UKC

Hello dudes. I'm idly thinking about making a fingerboard (a la beastmaker) on the cnc machine and was wondering if anyone has any tips on the best wood for the job. Woodwork isn't my strong suit.

All suggestions appreciated!

North American tulip wood, apparently: https://www.beastmaker.co.uk/pages/how-theyre-made

Any hardwood would do the job.  Tulipwood wouldn't actually be my first choice.  But I can see why they'd use it.  It is cheap and easy to get hold of, most decent yards will sell it..  I'd kinda prefer Iroko or Oak, but both have relatively horrible dust or are hard to work, so you might not like dealing with that.  But actually if it was me, I'd use ash as I have lots of it in the shed.

Tulipwood is one of the least expensive hardwoods and machines well, I'd imagine that's why beastmaker use it. A fingerboard doesn't have any fine detail so I think you'd get away with most hardwoods if you want to use a solid block.

I made a board a while back out of plywood. I cut 10 copies of the board shape out of 5mm ply and then cut the slots out of each sheet. So for the 10mm edge I cut a slot in the first two sheets, for 20mm the first 4 etc. I then glued and pinned all 10 boards together. It worked well and was cheaper than buying a solid block of wood. 

Tension Climbing use poplar for their fingerboards.

But not even sure you need a CNC machined bit of wood. Straight edges can be used and you can use any number of fingers on an edge. You don't need pockets to train for pocket climbing. You just use two fingers (or one etc.) on your edge instead of four.

Greasy - yup, that's what I'd thought.  It's what I used to make the face frames and doors for my kitchen.

stp - Tulipwood and poplar are the same thing. 

I use one of the small Moon plywood campus rungs for a lot of my finger training, but I find the edges get greasy/polished a lot quicker than beastmaker holds.

I'd agree with stp with regards just using a straight edge. I have a Beastmaker 1000 and a straight edge one I made myself, using oak for the edges, with similar dimensions as D Mcleod's version. I like the simplicity of the straight edges and the oak is really nice to pull on, the smallest edges on the Beastmaker feel a bit greasy in comparison. 

http://www.crusherholds.co.uk use Ash, Oak & occasionally Iroko for their boards..

Thanks all. I'll have a look into the cost of the various bits of wood. Probs update here when I've made a decision and ready to go.