ground and you cut each one of these, they're called rafters, these pieces that cover the seam. Hand cut every single piece. We build them in what we call facets, which are basically think of that like one angle change on the wall, one flat panel, and then wherever an angle change occurs, that is another facet. So when you're putting these things together, you have one person behind the wall, screwing in from the back, one person from the front, placing the each square panel. And you do that over and over again, whilst tying into this steel superstructure that is maybe a tight shot, but this is the hinge, three-quarter inch bolt, someone on the front ties the panel to this, and then you adjust all these pipes that actually tie back to the major structure behind, which is built beforehand. What are these called? Those are called T-nuts. Super handy, they're great for home projects too, but this is what we actually screw our bolts into that hold the holds on the wall. So here's one, here's a hold on the other side. Every once in a while, we will screw a hold on or set screw a hold, like a big hold that's going to spin. That's what that looks like. Does this have this first, or you just don't do this at all? You just don't do this at all. There's no T-nut on the front. This in a climbing gym, you'll see either like a flat metal head of a bolt that's holding the panel on, or wherever the bolt hangers are also come tie back into this. And so when you fall in a climbing gym on lead, you're actually not falling on the plywood, you're falling on the steel superstructure, and that's why it's strong. So if you're thinking about like you live in Kansas or something and you're wanting a 40-foot home wall where you're going to lead climb, just remember that we're not falling on the plywood here, and I'm sure that Ryan's going to show you what will happen if you on plywood. I totally want to whip on plywood now. Oh my gosh, I'm going to do some human testing when I get home. We're safety glasses for the splinters. That's what you're worried about? So this is pretty interesting too, I guess, like these angles and these riding. Zone 23, facet 7, piece 3, something like that, and then you go lay these out on the floor. So Gary and I were fortunate enough, I would say, because I was like flat broke. He did the job. EP kind of saved my bacon. Onapri is the wall company that we hired to do this. They're awesome. U.S. office is based in Bend, Oregon. They've been phenomenal to work with. They're also the wall provider for the U.S. Olympics, or for the Olympics, and for USA climbing and World Cup climbing. They do a lot of stuff. They do a lot of stuff. They're also the first wall manufacturer on the planet, so if you're thinking about building a gym, contact Onapri. They're gonna pass for that. I hope so. They're not. They won't. Yeah. Is this building new? The brick is old. The brick is old. We took out the floor and popped the ceiling off this thing, and then built new steel building within the existing old building. You don't have 50-foot empty buildings chilling in Boise? Surprisingly, no. There were a few 28-foot, which is not super good enough. You call that the superstructure? Yeah. So this is the superstructure, and you lay these up, and so you build this zone by zone, basically. You have this big metal framework. And this gets attached to the actual building? This is attached to the actual building. You can actually see it tied way up there, where it's tied into the structural steel. Okay. It ties in three places. We'll just say that. And you put that up first? First. What holds up this while you're building it, before you attach it to the superstructure? So you put it up piece by piece, panel by panel. Okay. What's really interesting with how the rafters are, is you set the panel in, and the rafters, that's what these pieces are. We call them rafters. Okay. Basically hold that panel in place, so that the person behind can screw it in, and then attach it to the superstructure. And so you basically build this up, and attach it to the superstructure as you go. And then the cool thing about these pipes, is they're movable. And so then you do final tensioning, to tension the entire wall together. You use lasers to level everything, and make sure that it fits just right. What's super interesting, you were asking about our wheel rock. That's going to be in the dark back here. Oh, yes. Same thing over here. So we can actually lead on all of this as well. Because even though it's a fiberglass backing, with secret sauce coating. Secret sauce coating. That's perfect. We actually tie all of the structural parts, that you would be whipping on, again, back into the main steel structure. Wait, your hangers go directly into this? Yeah. So it's like a. Whoa. This is a metal plate, that they fiberglass in, so on the outside. So it's like a hollow. It's a hollow bolt. There's not a t-nut, like that's a t-nut. That's a fiberglassed in, sort of fancy. Fiberglassed in, stainless steel nut. Got you. So the. Okay, there's no. The maintenance is, you can replace these. It's just a bit more work than a regular t-nut. And these t-nuts are screwed in, rather than having teeth. Like I've seen on, I don't know, t-nuts that you'd buy for a home gym. Yes. And you can buy these too. Escape makes really nice ones actually. The screw in ones are definitely the way to go. They are, they tend to spin less and are a little bit easier to replace. So this right here is a hold. That is a hold. Not a hanger that you would whip on. Definitely not. The only hangers you're going to whip on are here. This one. And honestly, this is probably not high enough. Our first. Yeah. The next one up. I just did an adaptive clinic in Twin Falls. And so when we get our adaptive program going here, we will switch these out for anchors. So that we can have load bearing things close to the ground and build anchors that are directional up. Because part of the process for the adaptive climbing is you want to have a releasable top rope from the bottom. And so you need structure, which we can tie into. It's a super versatile system. Like you're not really tied to any one of these holes. So sometimes, like if we wanted to, we could adjust this or needed to, we could adjust this anchor point to any one of these TINA holes and just move the TINA over. EP is awesome. Pound ins suck. If you're ever using pound ins on a home wall, plan on not changing your holds out very frequently. They chew up your wood on the back panel. You can push them out as you're putting a hold on. So the screw-ins are the way to go. If you plan on changing your holds decently frequently, that way you can save your wall, save some money, spend a little bit more on the initial purchase and get screw-ons. That makes a lot of sense. I've only seen the pound ins. Yeah. The pound ins were around for a long time and everybody commercially has switched over to screw-ins just because it saves you time, money and a headache rather than having a spinning hold on the front of your wall. I imagine they don't cost a lot more. They just take more time to install. They take more time to install. They're, I imagine, only like a 10%, 15% increase in price. But that's a good point about chewing up your wood. Those little spikes, as soon as they start ripping loose, just become a really crappy drill. This is a negative 16 degree angle change between facets, like I was talking about before. And so these are all flat rafters, but these come pre-made. They give you those pre-glued and screwed in. So is this the biggest Lego set you've ever built? Yes. The biggest, scariest, heaviest Lego set I've ever built. You guys do what, use scissor lifts when you're... Yeah. The person in the front does. Yeah. The person in the back gets to climb the loose superstructure and use the big... What are those big hooks? Ladder hooks. Ladder hooks. Oh, that's how you clip in. That's how you protect yourself. That's your protection. Okay. You don't just set up a top rope on a micro traction. We're not freestyling all the scary, slippery rafters. So this is my welder's shop. He let me put up my new lab here. And we put carpet in here so doesn't have that annoying echo my other garage had. We even put carpet in here to be bougie. So we're going to attach this bolt to this plywood sample that Commons Climbing Gym gave me to test, just to see what the plywood holds, even though that all the hangers, when they are installed, are in the superstructure. I'm just curious if 11 ply plywood can be stronger than the hanger. Right now, Larry, my welder, is working on our squishing machine. Yes, we are going to show you how to make gear backwards. And we're going to decorate. I'm not quite done decorating yet, but yeah, we're going to get fancy. Speaking of fancy, we are just using hydraulics now. I know I've shown this in the past, but this only goes up to 48 kilonewtons. But we learned if you add a pulley into a multiplier, you can get 94. So goodbye, winch. So I attached these two hangers here so I could attach it to the dyno side. But if I just clipped one of these, it would pull sideways. It wouldn't fit in the machine. So I'm going to drill a new hole here and put in this T-nut about right there. Now this is a 3-8 inch bolt, but it takes a half inch hole for the T-nut. So let's do that right now. My hole is just not nearly as pretty as theirs. Let's secure this down. Now this stainless hanger should be stronger than 30 kilonewtons. So that's attached. We have a dyno loop that is doubled up and put into here and steel beaner, so it should not have a problem. And our total force, which is on this, should be reflected on our dynamometer here. All right, that's 2.4. Let's turn on the slow motion. Okay, so my safety is kneeling. So I just saw wood fly. That is very interesting. That is amazing. Good thing it's attached to the superstructure. The hanger's actually still got some life in it at probably at least 10 more kilonewtons. If you want to see how much force you actually put on a bolt when you take a lead whipper in a gym, check out this video here. We are going to redo that video with some better dynamometers that are faster and just way more sciencey and whole as soon as we get some line scale threes in the mail. Pretty excited about those. And I got some other dynos that are going to be pretty exciting with the drop tower that we're going to be kind of excited about building on this property. And yeah, want to see what that breaks at in tension? Okay, so I put the hangers on the opposite side, which is going to really, really help protecting the dynamometer. I'm going to have some lights soon mounted here that don't flicker during slow motion. And this is kind of what we got going on there. We're going to be pulling straight out that PLX hanger will break between 50 and 60 kilonewtons. So it's plenty strong enough. Oh, I'm such an idiot. All right. I do understand how T-nuts work. Okay. I just didn't think about it. On this side, they're screwed on. That's the only thing holding them. Okay. I'm trying this again. T-nuts on this side. I didn't even screw up, man, because they just push against each other. It should be fine. Let's do it again. I'm going to have to vacuum all this up when we're done here. Oh my gosh. It came out. What are the chances? Oh my gosh. It did more than come out. It de-laminated. Break testing wood is fun. How climbing gyms are made is super interesting. And what they break at is super interesting. If you'd like to see a follow-up video, maybe on what a home gym is, is made of and how strong it is. I hope you're not taking lead falls on a home gym wall, but I'll leave that in the comments below. If that's something you would like us to make a video of. Thank you so much to the people who have donated this channel. It's the only thing that keeps this thing going. We are not sponsored by anybody. Nobody involved in this video sponsored it. And my welder Larry makes wine. He grows it here and he makes it. So I'll put that link in the description below where you can buy some of his amazing wine. I'd love your support. Please let me know on the near the top of slackline.com how we can do better. There's a Google form there and I would love, love, love your feedback. I do read the comments below, but the Google form thing is a little bit more thorough. Anyways, I appreciate you guys. Make sure you smash that like button. Cheers.