end of days

Right, Ned's back in Blighty tomorrow night and is currently trying Zerberus as it has rained pretty convincingly for the last 3 days so it's pretty much the only thing dry that he wants to try. Hopefully by the 10th this should correspond to us being better at shipping stuff out as he can get his wobble buns down to Leicester to ship out some more fine pieces o' timber (tulip wood). Ned briefly came out of "retirement" last week and did 2 rarely repeated 8a+s in a day here. Violation and Fueurzange, which was rather spiffing. It was on halloween too and there'll be a retrospective video uploaded when i get home. But for now you'll just have to use your imaginations. We've been sampling some fine beers over the past 48hours too and it can be confirmed with many a hiccup that oberailsfeld "Heldbrau" (hero-brew) is officially 'da shit' with the dark beer basically being liquid caramel. Bring on the plauzen (sp?) I haven't been upto too much except fingerrecoveryfying which is an intricate game of head vs body. Anyway enough waffle as the locals are starting to look at me funny (am parked in a non too inconspicuous place).

few pics on't blog

snow train, originally uploaded by Beastmaker. inc.

literally a few as stealing the web isn't easy round here

whittlin' time

Firstly: A NOTE ON BOARDS, DUE TO POSTAL STRIKES AND 1 OTHER EXTRANEOUS FACTOR WE WON'T SEND OUT THIS WEEKS ORDER UNTIL THE END OF THIS WEEK, APOLOGIES FOR THE INCONVENIENCE BUT POSTIES DO A GOOD JOB AND DESERVE A WEE BIT MORE CASH. WE'LL BE BACK AS USUAL ON SATURDAY.

As for life in Germany:

The weather has crapped out here in the last week like a fecal fracas in a public toilet after a vindaloo convention, but luckily this is the Jura and when it rains, you go a caving, boulder caving, and seeing as though everything is a roof it doesn't really affect the problems too much, you just get as wet as an otters pocket getting to the venue. Ned had begun to whittle things out of wood more than he climbs but is currently carving a fine wooden statue of a man, much to the displeasure of most of the group, who at the moment "wood" take a wooden statue as a woman to be a god send, as most of the locals round here have faces like dropped pies, with only the climbers looking vaguely chalky... But normal. But no Ned deemed it too complicated to carve feminine curves so we are stuck with bloody Adonis to gawk at whilst at the crag. More problems have been a tumbling down on their merry way but nothing over 8a+ yet as we're still putting feelers out on that front as at the moment it's hard enough to find dry rock without getting shot by hunters, accosted by religious locals, or just to find the rock in the forest, you can't see the rock for the trees round here i tell you.

Auf wiedersehen (cheers Andi)

Holidaymakers

Oh guten tag, hope you all like the slightly awkward self service website, unfortunately this has made myself and Ned a tad redundant for now, honest, so we are searching for new customers in the DENSE forest of Der Frankishe Sweiz, aside from having an incredibly Horse-killable land lady, our nice German basement accommodation is purely belter, waking up each morning to miniature deer skulls on every wall along with Doris bending over outside picking her veg from her bushy garden. We've been getting shown round by Fabian Chrishof and his girlfriend Mona, whom win the nicest people in Germany award, and the other night in the pub was golden memory central, with our friend Ben arguing with Marcus windisch ( the quiet 8c crusher whom was sat next to us for half the night, of which we were unaware, as we thought he was just a jolly local villager) about the german music scene, apparently techno is dead and metal core is where it is at for hard Jura sends. Nevertheless times are good and some good boulders have been discovered, a few of them have even been climbed, like V2, Billiard, Some huge highball 8a, Knochenmuller, and the worlds hardest 7cs (harder than the 8a's round here).

The Jura is no place for vegetarians and everything contains meat and sausage, and if it ain't then it's pickled. which pretty much sums up how our fingers and backs feel right about now. The G rectification process has begun but is only in its fledgling stages, by the time we leave things will be straighter than an ironed metal rule.

apologies if your boards take a day or so longer to come than normal, we're working Dave to the bone honest, he's pretty big boned though so can take it

auf wiedersein

online ordering now up.

We've been beavering away these past weeks, and the 2000series boards are now in surplus stock. We are due to make a large batch of 1000series also and due to back order size VS our production capacity we have decided to take them online too as that way we can get boards out fast, order priority will still be given to people whom have waited the longest mind.

you can order the boards from here:

http://www.beastmaker.co.uk/products1.htm

Ned and Dave are already on the continent, crushing european font 8A+s and the trip has barely started. hopefully all the cellar hang time will pay off, keep your eye out for blog updates as we head to Germany

Deutschland

A few months back we received an extra special beastmaker order to Germany and so we decided that we should deliver the board personally. We felt that a 6 week trip was needed to complete the exchange so all best plans were laid, some Aussies were keen and i've never been to the Jura without an antipodean, or more like they've never been without getting rid of me. So this year we plan on eating more cakes than ever and enjoying herbst and october fest along with some cool crisp days and some serious pockets/slopers/crimps.

Anyway for a bit of flava of last years banterful trip then check this video out. The funny numbers are german grades, if you don't know em learn them. The sound track is inspired by Germany's finest radio station Bayern Drie, which has no shame in milking any resource of classic 80's and 90's hits along with themed days! On one rainy day whilst we were there they played rain themed songs all day, witty chaps.

Jura 08 from beastmaker.co.uk on Vimeo.

making changes

There have been a number of changes to the site in the past few days,

the most significant being an article explaining the ins and outs of how to mount a fingerboard in various positions/places around your home:

http://www.beastmaker.co.uk/Mounting_fingerboards.pdf

as suggestive as that sounds it is quite useful to consider these things as you might be able to mount a board in your home where by previously you thought it impossible.

The other article is for the grade obsessed as i'm sick of people moaning about inconsistencies in the boards:

So your qualms are answered here.

http://www.beastmaker.co.uk/Lets_talk_about_grades.pdf

Meanwhile back in the real world, the motherboard at the works got shot of alot of its unused and unpopular holds, only to be placed by about 90 new symmetrical wooden ones. Hopefully this'll improve the board a decent amount and further enhance the, already copious, beastmaking potential in sheffield