Help with sidewalls

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Alex_Blais
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu Nov 30, 2006 6:56 am
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Help with sidewalls

Post by Alex_Blais »

Hey guys,

I am building some wooden snowskates and I would want to have sidewalls to prevent delamination. I figured I could use ABS sidewalls. How am I supposed to do that since snowskates are a bit more curved than skateboards.

Ill show you what I was thinking:

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Image

I think that would work but the problem with this is that I would need 4 pieces of ABS plastic per part. Since there are 4 parts (Nose, tail, side, side) This would result in 16 ABS plastic parts. And I do believe it wouldn't be as good as a single piece of ABS. Would a 1/2'' high piece of ABS flex?

Anyway, this is a major problem for me so if you could give me some ideas of how I could make these sidewalls wether its with ABS plastic or with wichever other material you have in mind. I only need the wood to be protected from water and impacts.

Thanks

-Alex
Ambition Snowskates
www.ambitionsnowskate.com
hydrant71
Posts: 61
Joined: Mon Sep 04, 2006 1:30 pm
Location: portland,or.

Post by hydrant71 »

you could use a solid piece of abs or uhmw sidewall if you routed all the
plys of maple with a template smaller than the finished outline of the board (somewhere between 1/4-1/2"). cut your sidewall thickness to equal the height of the maple plys + glue joint thicknesses. use a uhmw
base and topsheet. laminate and press everything at once. route off excess flash
after pressing with another tenplate. all wood would be sealed inside plastic. don't know how well grip tape would stick to the uhmw topsheet.
be sure to sand and flame treat the sidewalls and use factory sanded
and flamed top seet and base materials. this would basically be snowboard construction with a horizontal laminated core. hope this makes sense and helps.

jason
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mattman
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Post by mattman »

but would this flex enough? the 1/2" tall sidewalls on skis flex fine for pressing because the tips have been planed down to 2mm...if the area that needs to flex is still at full thickness (1/2"), how will the abs or UHMW react? i have this same problem with building longboards...i want to make a sidewall deck, but the deck has some major vertical curves!
hydrant71
Posts: 61
Joined: Mon Sep 04, 2006 1:30 pm
Location: portland,or.

Post by hydrant71 »

i see your point now. may not work in a one stage layup. i think you are right, if your press is the standard hydraulic skate type press i think it could bend the abs but it would have springback after you pulled it out. a two stage
layup would probably work though. pressing the maple first, cut to shape,
then add sidewalls/topsheet/base in a second pressing. sidewalls would have to be prebent then bonded to the core. forming abs is pretty easy with a heatgun, stays after it is cooled in place.

another option would be to prebend all the veneer and sidewalls. then layup top/core/base all at once. part location would be an issue, to
keep everything aligned as the press closed could cause some problems.
some type of cassette would probably need to be used, even then to make
sure that all the plys would slip between the sidewalls/tips would be hard to achieve.

layup in two steps may be your solution for now until you could figure out how to do it in one step.

jason
Alex_Blais
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Joined: Thu Nov 30, 2006 6:56 am
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Post by Alex_Blais »

Thanks for the replys guys

I'll try and see if I could use a different material or something to get it done
Ambition Snowskates
www.ambitionsnowskate.com
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