Hi, everyone. I figured I would start a build thread on my newest build that started a little over a month ago. I have been taking picture along the way and it should be done within the next few days, but i am still open to changes/advice. Parts list is as follows…
Trucks: Boardnamics 270mm trucks with adjustable baseplates
Motors: Flipsky bldc 6384 motors
Mounts: Boardnamics xl mounts and clamps
Bearings: Fast eddy sealed bearings (I think that’s the name)
Let me know if I missed anything, I will add some photos with brief descriptions, but please know I am not an expert and take everything posted with a grain of salt as it could be incorrect. I’m here to learn also, so im welcome to constructive feedback!
That is where I started. With an Instagram image of something I thought was amazing and wanted to do something similar but not a direct copy… so I decided to go hunting for something to make that dream a reality… Well let’s just say things didn’t go to plan, which seems like a common occurrence around here. I came across Kami Juins on YouTube who made a tan deck that looked sort of similar, and I initially went down that route. I even bought your run of the mill skateboard deck to accomplish it.
Well, I received it and let’s just say I wasn’t happy. It was way to small to what I imagined and I wanted something a bit larger than the 8 or 8.5 inch wide offerings but I wanted to keep that general shape. So I set out again to find a deck closer to 10 inched wide and 35 to 40 inches long. Turns out there aren’t too many on the market that big with the shape I wanted, and the ones I found were way too expensive for something I wasn’t completely happy with.
That’s when I turned to the forums for help. One random day I was scrolling through the ever so helpful pictures and nothing else thread when I saw a interesting looking deck that appeared to be custom stained. So I reached out and asked if that person had made it… turns out @Nullblox did way more and also made custom decks and molds. That’s when I knew I needed to get one. So we went back and forth going through old prototipo specs and dimensions and really crappy Google pen drawing overlays until we decided on something that seemed like a great idea. @nullblox is a great guy, he even agreed to do the mold on him because it was a cool idea, so he started. He kept me involved and the turn around time was about a week and a half from start to finish.
We started from that image above and went through many steps… (hopefully I’m allowed to share these photos)
We discussed concavity of the board and how we wanted it to look/feel and settled on a flatish deck with some rounded rails and 30 degree ends. Keeping the general side profile of the skateboard deck I had originally gotten except extending the dimensions a bit.
Then we went through trying to shape the deck (im saying we but I was basically just talking and he was doing ha) (good use of the royal we). This process I thought was quite cool and unique because I had never seen it before.
Haha yea, I have it all, im gonna keep typing until i get to current day. Am almost done just need to solder some stuff and connect some things tommorow and then it should be done
The general process was made so painless and @Nullblox did such a great job of keeping me in the loop and letting me make all the decisions I could regarding the custom nature of the deck we were building. Once he had the shaping done (which was quite a bit more involved than I care to type), we looked at stain options. I gave him a few reference photos of natural looking stains that I liked and he accommodated as he is so great at doing.
This was the result… absolutely stunning, he did an amazing job on it and i could ask for a better looking board. (@NullBlox you may be a bit mad at the end ha, but I made a reversible creative decision) ha
Now we will talk about a few other people who helped me on the journey before I get to the reveal of the deck and stuff. So firstly @TheRef, this guy has been great… can’t recommend him enough. I originally only went to him with dimensions… literally only dimensions. They were for the enclosure that I wanted to make and that I needed them to fit inside.
That was basically it, from that he told me discharge for the cells and helped me to understand what the pack would be capable of. He turned that pack around crazy quick and he did a great job! Can’t thank him enough for it. His prices were very fair as well! (Even better with the sale he is currently doing, so if you need a battery hit him up, he is just starting and im sure is gonna do great things!)
@joshoujoe this dude also helped me a crazy amount, I came to him with a request to get some stuff printed. I originally wanted a vx1 and vx2 case printed but ended up shifting away from both in favor or saving a bit to get a hoyt puck soon hopefully. (Don’t have one yet, sticking with vx1 for a bit). He took the dimensions of the boardnamics mounts and somehow found or made the covers for the motor pulleys, as far as I’m concerned he is a magician. Since he is in Canada we had to deal with border security and the package got sent back to him for not being in a plastic bag haha. But he got it fixed and even sent me extra pulley covers and some he griptape for the inconvenience which I thank him for greatly! I only paid for two sets of covers (4 total) and he gave me 7 and griptape which is very kind of him! Also the little pieces on them I did some light Sanding Sanding get off which we agreed I would do ahead of time.
@Paul77 this guy had also helped me out a ton and is still currently doing so, so if you see this paul thank you so much! He was awesome and sold me the tb100s with included pulleys for 25 dollars plus shipping… which is unheard of considering the wheels were basically never ridden on. He has also helped me with setting up the board and saved me from putting my trucks on the wrong way… yes I put them on backwards lol im still laughing about it. I can’t thank him enough.
Also, I can’t remember your name, but to the person that sold me the ESC, I very much appreciate you as well, if I can find you in my messages I will add your name as well. Also If I forgot you my apologies there is a ton of info going through my head at the moment.
I’m sure he could quote more than me on that, I believe width is 10 inches, length is 34 inches and to my knowledge no fiberglass. To substitute we added an extra layer of wood as I’m only 150 lbs 10 ply of the wood with the curved rails is more thsn strong enough, the deck barely flexes under my weight if at all.
This thread gives me nostalgia(LOL for fucking January of this year). The first and best part of my esk8 journey was designing and ordering a custom deck because I didn’t like the one I had. It was the first custom thing I commissioned and I love it more than I can express. That one looks beautiful. Props to you and null!
You are more than welcome for the help and to see you are really taking the time and investigate parts and knowing how it all jives together. Great job so far and can’t wait you see you riding very soon.
I think we are getting close to current time. I’m gonna talk about the enclosure now. Ok so remember how I mentioned kami juins? Well I took a look at his enclosure and I really liked that design so I decided to upscale that and figure out a way to make it better. Well suffice it to say that was a very big task and much larger than I initially thought. I looked through different materials from wood to acrylic to abs to lexan. I didn’t want to do fiberglass because if i went that route I might as well have just bought one because it would have turned out much better than anything I could have done. So I turned to my dad and asked for help. He owns a custom woodworking company and they had some leftover lexan, metal and acrylic from jobs they had done. We found the metal wouldn’t work because it’s very challenging to bend accurately yo be good enough for an enclosure. The acrylic and lexan are similar enough except lexan is more flexible and not as brittle. So we ended up using that. We spent 3 days and around 10 hours making the enclosure, we sealed it from the outside with clear JB weld which also attached the pieces together, then we sealed it from the inside with some clear caulk stuff that I forget the name of. This is what we started with, which I made out of paper to see the dimensions and if it would work.
I gathered the dimensions on a sheet of paper and accounted for the 1/8in thickness of the material to get me something that I was happy with. Me and my dad then measured for the motor cables and the on/off switch and charging port. Those dimensions will be added down below in an image. We drilled them with a drill press and a metal hardened drill bit so they were even/straight and we didn’t crack the material. Then we took the deck and need to figure out the attachment of the enclosure. We again took an idea out of kami juins playback and used spacer standoffs. I currently have nylon ones but I have stainless ones on order. To accomplish this we took measurement and first drilled into the enclosure for 5 of them on both sides, making sure to avoid the holes so they could easily be opened or pressed without a standoff in the way. We used that as a template and clamped it down to the wood to mark the holes for the deck.
We drilled them then using the drill press as wrll with a stopper on it so we didn’t go through the top. We sized the bit according to the attachment point screw things. (Excuse my Grammer, I don’t remember the name of them)
We drilled them a bit deeper than the anchor so it had enough room to get into the deck with too much pressure. We also countersunk the outside of the hole because the first one we tried to put in almost split the surface wood so we used a countersink drill bit and eased the edges on all the holes to counter the wood splitting.
We ran into a few issues with the width of the battery and the standoffs so we had to shave off a bit of the top so it would conform to the deck and align with the standoffs.
That is a bit of a better image of the enclosure, it’s clear but the bottom still has backing paper on it. Don’t worry we will address that issues later.
I also found some really cool attachment things, after we had the holes drilled and the deck has the attachments in it we test fitted it all to make sure it all fit together. This was where it was completely together for the first time, and at this point I attached the cone washers that @Paul77 recommended because of how cool they look.
That is an image of them, that was a few days ago from now and it is currently all apart for reasons you will see later. I believe that almost catches you all up, after that was done at rhat point was where we final sealed the enclosure together with that clear caulk stuff which I still can’t remember the name of. From there we brought it home and I took some photos because I was so happy with how it was turning out.
It could have been left there and could have been put together, but I wanted something even better and more unique. So I went further, I bought some vinyl wrap and decided to get to it. This is where it will come full circle and it will make sense. I have spent the past two days wrapping the vinyl deck. This I didn’t really prepare for I knew I wanted clear grip tape but never had a direction with which to pursue vigilantly and I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to make. I knew it would involve vinyl wrap however because it is removable and while @Sender makes amazing work, I didn’t want it to be that permanent. Well a few days ago my brother came to me and mentioned why not model it after herbie the vw bug from the movie. I have really liked that beetle so I decided to give it a shot. I ordered vinyl and did just that and after two days got some results I am fairly happy with.
I will edit this with the company that made the vinyl sticker for me when I get the chance. But the stripes and vinyl were all by hand by me otherwise. For the stripes I took a reference photo and put some masking tape down and measure from center to make it movie accurate-ish. I made the red stripe half an inch thick, with half an inch in between that and the blue stripe which I made and inch thick. As in the movie it looks around double the thickness. I also offsetted them from center a half inch and then put the sticker in the middle of the board. I accomplished this by masking off a square rhat is 5 inches wide, and 5 inches tall (which is the diameter of the sticker), then I made sure it was in the middle again before setting it and then I placed it as close as I could to perfect and i would say I got pretty close. Also for the wrap I started from the bottom and then wrapped the sides in separate pieces and then wrapped the top last and overlapped onto the sides to secure it all
As for that we are pretty much caught up to current day, I have half completed the vinyl wrap on the clear enclosure. But I’ll save that for tommorow once its done, also to expect what’s coming it should be done tommorow or by the end of the weekend at the latest. I will at the least get the enclosure completed tommorow, I also am going to be soldering tommorow with my brother who is studying to be a mechanical engineer (but any help is still much appreciated)!
Edit: also for the enclosure I am sitting at around 2.5 inches ground clearance weight and still very much clear the ground with weight
Edit 2: also this is my first build thread, anyone have any advice or info on what I can do better? If I can I’ll make the changes asap
Also @NullBlox sorry for covering up your beautiful woodwork. It will be back eventually which was why I used vinyl because it’s reversible and protects what’s underneath ha, just wanted to make my first major build the most insane I could!
if you don’t mind sharing what are the specs length and width
