I figured I’d document this build as I’m trying out a few things for the first time and learning as I go. Mainly pressing a deck.
I made my mold for the deck by cutting several 2x4’s into 1.2m lengths, then marking & cutting the cross-section profile from the side of my deck, working from outer edge to the centre.
Other than the 35 degree angles for the trucks, I wanted the deck to be mostly flat in the middle but pocketing in towards the foot bed with slight curves and concaves on the heel and toe. To acheive this, I started with my side profile higher at the footbed on the outer ends, and cut the 2x4’s deeper as it headed towards the middle of the footbed. Once all the pieces were cut, I glued and screwed them together and spent around 2-3 hours sanding the mold until the individual lengths blended into one, and the shape was somewhat uniform.
After already failing my first maple sheet/fibreglass pressing attempt due to some weird chemical reaction between the deck glue and the fibreglass resin, I decided to just keep it simple and do an all Canadian Maple sheet deck for my second attempt. I purchased the sheets of Roarockit and watched several DIY tutorials on pressing decks to make my decision on how I wanted to go ahead with it.
I originally built a large timber frame press with steel supports, utilising car jacks to push the suspended top mold down to the bottom mold, but ultimately the amount of pressure from the car jacks snapped the timber frame so I went back to basics and just used braces and clamps, which proved to give a surprising amount of clamping strength. I used the wood glue from Roarockit. Not sure if its any better than other wood glues but it certainly did the trick.
I didn’t really have a shape in mind for the deck and never had anything drawn up in CAD. My only requirements were that it would fit the TPU footpads and battery box enclosures that I make, so I basically drew a few different shapes over the sheets until I was happy, then cut it.
Once it was cut and sanded, it was time to start bolting some bits together. As much as I’d love to buy a new set of trucks and motor mounts, I decided to make use of these Trampa Vertigo’s that were on a previous build. They were a little banged up and I didn’t want the colours, so it was time to sandblast and respray.
I just had a quick test fit and a few jumps on the deck to test the durability and it’s holding up great. My next project is a slightly bigger enclosure for the batteries, as I want to hold 4x 12000mAh lipo’s in there to quickly hot-swap for longer range travel. It looks like it only needs to be about 30mm longer than my standard boxes…I’m thinking of doing a mostly alumimium enclosure, with JDM clips for ease of access
I’ve just been doing it outside and hoping small bugs don’t try and land on my parts since they like to kill themselves that way for some reason.
