Homemade Crack Machine

[Jens]

I am always looking for new ideas as to how to upgrade my home climbing gym.

Anybody seen any ideas for a homemade crack climbing machine? I was trying to think of any easy way to make one. Perferably one that lets me adjust the size.

[Cpt.Caveman]

Email for details. I did not make it but I have used it. Wood and adjustable....

[willstrickland]

Yo Capt, send that on to me too if you will. I saw plans somewhere several years ago for one that Steph was training on.

Why every gym in the country doesn't have about four of these is beyond me. I go to the PDX rock gym and run laps on the only crack in there looking specifically for the worst holds on the thing and it's still too easy, besides the crack I boulder a little and mostly just check out the hotties, I try to think I'm training, but I don't often run into red plastic blobs and colored tape outside.

[Dru]

you take a bottle and bust a little hole in the side. put some steel wool over it. put the rock on the steel wool, torch it, suck on the neck of the bottle. then go break into another car for money to score some more rock.

[Cpt.Caveman]

The one I used (buddies) is designed a little like this one. However you do not need to make the panels so large Put the crack behind the actual wall and build face holds around it. Also you can take some wood tools to the crack and adjust it with curves and grooves. I recommend large wood but not plywood something like a 4x4 or whatever (I dont know lumber sizes well). This dude's wooden wall is the best one I have seen yet. How about an overhanging offwidth!? When you master it then just change the width. Pretty fun especially when drunk.

http://www.putzl.com/~klew/wall4.htm

http://www.tradgirl.com/rc/faq7.htm#crack

[ 01-04-2002: Message edited by: Cpt.Caveman ]

[Matt_Anderson]

Oh, looks like I gotta write faster . . .

That design looks sweet! Seems like it wouldn't to be to hard to just cut out a portion of one of the vertical two foot sections in any existing home gym and do a similar idea without needing a 4 X 8 section that was adjustable.

At present, I have a couple of finger jams carved out of wood blocks. I made them using some small drill bits, chisels and a rasp. The bad thing is that the holds are rather large; the good things are that they can be placed anywhere on the wall and modified so that they fit my fingers, not my climbing partners .

[ 01-04-2002: Message edited by: Matt Anderson ]

[Cpt.Caveman]

The problem with the above drawing is the building of a crack face. Not a good idea if you ask me. Make your wall your face and place your crack behind it. Leave gaps in the plywood where you want the cracks. Use large wood for your crack so you can get deep jams. Keep in mind how you may want to adjust it later for size. Trying to exlpain it on the internet is sort of hard for me to do. I wish I could whip up a good drawing

Check out the tradgirl link. If you really want a crack I bet you can get it done. Erik has seen it before maybe he can help me out?

[willstrickland]

Only thing about that design Caveman, if I follow you right, is that you're always climbing in a diheral of sorts, i.e. the back wall is always right against one of your sides. The ideal solution might be to build what you're talking about with a splitter section in the middle of a panel as well.Maybe I'll work on a design.

Atlanta sucks, and the local climbing scene is kinda lame (although the rock is GREAT) but the Atlanta Rocks northside gym has a hand crack and finger crack in their 45 degree overhanging bouldering cave. It's like thin hands and hands (it wavers enough that you could pick a perfect or thin jam at any move), and the finger crack is perfect fingers and off fingers. That freakin finger crack is HARD.

[Cpt.Caveman]

There are No dihedrals all splitters. You ever make it out my way perhaps we'll make a session there for bouldering.......

[eriknusanet]

Here's a simple crack machine I have on my wall: just bolt a vise onto your wall. I had to get a couple of pieces of hardwood and cut them so I could attach them to the vise (make sure the vise has screws so you can do this). I put some sandpaper type stuff on the wood to get better friction (its actually for treads on stairs).

The vise sticks out from the wall which is wierd, but you can adjust it from fingers to off-fist. I pretty much use the wall as a hangboard anyway so I can throw in some finger jams to a session.-- Erik N

[panther]

Here's a corner photo of Cappellini's crackhouse. The indistinct line originating from the left of the red sleigh bells is the overhanging finger crack never sent by Danimal, Valente or Ben. Fat asses need not apply. The cutouts in the wall are hand jammable and very painful, yet provide the ability to apply technique.

http://alpinelite.com/danimals_crackhouse.htm

Oh, and Strickland. I agree the Atlanta climbing scene is lame, the climbers are lame, the routes are lame, the ethics are lame (they bolt cracks here) and the gym attendents give new meaning to pathetic. Vertical World seem world class in comparison. The rednecks over at Sandrock are about to get a good old fashioned Panther ass kicking. Southern bitches!

[ 01-16-2002: Message edited by: panther ]

[Cpt.Caveman]

Nice photo and you can even see the splitter hand over the roof I always like to play on which leads to the finger crack!

[willstrickland]

quote:

---

Originally posted by panther:

Oh, and Strickland. I agree the Atlanta climbing scene is lame, the climbers are lame, the routes are lame, the ethics are lame (they bolt cracks here) and the gym attendents give new meaning to pathetic. Vertical World seem world class in comparison. The rednecks over at Sandrock are about to get a good old fashioned Panther ass kicking. Southern bitches!

[ 01-16-2002: Message edited by: panther ]

---

I wasn't jokin' man, now you know. Anyway, there are some good climbers, just few and far between and aging (youngsters missed the boat). If you can finagle Shannon Stegg, Bob Ordner, Chris Watford, Travis Eiseman, or Rob Robinson into climbing with you, you'll have a different experience. The MistyMtn threadworks crew has some hard-ass tradsters (dudes freed Glass Menagerie on Looking Glass and put up some new routes on the Vampire Spires) also Harrison Shull, Burton Moomaw and Brian Haslam in the Asheville area are AMGA guides and tradsters. If you've ever seen that mag pic with some dude on Incredible Handcrack at ICreek where the picture was printed reversed...well that's Burton.

Sandrock is fucking way lame. The scene there is just wack, and the crack routes are way painful from the conglomerate pebbles. If you go back, walk over to the Holiday Block and look at the routes on the steepest side (Tuesday's Gone, Plush, Mardi Gras, Tales From the Hard Side). That route Tales from the Hard Side is the one that I worked for a long time came back to try to snag a sucessful lead after pitching off the crux and nearly grounding the week before. I was psyching up on the walk over there and arrived to find it bolted. Chopped it, came back a few days later my head wasn't in it, so came back midweek or something the next week and it was re-bolted. Pissed, way pissed.

I stand by the assertion that T-wall may be the best winter crag in the US though. 95% trad crack lines and tons of 'em, southfacing, etc. There are great routes in the area though, assuming big roofs get your motor running. Try the Prow, Raiders of the Lost Arch, and the Pearl at Sunset(not big roofs on these except Raiders). Jennifer's World at Sunset will scare the shit out of you (it did me anyway).

Here's the hot tip though...Tallulah Gorge, in NE GA. It's a State Park and you gotta get a free climbing permit in the office, they limit the number of folks on the gorge floor. Not a bunch of routes, but multi-pitch (a rarity in the region) and QUALITY quartzite. The best route in GA in my opinion is Flying Frog (.10b/c) at Tallulah, awesome face and crack moves, adequate protection, sweet position on a clean wall, and not too hard. While you're there, Punk Wave - a 3 pitch 10a is really fun with harder variations to the 2nd pitch if you want 'em. Heaven and Hell has probably the best 5.12 trad pitch in GA, 2nd pitch is like a 35-40 degree overhanging hand and finger crack. The Diagonal is worthwhile if it's not too dirty (the harder variation doesn't see muc traffic but I recommend it over the other 2).

And yeah, the gym (I assume you're hitting Atlanta Rocks in Doraville on Bankers Circle, north side of city) is a lame scene (more so than any other gym I've been in). The cracks in the boulder cave were useful for me, that figer crack is tough.

Enjoy man and don't let the Sandrock scene get you down, it's not all graffiti and gap-tooth hayseeds down there.

[Bob_Clarke]

Hey Strickland-

I was thumbing through a back issue of R&I and noticed the name Will Strickland (coincedence?) on an Urban Cragger article. Was that you?

[willstrickland]

Yeah, that's me.

[Bob_Clarke]

Dood - Awesum

[Matt_Anderson]

This thread got me thinking and this is what I think I'll try on my home gym for hand crack (awkward to describe in words, but here goes):

1) Cut a four-inch wide two-foot long (up/down) gap in my 50 degree angle wall. The wall is supported by 2"X6" studs.2) Drill holes in the studs that lie on either side of the gap. On each stud, there will be two holes at each end (botom and top)of the two foot gap. One hole close to the area where the stud touches the plywood (about an inch away). One close to the the rear edge of the stud (again, an inch away). The line that runs between the two holes in the bottom will be perpendicular to the line that the plywood face forms (same for the top). This makes a total of eight holes.3) Run four metal rods with threads running down the entire length of the rod between the holes. Anchor the rods with nuts.4) Attach a good sized block of wood (two feet long, about six inches deep, wide enough to be very rigid) to each of the four rods. Either drill a hole in the block or attach metal loops to the bottom and top edges of it. Secure the attachment points with nuts on each end. (8 more nuts, total)5) Make sure that attachment points (the holes through which the rods pass) on the floating piece of wood are larger than the rod, and then the floating piece of wood hole jam will be adjustable to flare/constrict the jam in every direction. 6) The jam is defined by the floating wood on one side and one of the the 2"X6" studs on the other. 7) Sand/form as necessary.

Instead of the threaded rods, I may use quick release clamps and bicyicle seat stop.

I did not intend all of the phallic references that seem to infest this description.

Advantages: Low profile (on the climbing side); Adjustable (more so if I use the quick release clamps.Disadvantages: complicated, need easy access to the rear of the wall to adjust.

I'll add another gap higher up if I think it's worth the space. Otherwise, little climbing space is lost.

Matt

[Peter_Puget]

Over the years I have had several crack machines in a series of garages and found that they weren’t so great for technique training but they were pretty good at training for endurance. One crack went up the side of my parents’ garage across the ceiling (three car widths) and down the other side. After a while I gave up on the long cracks you could really “climb” and concentrated on short cracks used as pull-up bars. For me these short cracks were FAR superior to the long ones. I even made several cracks suitable for Lat Pull machines. These turned out to be a total waste of time.

PP