Hi guys,

After seeing a Beastmaker at a friend's house in Boven over the weekend I decided I really needed one - that thing is a piece of art... so checked out the website and noticed they were pretty pricey (100 pounds for international shipping)
I'm trying to convince another friend of mine with a woodworking shop to make me something similar, but he says he needs to buy some machinery to make them.
So I was wondering if anybody else would be keen/ do you think there would be a viable market in SA for something like this that would justify investing in a CNC router?

Lemme know your thoughts,

Sounds interesting. What is the cost of a CNC Router?

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Climb ZA - Administrator

What about the Metolius Compact(small) or Deluxe(big) wooden hangboards?

We retail them here at CityROCK for R549 and R699 respectively.
See pics:

I can wholeheartedly recommend the Beastmaker. Why don't you and a few friends buy one each? Dan (the Beastmaker-maker) will probably give you a volume discount and the shopping costs also reduce. We ended up paying about GBP80 each with shipping. It's totally worth it.

Or if you know Guy Hubbard, you could just buy his from him as he hasn't even mounted it yet.

Robert, I've used the Metolius and it's not in the same league.

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the fresh prince of darkness

i didnt say it was in the same league.
and even 80 GBP is also double the price. and you have to wait for it. and risk it getting lost en route. the number of times a customer has walked into our shop and said "would have could have should have".
and does 80GBP include VAT when it arrives. bird in the hand vs. two in the bush?

Howzit guys,

I am a CNC technician for a machinery importing company called Austro. Our cheapest CNC machine goes for R450.000 excl, however the one I would recommend (Rover S1) sells for R798.800excl. This price does not include tooling, extraction etc. Check it out on http://www.austro.co.za/Suppliers/Biesse.asp
In my opinion, find a kitchen cupboard guy with a CNC, and take him a drawing of what you want and maybe he'll give you a good price. The difficult thing is the programming, but once that's done, it's done, so as you say- the more you order, the cheaper they will be. For all my metal CNC machining requirements I use a company (PTN Durbs) called Pitchline, and they require an order of at least 10.

I have been toying with the idea myself for quite some time now, but if anyone has the bucks and is serious, check out http://www.cncsolutions.co.za/ I have no idea of the quality of the machine, but the bed size is more suitable, as well as the price.

Trent

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I'm not here for a long time,
I'm here for a good time!

Wow, 450 grand for a hangboard sounds a bit steep! I think for that price you could get a decent sized piece of rocklands! Even at £80 a pop, you could ship in about 400 Beastmakers for that cash. I doubt there is even a market for 100 of them.

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...Chalk is cheap...

I can vouch for the Beastmaker - it was worth every cent and the wait. I would go through the 3 month wait again if I had to

BTW - why you do have to get so defensive Robert? You were the one who started with the sales pitch which automatically calls one to need to make comparisons!

Which Beastmaker are you guys on about? The 1000 or 2000?

2000 series - really good mix of hard holds!

I also have a 2000 series, but have seen the 1000 series here in the UK and it looks like a good intermediate hangboard.

Still waiting for the promised JG 2000 Series to rear its ugly head - all the holds are half depth (that's if they ever decide to make it).

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the fresh prince of darkness

Whilst CNC is the way to go for mass production its not essential to making a decent wooden hangboard. Ive made several over the years and the holds can all be formed with machinery costing a lot less. Access to a drill press, a chisel, a small hand router, cross cut or radial arm saw and a beltsander is all you need and of course the know how to use them without chopping your fingers off! Add some elbow grease for good measure.

My present board I made in two lunch hours with scrap I scavenged off the shop floor - total cost R0!!! You dont really need six zillion pockets for the hangboard to be effective. One or two straight edges of different thickness (wider one goes above the narrower one) with varying depth and size pockets drilled through them (I put a slight incut angle on mine, be careful drilling this though! If you want to be fancy router a rounded seat/divot into the backboard to give the pockets a softer-feeling inner surface) then some fat slopers on top and youre done. Cheap pine is the easiest to work with as it is soft and yielding to sand. All it takes after that is the motivation to actually use the thing! (Note to self! )

C'mon then Xmod- post us a photo!

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I'm not here for a long time,
I'm here for a good time!

Hmmm, to b honest my present one is nothing special at all, I kept it as absolutely basic as possible, some of the others are more worthy of a comparison with the regal beatmaker. My point is one can make a super effective hangboard with a bit of effort and very little money.

Im not at home at the mo, browsing from my phone at the local i-cafe, but I'll post some pics of it and the more involved versions I made before whenI get a chance.

To go back to Gregs suggestions of motivation and making your own hangboard, I can recommend one of the best training tools in the world - a 2cm deep, slightly rounded wooden rung. It's no Beastmaker, but if you don't want to shell out for a Beastmaker immediately as (a) it's a lot of money and (b) you don't know how much you'll actually use it, put a rung up above a door and see how much you actually train on it over a month or two.

If you can motivate yourself to train on it 2 - 3 times a week, then a Beastmaker makes a lot of sense and will seem like a playground of power. If you can't, then maybe hangboarding isn't for you.

Hangboarding is boring, anti-social and not fun at all. It's also the quickest route to finger strength.

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the fresh prince of darkness

Ok cool, my buddy says he knows someone with a CNC so we'll get going with some drawings/ programming - I'll keep you guys updated on the project.
Robert, would you guys be interested in stocking a South African product like this if we can make it decent quality/ reasonably priced?

Cool Desertbob! Being an industrial designer, I love hearing about locals taking the initiative! To accurately make the range of slopes and complex curves inside the pockets, as featured on products like the Beastmaker, by hand would be very tricky and time consuming. Still trying to get pics up but my card reader is playing up. If u want a good basic board its perfectly possible to make it cheaply, but for the more involved range of grip profiles buying a premade board is actually good value for money even at over a grand a board. It would take more than a solid day to hand router and sand a large range of profiles, so 10 plus hours of work at R100-200 per hour, ... Obviously easier and cheaper to buy a premade board.

As Dom says, fingerboarding is as boring as hell, but it also produces phenomenal strength in a very short space of time. I suppose it depends on ur level of clinbing as to how much u should spend.

Please keep us posted Desertbob, love to see the final product, go for it!!!

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Climb ZA - Administrator

OK finally got my card reader to co-operate.
Here is my humble homemade hangboard. Super simple and stripped down basic, it still works to develop steely fingers.

I know these are all US measurements, but seriously this is exactly how easy making a GREAT hangboard is.

All you need is some wood (pine works well cause its a soft wood) a drill, some screws, glue and sand paper.

I know cause when I was last home, I made my nephew a campus board in their garage and spent R150 on materials! Seriously this is all you need. You can select which ever dimension of wood you want to use and just sand it down on the edges and BAM! you can put blocks on top of one another to create large flat edges. You can make holds 10cm wide, 8cm wide or even 2cm wide.

Best of all, when you get bored with your board you can change it at the most minimal cost!

If you think this is the way for you but you need more ideas on how to go about this, just ask... Ive done a fair bit of research on hang boards and I can sketch them up in google sketchup pretty quick and easy.

Also you might remember this thread that I posted many years back on how to add more value to your already exsisting hangboard. http://www.rockclimbing.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=1431814;#1431814

Cheers

*Wish I had of taken a photo of my campus board, I thought it was neat!*

Thats how you do it! Great minds think alike!

A climbing buddy and myself have been building our own wall over the past couple of months, and in the process decided to invest some time and thought into the process of making our own grips for it. After many failed, or not so great ideas we managed to come up with a seriously great process and moulding compound. Our wall, complete with some intense overhangs, is now spattered with our self made grips, and they are a thing of beauty - the process we developed gives an extremely natural feeling grip which is about as close to getting onto the rock as we could make it.

That being said we saw the posts regarding fingerboards, and realised we could easily mould our own set of finger / hangboards using the same process - that and we have a router which will allow us to create both wooden and moulded boards. After some chatting we felt that it may be an idea to chat with you (the community) to gage if there are guys who would be keen on 'ordering' one of our boards, and also what types of prices would suit you? In terms of something like the above posted 2000 series, in either a moulded or wooden material, what price (being somewhat realistic) would one expect to pay?

Basson: With all due respect, I think you're headed for failure asking the community what they're willing to pay - you're in all likelyhood going to end up charging too little.

You should be setting the price in such a fashion that you cover your costs and make enough extra to make it worth your while. If the community is willing to pay for it, you've got a nice sideline business, while if you're asking too little, you've created high expectations and caused yourself frustration.

In my honest opinion: if your product is good, which you claim it to be, you'll always find someone willing to fork out for it. It's almost impossible to fix going in too low (which you're running a serious risk of in my opinion), while dropping the price if you find it was too high is easy.

How about making a sample board & posting up pics? Some pics of your grips? Hopw about sending a couple of grips to the climbing gyms?

At the moment you're asking people to "bid" on something they have not even seen yet......

I think you took my question in the wrong light - I was simply gaging whether guys would pay somthing along the lines of what would cover our costs pluss a small markup. Both of us have full time jobs, so the side line project would just be something for the climbing community and hopefully would provide a little pocket money.

We are busy putting together both a moulded and wooden demo at the moment and intend on taking them to our gym to see what their opinions are.

This is exactly my point - you need to put a figure out there (preferably with a sample / pic of the product), and ask whether the guys would be willing to pay it. In your first post you were asking us how much we'd pay for something we've never seen.

I'm not trying to shoot your effort down, I think it's great, just giving some advice on approaching your potential customers. Whether you intend to get rich and retire young making fingerboards or just doing it for the love of it, I think the principals remain the same, which is that you decide the amount that makes it worth your while.

Best of luck, looking forward to those pics!