The Setup

There are many reasons why becoming a homeowner has been really exciting, but high up on the list is the fact that I now have the space to construct my own board.  I've been living in rented accommodation since leaving my parents and going off to uni in 2002 so I've never been able to drill, saw and generally vandalise my home in order to dangle from my fingers.  I've partly circum-navigated this issue by using temporary kit – rock rings hung from rafters and a Beastmaker mounted on a board that fits onto and off an Argos pull-up bar (a design dreamed up by Murdo, my training guru), but nothing beats the convenience of having your own setup in the garage.

Since Rich built his I've been a regular in the exclusive Bettsmaker user group, and although every session I have there is a general lesson in punishment and humiliation I do think it’s probably given me some gains.  If nothing else, I love the simplicity of board sessions: short, sharp, hard.  In the near future I can only imagine that life is going to get busier, so being able to get in regular good sessions without having to trek into town will be a big bonus.

So now it’s on.  The month of January, a month that’s brought some of the wildest weather for a while, has been put aside for me to convert our big wooden leaking shed into a, um, big wooden leaking shed with a board in it.  At the start of the process I knew almost nothing about construction or woodwork or design, but a couple of weeks in I’m pleasantly surprised at how things are going.  I still know nothing about construction or woodwork or design, but I’m learning that with a liberal application of cement, screws, bolts and half-arsed trigonometry and with regular trips to Wickes, Homebase and Highland Industrial Supplies to buy an armoury of metalwork, you can make things stand up and stick together.

There’s still a fair way to go before it’ll be ready, but I’ll let you know when it’s done and you can start the countdown to my first injury.