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Jamming (or jamBing as the case may be).

Hermes

23-Aug-2008
9:13:35 AM

Hi
I'm thinking about adding something to my woodie at home that can simulate jams. At the moment i'm visualising two parallel planks of pine with a gap between and some carving/chiseling to simulate flares, hans jams and fist jams. Has anyone got anything like this on their wall, or have you seen anything that might help me?

Pat

23-Aug-2008
9:53:20 AM

There are a few articles on the web about this. Start with Trad Girls site, there are some really good
looking cracks that have been made on some home walls.

Paulie

23-Aug-2008
11:57:08 AM

When I worked at an indoor wall we built an adjustable crack through the roof section (on the side). It was quite easy actually and involved lengths of timber (from memory about 2 x 8) thru bolted to the frame every 2 foot or so with a nut on the inside as a stopper, the idea being that you could slide the outside length of timber along the thru-bolts and tighten it at whatever width you wanted. Of course this also meant that if the crack was at wide hands size you could just grab the thru bolts! Worked really well at hands - fingers size and because it was straight sided with no grip paint on the inside you really had to use proper technique! It was a real challenge (starting off at 20 deg then going thru a roof and then up a vertical wall), even in hands crack size and I think only 1 bloke ever climbed it when it was set to finger crack size (Bob Cowan of course!).

rhinckle

25-Aug-2008
1:00:01 PM

addition of sandpaper helps to get the feel of a proper jam(b)

Phil Box

25-Aug-2008
1:07:31 PM

Before you can learn to crack climb you need to learn how to spell Jamb.

devlin66

25-Aug-2008
1:40:50 PM

http://www.routesetter.com/forum/1/topic-299/?recent=2478

Robb

25-Aug-2008
1:42:44 PM

went to a new gym in salt lake city a few months ago and they had a crack section of the gym with about 10 different sized cracks. each one about 20 metres long. perfectly parallel. good training for indian creek parallell splitters. lettle bit of texture but not too much.

Ronny

25-Aug-2008
1:57:11 PM

I thought about this once too - and realised that it was a terrible mistake, and that I was better off just training general strength on the wood, and working on crack technique on cracks.

On 25/08/2008 Phil Box wrote:
>Before you can learn to crack climb you need to learn how to spell Jamb.

You can't be serious? How does a door jamb have anything to do with jamming your fist in a crack?

BA

25-Aug-2008
2:05:37 PM

On 25/08/2008 Ronny wrote:

>You can't be serious? How does a door jamb have anything to do with jamming
>your fist in a crack?

Exactly! Only us greybeards and Queenslanders understand this particular bit of Australian climbing folk lore.

Phil Box

25-Aug-2008
2:30:23 PM

On 25/08/2008 BA wrote:
>On 25/08/2008 Ronny wrote:
>
>>You can't be serious? How does a door jamb have anything to do with jamming
>>your fist in a crack?
>
>Exactly! Only us greybeards and Queenslanders understand this particular
>bit of Australian climbing folk lore.

Ed zachary and yes I am serious. ;)) And also for the record he also didn't spell Jamb correctly.

dalai

25-Aug-2008
2:40:51 PM

On 25/08/2008 Phil Box wrote:
> And also for the record he also didn't
>spell Jamb correctly.

I believe the correct spelling is jamB.

IdratherbeclimbingM9

25-Aug-2008
2:43:35 PM

There was a user ID with variations on that theme, that eventually ...

Ronny

25-Aug-2008
3:00:47 PM

On 25/08/2008 dalai wrote:
>On 25/08/2008 Phil Box wrote:
>> And also for the record he also didn't
>>spell Jamb correctly.
>
>I believe the correct spelling is jamB.

My (mock) outrage was not directed towards the suggestion that one has to learn something about door jambs before learining about crack climbing (that makes some perverted sort of sense really...), but was directed towards the suggestion that the word is spelt "jamb".

See definitions below. Its called 'jamming' because you jam your fists/hands/fingers in a crack. It has nothing whatsoever to do with door frames.

jamb
/jam/
noun
1. the side of an opening; a vertical piece forming the side of a doorway, window, or the like.

jam[1]
/jam/ verb, jammed, jamming.
verb (t)
1. to press or squeeze tightly between bodies or surfaces, so that motion or extrication is made difficult or impossible.
2. ...

IdratherbeclimbingM9

25-Aug-2008
3:26:11 PM

On 25/08/2008 Ronny wrote:
>My (mock) outrage was (snip) directed towards the suggestion that the word is spelt "jamb".
>
>(snip) Its called 'jamming' because you jam your fists/hands/fingers
>in a crack. It has nothing whatsoever to do with door frames.
>
You are technically correct but why would climbers let that get in the way of a good slagging? (as BA indirectly attests above)!
I will start the story ...
Back in the heady days of climbing folklore during the height of interstate rivalry, there was an interstate raid by a party who were going to teach the other mob how to climb cracks in their own territory ...
~> feel free to continue BA, since you may have been editor of the hallowed publication at the time? ...

Some links for posterity.

One historical source.

Here quoting the master in an original climb description.

A snippet of trivia.

Ronny

25-Aug-2008
5:10:05 PM

Nice one - I retract my earlier comments. Sorry for the thread hijack.

I don't retract the bit about not bothering with a crack on the woodie though. I climbed a 4m roof hand-crack on my old school's climbing wall once. It had some sort of sand-paper/grit in it and it made you bleed like crazy. We called it "sharing needles" because it was an aids risk - and swore off cracks for ever.

If you do make one though, try to make it variable, so that you can change it when you change the rest of the holds around.

J

Wollemi

25-Aug-2008
6:23:15 PM

Your school had a climbing wall? How enlightened were your teachers and peers! And a roof at that - sounds good, really.

There are 16 messages in this topic.