Ceiling Mounted rings

[Cole Dano]

Its wise that you do plan out your strategy before starting to drill into anything.

In theory if your ceiling joists are running the direction that you want your rings then just sinking the eyebolts into them will work. That is if everything goes right. If you accidentally drill off center then you could have some reliability issues. I have nightmares about rings falling down so i'd really want to be sure it was done right.

You next two options are better. If you are worried about appearance you could also go up into the attic and build some cross bracing there that you can confidently drill into. If you do this then you should use an eye bolt that takes a nut rather than the wood screw style.

To make the cross bracing strong, instal a 5 inch 2x4 on each joist right down at celling level, then take two 2x4, one the length of the gap between joists, and the other shorter so it fits between the two blocks. Nail this to the blocks and you will have a very sturdy set up. You'd need to do this across a two gaps to create a surface wide enough to accommodate rings at the typical 19-20 inch spacing.

Then you drill down from the attic. Of course you need to make some measurements etc to get it in the right spot.

This would be very reliable and safe and as non-intrusive as possible to your living space.

[Mehmet Yuce]

mercuryashes,

If you're concerned with safety, you can also use cross dowels with eyebolts instead of screwing the eyebolt directly to the joist. That's the way I did it. You can get them here: http://www.woodpeck.com/crossdowels.html#158. The connection looks like this: