Hi all! Like many of you my desire for esk8 is insatiable and I crave bigger and better.
The inspiration for this build was my Unity shitting the bed and putting my old board down for maintenance.
Thus, Shadowfax was born. Begin build log!
The concept: An integrated-deck board built for 2 things: reliability and durability.
The deck is going to be completely custom work, comprised of layered sheets of 1/4" birch ply interleaved with 250gsm fiberglass and epoxy. Since bending is a lot of work, I’ll be using either brass or oak pins epoxied into the transition areas of the dropdown to reinforce the plys.
Specs
Most of the parts are pilfered from the bones of my last build:
Deck: Custom 43" x 10" Integrated Enclosure Dropdown
I used spray adhesive to stick paper templates to the sheets before cutting them out roughly on the bandsaw. They don’t need to be super precise cause I’ll be sanding everything down to a uniform contour later.
I also stacked the pieces up to get an idea of how the deck is looking.
Brief process summary: drilled 1" holes with a forstner bit at key points, and cut between them with a jigsaw. The blade was a little dull and tore up the first layer I used it on but after I replaced it everything went fine. You can see in the last photo the drill bits I’m using as alignment pins to ensure consistent alignment during test fits and such.
Over the past few days I managed to get the enclosure space cut out…
I didn’t want to update until I had wire channels cut in but I think I’m gonna wait till after glue up for that.
Pictures will be in the main post (Apr 7).
Next steps: clean up the profiles, and glue up!
I’m on the fence between fiberglassing the whole exterior or leaving the wood grain exposed
It’s been a while since I updated this log so I figured now is as good a time as any to put out some current events.
Exams have been keeping me pretty bogged down recently so I haven’t had tons of time to work on the build but I did get a chance to sand out a small test patch of the contour of the deck.
The weather’s still too cold to do any epoxy work, so I have to wait a while yet for that…
The aluminum blanks I’m using for my ESC heatsinks have arrived at the shop, I just need to pick them up on Monday and take them to my CNC guy.
I received some Freefly Arc200 ESCs from the lovely @DerelictRobot the other day, and I’m super excited to use them in this build.
I am currently parallelizing the two tasks of waiting for the weather to warm up, and waiting for my heatsinks to be machined. So, that’s where the project stands for a while. Although, with the ESCs in hand, the only part I don’t have that I need to complete the build is the heatsinks, so we’re in good shape to finish before summer starts.
Here’s a few photos of the pieces after glue-up. These will then need to be assembled and glued together to form the deck, which will then be sanded to the final contours and fiberglass wrapped for maximum indestructibility. I’m using west system 105 epoxy with 205 hardener 'cause that’s what was on hand at the time.
In other news, my dad and I are currently discussing building a large cnc router, and making and selling real schnazzy skateboard decks so if there’s interest, it would make his day tomorrow to hear about it!
That’s right kids - major deck parts are finished curing. Ready to be assembled into the full deck.i literally did a happy dance after unclamping these babies. Couldn’t be more thrilled.
I also picked up my aluminum heatsink blanks and delivered them to my machinist for CNC.
Yeah, the two bits above are the nose and tail. I’ll be glueing them on soon as well as sinking 3/8" aluminum plugs through several holes to reinforce the joints.
The wood I used is Baltic birch, I think there’s about 80 or so total plys in the final deck.
I sure hope so! It’s geared for around 69kph top speed (unintentional I swear).
Super pumped about this, I think it’s lookin’ real shmexy. It’s at like approximately 180 grit rn but who’s counting? Anyway I won’t go on an on about it. Peace!
Excellent questions…
The nose n’ tail were epoxied on to the main body and the small silvery circles in some of the pics are 3/8" aluminum rods epoxied in vertically to relieve some strain from the joints.
, a larger deck with long integrated enclosure 
.
