Skateboard

CONTRIBUTOR: Ben Schmidt

DESCRIPTION:

DIY Skate board using 3 layers of 3 ply, some well made jigs, cheap skateboard trucks, wheels etc.

 

DETAILS:

• Jig construction: The jig is time consuming to construct. To complete the final shaping I used a heavy grit sandpaper wheel on an angle grinder as recommended. After doing this I used tool making technique (outlined in the following wiki link below), however, instead of using marking blue, I used blue chalk to get the same effect. This involved applying chalk to the top half of the jig, then putting both halves together (clamp if necessary). After removing the top half it was evident to see where the high spots were (as the blue chalk had transferred onto the bottom half). I then removed the high spots (on the bottom half) and repeated this process. The aim is to achieve a good/even covering of chalk, indicating that both halves fit together well. After completing the initial press, my first board had a slight gap between one of my plywood layers. I did have to modify the jig slightly in order to fix this. I applied some iron on edge strip to a point on the bottom half of the jig. This fixed it by causing more clamping pressure at that point.

• Board construction:I used three layers of 3mm plywood to construct my boards. I’m sure 1mm or 2mm would probably be better, however, we had 3mm in the rack and it seems to work fine (cheaper too). The plywood I used was interior. Once again exterior would probably be better, however, we had it in the rack and it worked fine (cheaper too). I used a Roland Camm-1 vinyl cutter to make the stickers. I also grabbed a large roll of deck grip from a skate shop which worked out to be relatively cheap (about $2.50 p/m).I made a template using Inventor (I got dimensions of the net) to trace onto the pressed board. You could either cut it out using the bandsaw or jigsaw.

 

PHOTOS:

RESOURCES:

• I used to DIYSKATE website assist me in the construction of the jig. It includes useful PDF templates.
• There are loads more great sites. http://diyskate.com/skateboard.html
• kit on eBay: Includes trucks, deck grip, wheels, bearings and a tool used to assemble. I used this for my first board. Link to Ebay

 

Enjoy and share!