Back in 2004 I had an idea to develop mouldable (and remouldable) climbing holds. I played around for years with different materials and eventually found one that worked. My intention was to market it and after ordering the materials and sorting all the packaging etc, things kept getting in the way!
Anyway, I thought I'd share the concept on here for those interested. There's probably still a commercial product in it too, although now the "recipe" is online that might be tricky!
I used a product called polymorph (used a lot by modellers) that can be reshaped at 60 degrees C. You usually add it to boiling water. Obviously it's a slick plastic so not much use for holds. I found the powdered version of it, and played around with mixing various materials. After 5 years of trial and error it still wasn't strong enough to be a proper hold, so I was back to the drawing board, but eventually found olive grit, literally ground up olive stones! This worked perfectly, giving a strong bond to the plastic and it's light too. Powdered rubber worked ok too, but not as nice for holds. Kinder on your hands for training perhaps though? With the powders it's best to use an oven to heat it to 100 degrees on a silicon baking sheet.
Anyway the reason for sharing this and making it public after all this time is that I'm getting rid of the material that I bought now as I'm moving house soon. I'm selling it on ebay, and at a massive loss to what I bought it for just to be shot of it, although others sell it too so once I've run out maybe there will be a hold making community?! I'm happy to share techniques and other stuff I learnt to anyone interested, it's great fun - in theory you can re-create entire routes on your wall, and although I never tried it, making a mould of real holds would be possible. I've now had the holds up on my own wall for 5 years or so and they work well, not as strong as resin holds obviously, but strong enough. I've never broken one in use. They can be remoulded as many times as you want, although no doubt chalk and grime would weaken them too much eventually.
