7 months ago
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Step 7: I’m going to cut you so bad (…you’re going to wish I didn’t cut you so bad)
Bam! The board has been cut out (and setup with some Bear trucks and Zombie Hawgs just for the heck of it).
Note that we haven’t hit it with poly or anything yet. This is strictly a cut out of the pressed blank so it’s going to look rough. I realize the lighting in my apartment’s hallway isn’t doing much for it either.
And, yes, he was already scolded for sanding against the grain and forcibly shaping the edges of the board with a low grit.
The cut was based off this design and discreetly cut out in our university’s architecture workshop:
We, uh, aren’t allowed to go there anymore.
Body shot time!
You can see the kicks are gigantic as planned. They don’t curve upwards quite as much as we were hoping, but they are still very functional.
You can see the impressive camber we managed to get.
[
Unfortunately, 4 ply doesn’t flex for either us, so it’s a bit like riding an ungripped camel at the moment. We have a bit of “why didn’t we try concave” type regret right now. I think it’s shape something I could tough out and get used to for just cruising around, but Zippyo isn’t a fan. We might try flipping the board for some ‘fake camber turned weak substitute concave’, mounting trucks, and pretending we meant to make our kicks curve downward when anyone asks about it. Like a boss.
I don’t know. I don’t think it’s too bad of a build for a first shot.
Wheelbite potential test with 150lbs:
Check it
So, lessons learned:
[*]All camber and no flex makes for sad board builders
[*]There’s a lot more to the design of kicks than you’d think
[*]Sanding against the grain is bad
[*]Truck mount outlines kind of look like penises before you cut them out
Stick around for a future builds post. I’ll probably do this type of thing again if we go for a second board. Let me know what kind of information you’d like me to include next time around. Hopefully, someone got something out of this one.
7 months ago
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Step 6: Out of the Press
Our board press took on an earthquake AND a hurricane this week.
Yeah. It’s that badass.
Aaaand, we somehow still have a workable blank. Here’s how it went down.
First off, after about 80 hours of class schedule inspired neglect, we took some time and removed the clamps. We noticed that our washers had taken some abuse, so we’ll probably have to flip them for our second build and then replace them for our third build. All in all, that’s a pretty small investment to keep our makeshift press in working order.
Our clamps also have a nice green sheen on them. That’s kind of unfortunate, but there’s no much we could have done with my back porch doubling as our workshop. My room is already full of leftover industrial foam and the remnants cut threaded rods and my room mates aren’t fans of turning our living room into a workshop. Lame, I know.
Everything looked good when we opened the press.
Here’s a rough idea of the camber.
We cut the excess wood glue off to make ourselves feel a little better about our rough looking blank. It looked like caramel*!
*It did not taste like caramel.
The result of our sliding plys might cause an issue when we go to cut. I don’t think our planned error margin can accommodate this extent of sliding. We may have to shorten our board a bit and go for an awkward 36” instead of 38” or something like that.
This is our blank in it’s entirety.
The flex test (with some Vibram rep):
We are disappointed in the flex. I get no flex at 115lbs and Zippyo only gets a few centimeters at whatever he is, which makes the sweet camber kind of pointless. We’re not sure if we should ditch our designs or try to pry a ply off to get some flex back. I can maybe see the flex increasing a bit when we cut down the blank, but probably not enough to make this a worthwhile trick deck. Either way, our next build will probably be 3 ply.
I’m not sure when we’ll be able to cut the deck. We trying to bribe an architecture major for access to a jig saw or band saw so we’ll see how that goes.
