Thursday, April 10, 2014

The March of April Progress

We're getting to that part of the book where everything accelerates and begins to spiral inevitably towards the conclusion like a spider getting sucked into a drain. This is a metaphor, with "The Book" being the construction of Kuraimu V4 (I think) and the sucking pull of plot resolution being the dual forces of 1) my finally being able to clean my house, and 2) my inevitable overuse injury from climbing in my garage every day. Whew! What I'm trying to say here is that things are coming along.

Before. Before THE PARTY that is!!

Amidst a lovely light spring rain/sleet/snow we assembled the second of the two main sections, which astute readers will remember is a 30-degree segment. After a few late nights of hurried T-Nut installation, the big day arrived and my free labor friends arrived to help. First step: moving the damn thing out of my house.
"I'm not sure this is going to work"
"That hasn't stopped me yet."

I have a lot of regrets

That's not a door, that's a window- I think. A big sliding porch-style window-door thing, minus the porch. If you ever decide to assemble a climbing wall inside your house, don't. If you do, like me, make sure you actually figure out how you're going to get it outside before crunch time- I didn't measure anything, and it's only because heaven smiles on fools that I was able to get this thing outside.

This is how we party in Hokkaido

You can see here, as in the first picture, the unnatural blue glow of my garage. I picked up a string of Christmas lights on the cheap to provide lighting inside the garage at night, figuring the soft glow would serve to illuminate the wall without causing issues with shadows, glare, or excess heat generation. It works quite well, although I wouldn't mind a bit of heat right now. The blue glow pulsing out under the door also serves to keep curious children away, but the tradeoff is that it attracts curious ravers.

hup


hup hup

We hoisted the wall section into place (it fits!!) and then kind of stood around for a bit considering what to do next. Since the angle of the wall is shallower than that of the A-frame, there's a gap between the two. I filled it in with some supporting beams, but these had to be cut first since I didn't actually know how long they'd have to be.

Then I had to get behind the wall to secure everything.

Who likes spiders???

Luckily, as it turns out, I was able to get through the gap and into the dark and webby netherworld of Behind the Wall. I wasn't sure how this would work before we actually did it- if the gap wasn't big enough, the plan was to get the wall raised up with me behind it and then scramble out over the tiny gap at the top. Which would have made for a pretty funny picture, I'm sure.

Welcome to... the Netherworld.

Here I am behind the wall, taking a selfie while waiting for more screws. I had to climb up the back to screw the supports into the top beams of the A-frame. You can see the supporting beams of the garage itself in this picture, but the wall isn't attached to them at all- I didn't trust the structure of the garage enough. You can also see the gap I was planning on squeezing through to get out. Alas, it wasn't meant to be.

After securing everything (for now) I got back out and we were done. The 30 degree section will need more beams supporting it, but since I can get behind the wall at will I can do that any time. And the result...

Tadaah!

Both sections of the wall, loud and proud. I put a few holds up on the left side, for testing purposes only. I promise I didn't climb on anything before the wall was properly supported.

Birth in Reverse

Here's the gap between the two sections. Once everything is squared away and I don't need to get behind the wall any more, I'll put a small section of plywood here as a transition. This will provide for cool arete moves and let me use some of the terrible slopers I have that would be unusable anywhere else.

Nothing sadder than Christmas lights in daylight

Here you can see the gap between the top of the 30 and the A-frame crossbeam. After adding a few more support 2x6s in here, I'll put a short roof section here. This roof section will actually be slightly MORE than horizontal, with a slight angle down from the top of the 30. This should provide some interesting potential for underclings and the like.

And there you have it. These two pieces form the main bulk of Kuraimu V4, and I'm excited as hell to have them up. The next step, after finishing the transition and mini-roof, will be to add in the proper roof section- more on that later.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned next time for A Very Special Edition of Fantasy Gyms. Stay loose!

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