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Making your own portaledge
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How easy or difficult is making your own decently constructed ledge, and how expensive? |
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I made my own 30 years ago for a trip to The Valley. Some aluminum tubing, machine a few corner blocks and shock-cord for the frame. Sew a few yards of pack cloth for the deck. 1" tubular webbing with buckles for the suspension. A few more yards of tent fabric for the rainfly. Wasn't that hard. Only cost about $100 |
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Really depends on your fabrication possibilities. If you have access to a tube bender and lathe/milling machine and a solid industrial sewing machine it's just fine, but still a lot of work to produce something propper. Have a look at the Middendorf designs. |
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TLDR: Best to buy a custom made ledge from a boutique vendor or get a used ledge. Only make a ledge if you are super excited about making something and know it will cost twice as much as you expect and take 10x longer to make than you think. I love making stuff so was super excited about the project. In the end, I’d say the project was 70% research and puzzle solving, as I was making something I had never used before and didn’t have on hand to examine in person, 25% sewing, and 5% “building.” The engineering problems of how to build a ledge have already been solved, so in the end it’s basically a large scale sewing project. I had some basic sewing skills, which helped a ton, and sewing also requires a lot of planning ahead in terms of thinking about what order to do things in. I definitely pushed my skills and sewing machine to the limit. All of the materials you need are easily available online from various vendors. Piecing together which parts to use and where to buy them is a whole puzzle in and of itself. Corners were an issue, and I thought about bending aluminum. But I found someone through an old forum post who had extra aluminum block corners left over from when they made their own ledge and had ordered multiple sets and they gave them to me for free. So I went with the older, square corner approach. I was a grad student at the time with no disposable income and fortunate to be able to use some school funds to pay for all of the materials, otherwise it would have been too expensive. In total I’d say the materials cost $350-500 (ledge, fly, and beefy haul sack). I don’t remember the exact total off hand. I already had a sewing machine and access to a shop and tools. It took probably a couple hundred hours of research and planning and maybe 20-40 hours of fabrication. The research and planning were fun. The fabrication started out fun, then shifted to back breaking, hunched over a sewing machine and maddening when I had to correct mistakes, and then got fun again near the end. The best part was pulling into the valley with my partner in May after just finishing it and him asking me what ledge I ended up getting for the trip (I had told him months earlier that I was able to secure a ledge). Just as we hit the meadow and were craning our necks to see the whole of El Cap towering over us through the windshield he asked, “so which ledge did you end up getting?” “Oh, I made it myself.” He nearly shit himself. “We gotta test that thing in the ground first.” I got a good laugh. We set it up and bounced on it and laid down and set it up a couple times. He signed off. Later he said he slept better in the ledge than on the ground before we blasted. It’s since been on El Cap a couple times. I recently took it apart to correct a couple small mistakes I made when first making it and to redo the suspension. I’m also planning to sew a new rainfly, I’m not happy with the first one I made. Iteration is the name of the game. (But iteration is also resource and labor intensive, i.e. expensive.) All that being said. My advice is to just buy a ledge. Only make a ledge if you really love to make stuff and are excited about that process. It’s a lot of work and very easy to make something sub par. All the materials, and having them all shipped is very expensive. 6061 aluminum tubing is very pricey, when I made mine it was right after Trump’s China tariffs so steal doubled overnight and aluminum went up. And I only bought exactly what I needed. If I had made a mistake cutting the tubes down or in cutting the fabric I would had to order more. My budget was razor thin, the funds were not exactly earmarked for this project. After all the labor and effort I think the prices that someone like Runout Customs or Durango are offering are a steal. Used ledges are also readily available at affordable prices. A buddy texted me yesterday that a used BD ledge and fly is for sale in SLC Gear Exchange for $700. Now that I’m not a broke student. That seems totally worth it to not hunch over a sewing machine for a hours and to also have a professionally fabricated ledge that is trustworthy off the shelf. That being said, making stuff is super fun. I’d love to bend my own aluminum and make a Delta 2P. The G7 pod is essentially applying packraft materials to reinvent the portaledge. There is a great Canadian company, DIY Packraft, that not only sells packraft kits but also has a wealth of resources online about working with TPU fabrics, and at one point sold TPU fabrics by the yard. Kyle at High Mountain Gear is also making the Taco, which I think anyone could make their own version of at home…to varying levels of success. But, these DIY projects all take lots of time, some money, and most of all space. I no longer have a shop at my disposal…just cutting and sewing large pieces of fabric in a small apartment is way harder if you don’t have room to spread out. |
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Or you could go old school  |
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People with very little tube bending or sewing experience are building this design in a few days, can be made with less than $150 material cost, but does require a few specialised tools, like a $100 tube bending machine. http://bigwalls.net/diy-50buck-portaledge-frame.html edit: here is an article by Dave Smart on how these are being used in aerial activism: gripped.com/profiles/yosemi… |
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John, that's an awesome resource. Thank you! I have zero skill in building or fabricating things, and would love a similar style single or maybe double ledge. If any MP engineer wants to make some money, I'll pay you appropriately for the materials and labor to build one for meee :) On a related note, if anyone wants to sell one used, I'm interested. |
Marc801 C wrote: Prices these days are getting out of hand, on all items! Im trusting these boys are making a fair wage and John is getting a worthy cut$. I would pay that if i was in the market, in todays prices. I am found of the best gear! |
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Both Metolius and Black Diamond double ledges come in right at $1300 for ledge and fly. now that Runout Customs has left the Ledge Market- it literally leaves 1 small time, hand made in America producer.. if you want to save $400 buy one from the big guys.. If you want to support a small time company making a better product by hand in America then buy a D4 from Durango.. I took my family out for Ramen last night and it cost $100 and I left hungry |
Quinn Hatfield wrote: Damn. I was under the mistaken impression that an expensive ledge was ~$800. I guess that was 25 years ago! |
Marc801 C wrote: I’ve got a 25 year old A5 Single I’ll sell ya for $800 ;) |
Quinn Hatfield wrote: Me thinks there is at least two... Making a ledge is a ball buster. Just go get a job for a couple weeks and then buy one. Your mind will thank you later. |
Russ Walling wrote: Sorry Russ |
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http://www.fishproducts.com/catalog/portaledges.html For a more traditional design without bent tubing… |
Ben Hoste wrote: It will be a while as we are not making anything right now, nor have been for a while. A while these days is a season. |
Kauait wrote: For the record, I do not get any cut from Barry’s making of the open source D4 designs, never have. Durango Sewing Solutions is his own business, and he was instrumental in helping design and manufacture the first D4 Portaledge kickstarter in 2017, a rectangular curved tube design very similar in concept to BD’s new ledge. Barry was also a key maker of A5 portaledges back in the 1980s. Frankly, even at $1700, if that is the price he needs to charge these days, is a bargain for a hand crafted modern portaledge design, there is a lot of work in these! I made about 120 or so D4 portaledges in Tasmania from 2017-2020, and it was not really for profit, only making enough to pay for materials and quality work from a bunch of local climbers who helped sew and bend frames—portaledge crafting is a labor of love (though it did also provide me with prototype materials to tinker and create the Trapezium, Octapos, and Delta2p designs). I do believe the Delta2p design is the best framed portaledge design, and production is limited, so if you are looking for the best, Barry makes quality gear and uses the best materials. Aideer climbing in Europe has also made a few of the Delta2p design. Eventually the big boys will catch on and copy this design, too! ps. Just checked Barry’s pages—looks like he is still offering the 2017 Kickstarter rectangular ledge, but he has also been making his own version of the open source Delta2p portaledge (my 2020 design) here: https://d4portaledge.com/delta-2p-portaledge |
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News: Anna, who sewed about 42 Delta2p's in 2019-2020, is interested in sewing up another batch of beds, flys, suspensions, and haulsacks, and I am sure I can find help with the tube bending process from the interested 5.12 climbers who will come to my shop for a day (30mm*1.5mm 2024-T3 tube takes some strength to bend!). So we are thinking of making another 4 of these here in Tasmania, my interest would be to make them available to climbers who will continue to use and provide public feedback about the new design. Price will be $1750USD shipping from Australia anywhere in the world included, so as not to compete with Barry, and if you have an order with Barry currently, stick with it as the timeframe will probably be about the same ((mid-Spring delivery, taking into account sometimes slow shipping from the antipodes). If interested, email me at deuce4@bigwalls.net The Delta2p is a two person ledge with my bullet joiner overlapping tube system (sets up fast), with the same area as the A5 Alpine Double (and later Runout Customs UL ledge clone), so designed more for lightweight and compactness rather than super roomy like the full size D4/Cliff Cabana/etc. This is a high end bigwall tool, used for cutting edge climbs like Changabang a couple years ago.   Also in Baffin by Marek as a solo ledge:  But if you want to get into portaledge life on the cheap, the "Activist Sit" design, linked in a few posts previously, is a simple one-person DIY portaledge design that can be crafted in a day or so (I do not recommend the more commonly available 6060 aluminum for a two-person ledge). The design on bigwalls.net is tailored for tree use, so there are no patterns for the typical corner and wall side reinforcements that would be needed for a rock climbing ledge. Cheers and happy new year! |
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Here is a good DIY report: |
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Hmmmmmmmm………. |
