Prototyping for a reason
During the winter 2011/2012 I volunteered at the International Scout Centre in Kandersteg where I picked up Snowboarding. In southern parts of Sweden there is a miniscule amount of snow though and I wanted to continue this newfound thing that I started, so I gazed at longboards and thought that it would be an ok replacement. My first one was a kind of ok cheap longboard from a major sports brand. On that I learned some balance. Naturally though it didn’t take long for me to start thinking about making my own.
So I started prototyping. The first one was simply a piece of plywood which one would normally use for when pouring concrete. I decided on some form and cut it out with a jig-saw. For grip I used double-sided tape and sand-paper. Real cheap build since I didn’t use anything that my dad didn’t already have in his garage.
It was a real low-rider, if I recall correctly the top of the board wasn’t more that 5-6 cm of the ground. It was somewhat funny to ride in that aspect together with the absolute absence of any kind of rounding of the board to help keep the feet in place. Because of the absolute flatness of the board it almost felt like the board was convex when coming from any board which had any hint of concaveness. Naturally it broke after a couple of weeks in the weakness where the cutout for the trucks is aligned with the inner corner of the tapered ending.
Not to worry, it was only a prototype after all!
The next one I made of three layers of fir plywood. This time I wanted to make a little more elaborate with some bends. I tried to wet the plywood boards in the bathtub but in the end I think that maneuver only made them weaker. I then glued the boards together in a jig so that both some camber and some concave was created in the finished board. It was decorated by a dinosaur painting underneath, inspired by the kids I was a substitute teacher for at the time. Unfortunately i don’t have any picture of it. This was a nicer board to ride in many aspects but fell victim to the same problem as the first one, it broke in the exact same place. It also had some weaknesses in the glueing between the plywood boards.
Ok, with two prototypes under my belt I felt it was time to do another one. I tried googling to buy some maple veneers but to my disappointment it seemed very hard to get hold of. In the end I settled on 4mm birch plywood.
I did this very much the same as the dino-board but without the wetting of the board. To combat the weakness in the glueing I clamped it down very hard with more clamps on a plank that went right along the whole intended board.
To keep this board in one piece I also layed up 600g (2 layers of 300g) glass fibre matt on the bottom together with 45 degrees reinforcements at the weaknesses at the tapering/cutout. The top of the board also got a 300g layer of glass and epoxy as well as proper grip-tape. The sides where sealed with epoxy and I used spray paint to paint the underside.
With all of the mass that went into this board it is quite heavy but it hasn’t broken yet despite an unconscious visit with a broken cheek bone to the emergency room. It has held up nice for many years now.
I wanted to make another board with a little bit more of a spring to it when going from the Randall 2 and Caliber 50 trucks that I have used on the other boards to the Spring-loaded Original S8 trucks for a more smooth ride.
I once again used the same layup as the Cloud-board but the form was a lot longer and the board a bit narrower. The narrowness together with the length made the feeling of this board quite mushy and requires some getting used to. It didn’t help that during the pressing the length made it so that the board does not have a camber all the way. This was stained with mahogany stain before applying the fibre glass.
To try and make a lighter board I knew that I had to make the board smaller because of me using plywood and not veneers, so that I could use fewer layers of plywood. I ended up making a small one, used crushed glass and epoxy for the top grip, slapped a pair of Randall 2 trucks on it. It was a lot lighter to carry around but I always ended up going back to the Cloud and Mahogany (stained birch) boards for riding. I don’t know where this glass board is now actually.