Moon Board Modifications

I am getting underway with building my first moon board, but have a space that has a much lower ceiling than is specified.

The moon board specs details a height of 3.15 meters (or 124 inches) and my space is 2.3 meters (or 91 inches), a rather significant shortfall.

Has anyone found a way to modify the original to still see much of the benefits? It seems that reducing the kick plate to a minimum is one avenue and then, I suppose, eliminating the requisite number of "rows."

Thanks in advance for the help.

Tricky for sure. Besides the obvious shortening of the kickboard, which would only give you a few inches, there is a bit of unused space at the top of the board too (i.e a few extra unnecessary inches above the top holds). However, neither change will come close to making up the deficit. If you are so lucky as to be under 5'8 you could also put the holds a little closer together and not feel to bad about it; lots of the moves on the set problems are pretty big.
Maybe try to get a bit of extra height by going into the ceiling space, if possible? Personally, I opted to move into a new house to fit it in, which is probably the way to go, but a little expensive.

P.S.
The easiest problems listed (6A) typically feel like modern V4. If your stats are correct you may not find the Moonboard to be as fun as you hoped.

My friend and I are going to be building a moon wall soon. We are having the same issue with the ceiling not being high enough, but we are just going to skip the 3rd section at the top and add a few modifications or go as high as we can to the ceiling. We should be posting something soon.

I built mine outside for that reason. If I had to build mine in a limited space, I would cut a couple inches off the bottom, the rest off the top, and add a little horizontal roof above with big roof jugs at the end. Almost all of the problems end with dynamic moves to jugs, so it probably wouldn't change the problems much.

I agree with Sam about the difficulty. I was expecting V2 warm ups, but between the stiff grading and the powerful style that I was unaccustomed to, I was getting shut down by those problems to begin with.

I was wondering a bit about the grades...

It is actually a multi-purpose install.

1. I am looking to use it for training, not technique, as I am just getting underway with the Rock Climbers Training approach. The "stats" listed are actually more reflective of the fact that I just started leading this year, and leading outdoors only a couple of months ago. Top rope tends to be in the 5.9 to 5.10+ range with high hopes of getting an 11 before the year ends! After a 30 year "break" from climbing, I returned to it about two years ago and am learning how different is at age 53 vs 18!

2. My 14 year old daughter will also use it to supplement her own training. She boulders V8 and will likely find it more interesting!

All this said, it may be better to just set up a more "standard" indoor wall where I can simply work on linking up a few moves as part of an overall training program. I will take a look at the modifications suggested here and mock it up to see how it might all work.

Thanks for the thoughts...

Tim Roy wrote:2. My 14 year old daughter will also use it to supplement her own training.

kids these days.

maybe go wider than higher. the holds that are in the sets are pretty tough at the 40 or 45 angle. next time i build mine im going to make it adjustable. I think youll enjoy the holds on whatever angle and even if you cant follow the routes online its a blast making your own. Also try to keep the smae amount of square footage so if is 20m^2 less on top add that to the side. Ive always ended up adding to my walls. bigger is better

Thanks for the thoughts on this.

I had also written to Moon Climbing and was impressed that Ben Moon himself wrote me back with his thoughts:

"As you have pointed out you could reduce the kick board hight and eliminate the rows although this isn’t a good idea. Your best option is to keep all the rows but reduce the spacing between rows. This means you can do all the problems listed on the website but they will be at a slightly easier grade."

I will need to do the math on this, but I think I can get the kick board down to a bare minimum and then re-work the spacing to use the vertical height I have. I am contemplating stripping the drywall off the ceiling to gain another inch or so, but have drawn the line at jack-hammering the concrete floor!

I will post my sketches once complete.

quick number crunching looks like your board with be 1.72m deep giving you a wall length of 2.87 for a spacing of 0.16m between holds (evenly spaced) which is around 6 5/16 inches. keep in mind if you run it right to the ground the first few rows will be obsolete.

I'm sorry to dig up such an old thread, but I was wondering what you ended up doing with your space-constrained moonboard? I am about to start construction on one and have 113 inches vertical to work with. I am thinking of shortening the kickboard to 6 inches and reducing hold spacing from 20 cm to 19.5 cm on the angled portion. Any thoughts on this?

Max Rudolph wrote:I'm sorry to dig up such an old thread, but I was wondering what you ended up doing with your space-constrained moonboard? I am about to start construction on one and have 113 inches vertical to work with. I am thinking of shortening the kickboard to 6 inches and reducing hold spacing from 20 cm to 19.5 cm on the angled portion. Any thoughts on this?

There is actually an article regarding this. I believe a female climber wrote it and it went into some magazine that MP shared on the front page. Try searching for it. If I have time later I'll search for you

Is this the article you mean?

It's on eveningsends.com by Andrew Bisharat

eveningsends.com/battle-of-…

Mark,
Thanks for that link! This is very helpful information. There is actually an inconsistency in the moonboard instructions too that can result in a slightly shorter board. The standard hold spacing is 20 cm, but if you build it as shown in the pdf on Moon's website, there is a 22 cm spacing across gaps between plywood sheets. You can eliminate 1.5 inches from the moonboard by just using uniform 20 cm spacing from what I can tell. The spacing adjustment that I need to make is less than half the size at 0.5 cm than 1.2 cm in the Bisharat article.

Edit: The eveningsends article says that hold spacing was reduced from 7.75 to 7.25 inches, but the standard spacing is 7.87 inches (20 cm). The reduction is either 1.2 or 1.6 cm depending on which numbers are correct.

Max,
I think I'm missing something but 20cm is not 7.75" but is 7.87" isn't it?
Have you built your moon board yet? I want to build one as well and have similar low ceiling issue in my garage. I think I am going to remove the drywall and have the board go all the way up between the studs to gain more height.

Christophe,
You're right. The standard spacing is 20 cm which is 7.87 inches. I did end up building my moonboard. I had only 9'5" of vertical to play with, so I reduced the kickboard to 6 inches and reduced the vertical hold spacing to 19.6 cm. I kept 20 cm horizontal spacing. I left 15 cm between the top of the board and the last row of holds because I didn't want people to get hurt if they overshoot a dyno to the finish holds. The gym that I climb at also has a moonboard, so it will be interesting to see whether the problems feel noticeably different. The paint is still curing on mine so I haven't put up holds yet.

Max,
Let me know if you can tell the difference between the one at the gym and yours on the same problem. I still need to figure it all out before ordering the holds and the LED system from Moonclimbing.com.
I'm 6'3" tall so I don't want to shrink the kick board too much, and want to keep both rows of feet. I can reduce the spacing like you did, perhaps more? Depending on your feedback :)

Edit: Shipping to US is a pain though...

Christophe,
I'll try to remember to post an update and some pictures once the paint is dry and the holds are mounted. I'm 5'9 and the shortened kickboard is not really a problem for me. If anything it's good practice for really scrunchy starts on outdoor boulders. Before I committed to my design, I climbed on another moonboard and focused on using the highest starting feet possible to make sure that the design would work. The eveningsends article that was linked to a few posts up is also worth a read. He reduced the hold spacing more dramatically. The numbers in that article don't make sense, but he had to decrease the spacing by 1-1.5 cm and said that he might eliminate rows instead of decreasing spacing if he had it to do over again.

No doubt, the shipping from the UK was really expensive, but it was also super fast. The holds arrived here in Oregon one day after they left the warehouse. Moon may be able to work with you if you can identify a cheaper/slower carrier than DHL. For what its worth, I did not have to pay any import tarriffs.

Max

Argh, I just opened up my ceiling and there's no way I make the wall go beyond 100" w/o changing a bunch of crap in there.
I am thinking of having a kick board of 10", 16 rows spaced by 7.5" (19cm) and have the last two rows flat horizontal on the ceiling since most problems are big moves to the last row and row 17 doesn't seem to be used much at all.

Max,
How's the moon board now? Noticed any difference between the one at the gym and yours?

I did get my moonboard finished. I haven't climbed too many problems, and I realized that my gym has the old hold setup (2015 version with Original+a+b), whereas I put up the 2016 layout so that I can use the app. I also measured the incline of the moonboard at my gym and it is only 38.5 degrees. If the gym ever re-sets their moonboard, a direct comparison will be possible.

Hey, I've been looking into building a Moon Board, too. Are you guys using 3/8" t-nuts and bolts, or are you using metric? I'm leaning towards setting up my wall with 3/8" t-nuts since they seem easier to find in the U.S. It seems that 3/8" should work since it is slightly smaller than 10 mm.

Thanks,
Shaun

I built mine with 3/8. They are essentially the same. The M10 T-nuts take 3 wood screws in the back whereas the 3/8 get hammered in. I would rather hammer a bunch of T-nuts than deal with all those little screws. If you buy other holds from US companies, they come with 3/8 fixings.

The moonboard holds take either cap head or countersunk bolts. Most of them do not need to be as long as Moon lists on the website. It would have been a lot faster and saved me a few dollars if I had bought mostly 1.5" bolts instead of 2" for the smaller holds. You need a few longer bolts for the bigger holds.