I’d also mention there’s other factors to flex aside from plies, like the deck contour, ply thickness, and layer orientation. That’s how you can have the Battle Axe with 8 layers be way more flexible than a Rally Cat with 7. I think flex could still work - just look at all the Boosted clones out there, but you’ll need two part or multi-segment enclosures to preserve as much deck flex as possible.
Ah. Agreed. There’s a million more details to crafting a skate deck than just plies and a ballpark stiffness rating. But as esk8 decks to avoid, for me personally, stiffness rating is a halfway decent benchmark.
If the enclosure is segmented or if you’re top mounting I think they are fine, but a long stiff enclosure on a flexy deck is definitely a recipe for disaster
Well, drop hammer is stiff for sure, I have push-carved it the whole summer season and I like to call it “rapid-plank”. Then again, maybe it is stiff enough but I feel like 7 ply may be too little for hard AT driving, I have already done some chips on edges/corners while pushing. And daaaamn, it’s short. It is really short.
Evo 40 seems fantastic, but I cannot find any second-handed locally
Any other suggestions for some drop/double-drop 40ish deck for AT esk8?
And just to be clear - LY is a great brand, I love their boards. Had the chance to test several different models of theirs and they are solid, predictable. So as others had already noticed, the first post problem maybe just a poor deck-purpose selection rather than a poor deck itself.
I absolutely love how you analyze this failure and give as many details as possible and try to advance the science — instead of just making a popcorn thread shitting on a vendor for the drama factor.
Another small detail i thought was interesting-
I tore apart the build last night () and realized the split stops above the end of the epoxied drop thru.
I’d forgotten that I embedded strips of fiberglass inside the cutouts as I poured (2 layers of epoxy), which may have actually stopped this failure from shearing clean through.
Additionally, you can tell from the previous image, the epoxy did not bond to the wood very well in some places.
Hey! I set up an account just for this. I work with Landyachtz, so thought i could give some advice about the product range. First, it sucks that the it snapped. But other’s in the thread have the right idea. That board has a lot of flex to it, and i’d think that the sudden torque of the motor over time just weakened the wood the glues. It’s just not the kind of forces that deck was designed to take. If i was chosing one of our decks to use as the basis for an esk8 project, I’d go for a switchblade. They’re a lot stiffer, Canadian Maple, and they’re 9 ply. I’d go for the 38’s as I’m not the tallest guy, but there’s 40’s too. Or, and this one might seem a bit crazy, the ATV-X decks. They’re smaller, most designed for street skating and cruising, but they have two layers of composite mixed in with Canadian Maple.
At the other end of the scale entirely are the race boards. They’re a blend of maple and carbon fibre. Expensive but super stiff. The Evo’s (which others have suggested) are technically race boards too, but I also hesitate to categorize them with the El Peligro and Obsidian.
Lastly, someone mentioned shipping from Canada to the EU would be expensive for a landyachtz board. We have some distributors in Europe, I’m not going to link them all here as i don’t want to seem like I’m shilling businesses, but just google around for local resellers of our boards and you should find them.
Anyway, I hope that helps or is at least slightly informative.
Thanks anyway!
) and realized the split stops above the end of the epoxied drop thru.
