Well lets be honest here, obviously I did not expect this process to be an easy one, however I did not really expect to run into this many difficulties and still not have at least a viable blank (blank deck). My first attempt was just down right terrible, I used terrible wood and my concave was way too steep. Essentially turning my would be board into a long soup bowl. I changed the rail height on my press to 1/2 in. instead of 3/4 in. And I purchased better wood (well Better quality does not mean useful in board making). I got my hands on 1/4 in. birch plywood and it is too stiff to fit into the press without cracking at the kick tail. Off to locate a more pliable plywood. After doing some research I have found a wood shop that sells 1/8 in Baltic birch wood. Lets hope that this leads to some sort of success. If this does not work then I will be forced to learn how to steam wood.
O.k. This was a long weekend and i took advantage of this by building both my first and second variations of my board press. Unfortunately I lost all of my photo documentation of me actually building the press. About 1 week ago i smashed my other iPhone, fortunately I had a upgrade which I used to get a iPhone 5C... cool. Well I had all my pictures of my press making on my new phone and when i went to upload the pictures to my computer i was prompted to update my phone. As part of that I was given the choice of making my new iPhone "a new phone" or sync it to my old phone. I thought (in my ignorance) that it would just upload all the old stuff back onto my new phone, I was wrong. What it did was replace all of my pictures with my old pictures, change my backgrounds and a few other irrelevant things. Long story short it ditched my new pictures without backing them up to my computer. Lame. So now I have to go through and document my weekend journey without pictures, so sorry to any readers who would have liked to see some images.
skateboard 101O.k. so when I first decided that I wanted to build a skate board I figured cool, this will be a rad idea... then I stated to do some basic research into what supplies were needed by basic i mean i literally typed into Google, "Build your own skate board". On every website that I visited regarding DIY skateboards the very first thing that was needed was a board press.... What in the world is a board press and how do I get my hands on one???? Just so you know this is one type of design that I found while looking into Longboard Presses. I found this at Silverfishlongboarding.com. Now for me this is a bit complicated and I think I will look around to see if its possible to build a more simplified method of pressing a board.
The basic principle is to use a cut out mold to create a bend in sheets of plywood by using glue and pressure... granted that is a very simplified description, but it drives the point home. the initial planSo I have been in a bit of a slump trying to figure out what it is that i want to do for this 20% project. I felt that doing something along the lines of coaching (which was my initial interest) felt like a bit of a cop-out. Then I was talking with a friend and I had expressed the interest of learning how to build and shape my own skate board. So there you have it the beginning stages of my 20% project.
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