UKC

I'm half way into building a 45 degree training board and am hoping for some advice on which grid pattern is best to go with. My plan was to use a diamond grid, with squares drawn diagonally to the plywood edges. 

Following a recent thread I noticed others have regretted using the diamond pattern wishing they'd opted for a square grid.

So, what are the pros/cons for each grid pattern?

Is there a good reason not to go completely random? Assuming it's not a system board your aiming for.

Thanks. 

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Probably not the 'right' answer, bearing in mind all the boards I've seen use bolt on holds but if I were building another board, money no object, then I would buy screw on holds and not bother with 't' nuts at all. However, this assumes you may be resetting it fairly often. If you're going for a systems board with a one time symmetrical pattern then I would look at the best of the current manufactured ones and copy that.

For the sides of my wall I used 1/2 sterling board and while it's supported well enough to take the load I found that the end of the t nuts sometimes pull flush with the face of the board, making it difficult to tighten the holds. The lesson there was to only use 3/4 ply!

I set a square grid at 20cm intervals. This seems to work pretty well and for the first few months when I was moving holds around a lot having them in t nuts was invaluable, way less work than moving screw ons around. Now the set up is more stable I have subsequently added in more screw ons either because the holds I wanted weren't available with bolts or because I wanted to fill a gap.

I'm not really sure why diamond would make any difference as long  as it is dense enough, especially as it's easy to fill gaps with screw ons once you are happy with your initial setup.

I used diamond pattern, the reasoning being that I can then get maximum number of t-nuts onto a wall whilst keeping c.20cm spacing between all t-nuts. I suppose it makes labelling them harder, i.e. you can't use grid references, but that doesn't concern me for my setup.

I likewise set up a diamond but it was intended as two offset 20cm grids so I could have the moonboard on one and then easier holds on the other. 

Thanks for the advice guys it's much appreciated. It seems like the diamond pattern is the way to go. 

I prefer to use an app to keep track of problems rather than the old methods of grid references or naming holds.

I think Retroflash is the best of the free apps.

Eat, Spray, Love or Open Climbs are OK too but have clunkier interfaces.

Also, I agree with gilesf: screw ons all the way. Or a hybrid with a smaller number of tnuts for juggier warmups/circuits and screw ons for everything else.

Having built a few of these and used diamond, square grid and Voronoi tessellation (fancy way to say random) I can safely say none of it matters.

What does matter is marking where the battens on the back go and steering clear of these by a good 25mm.  Nothing is more annoying than getting this wrong (well forgetting to fix the T-nut with a screw before you mount the board is about as annoying).

Really don't worry about the grid pattern and if a hold hasn't got a bolt hole just screw it onto the wall with screws wherever you want it. 

As soon as you break the virgin surface with your first screw on hold and realise the holds can go where you want it gets a lot easier.

The easiest way to choose the hole pattern it is mark the battens on the front, scatter the required number of tee-nuts over the board and adjust them away from the battens (and to have roughly equal spacing) and drill them where they lay.