A few years back I received some core components for a thane build. Amongst these parts were tb110’s, some weird deck dubbed “bamboo gt flex” from the guys at propulsion, and a battery (12s3p 40t). After some shenanigans at my university this was much needed, I can’t get into details but I was big into long boarding and occasionally the culture that goes with this free spirited mindset. ugh.
So I begin the build and somewhere on the og forum it lay, but it was not up to snuff. I quickly moved to mountainboarding because of the physical aspect of it, and to this day havent ridding thane in years, expect on a surf skate. I lost my roots, as I started with small thane on kick boards.
So I dig the MTB scene, but that road feel on thanes gives me chills. (For more info on anything above feel free to ask)
Build
One of the goals for this board was a bracket designed to be used with any truck on the market, channel, tkp,rkp,pkp,atb, whatever. I love having a dedicated board, a board for a specific use case. But with this comes trade offs. I went to work with this idea and came up with 11 gauge crs brackets, that mount at various heights and various angles (deep drop -10, +10,-10,+30,+30 long wheel base, +30 drop, etc. There’s about like 6 or 8 positions idk it was a headache coming up with this mounting pattern, but I did. The called rolled steel did not paint well (imo) I used automotive self etching rim primer, followed directions, and rustoleum. Unfortunately there are a few areas that got scuffed because, yeah. they will be used anyway. They are secured with 2 9.5mm diameter stainless pipes, and 2 m8 bolts.They were designed for kingpins (3/8) but I wanted stainless and relatively cheap.
Bracket Images - more to come
This bracket seems strong, no idea, might jump might not haha, ill check out the rigidity when its mounted.
Deck
This is the deck that came with my first esk8 experience. It has mild w concave, slight camber, mini drop, and drop through. Pretty solid. BUT if I had pictures of how I received it you all would laugh. There were massive inserts in a mis matched unusable drill pattern that completely went through the middle of the deck. about 16 inserts. terrible job. my guess is this deck came from china and was a one time thing for a small company. originally the deck has 10 ply, 2 ply fiberglass and 6 ply maple. the tops and bottoms were bamboo veneer. Interesting.
Here’s a photo of the deck before I went to town, after I went to town.
I had fiberglassed the deck and it turned out decent, but the adhesion of the fiberglass to the wood was not optimal. upon impacts areas would separate from the deck, making it non structural. My problem was polyester stinky fume resin.
So I peeled the glass off carefully, to reuse later…
The deck was stiff and good all that jazz but a bit boring for me. I cut the nose and tail to make an Idea style deck, accommodating my brackets.
I messed around with the deck for a bit sanded it, painted it, sanded it, wood burn, what have you. My conclusions were
Apply fiberglass to bare wood.
I also wanted to take out some wood from the core and experiment with some xps foam I had around. The pink kind.
Stringer
Soo, I take wood outta the deck, who needs a deck. I wanted the deck to be light, strong, adjustable. The answer to my tinkering needs is a stringer. Why?
The stringers contains plywood in the areas where the brackets mount, acting as a built in riser, which is necessary given my design. Its also constructed of 4 ply of fiberglass, and yours truly, great stuff.
I used the bottom panel of fiberglass which I previously removed as the base because it conformed to the deck, and then flattened out some fiberglass on the road facing side so the brackets mount flat. I have more pictures just need to dig them up.
I decided to drill holes in the foam and let gravity pull som epoxy through.
Shout out to my broken skim from youth for inspiration,
Deck finishing More to come
So I went for clear epoxy based resin this time. the results were much much stronger, in terms of adhesion.
I glassed a lot with cloth and used mat to enforce the foam and truck holes. I don’t have much photo from this stage its hard to document when working alone.
also first time with frit.
Battery
I have 13 6s 1p modules ( samsung 30q) from battery hookup and I need to order supplies but also have some batteries on hand not sure of my direction. Either, 12s6p 30q, 12s3p 40t, or 12s 4p p26a.
Unfortunately my original battery from propulsion boards is on its way out. It only charges to 49.1 volts, ugh. can’t figure out what’s wrong each cell is reading higher than 4v fully charged.
Misc
I have 6374’s on hand, which will work for thane (tb110s) and will be using a 14/38 set up.
I want to mold an enclosure for sed battery, either top mount or bottom not sure.
At the moment I will be using 15.2 inch trucks from flipsky and dickyho mounts, as well as a storm core 60d. The brackets allow flexibility to fine tune which truck is right for which build.
I have lots more coming up regarding this project, its current state is pretty clean given what its been through. Thanks a bunch for anyones interest, id love feedback on my brackets and ways to improve, I’ve already came up with a few.
