Making rain grooves in wheels

Found this post on making rain grooves over at the 'fish, and couldn't help but feel it was postworthy. Dremels can be had very cheap these days (Black & Decker FTW ), so this is about as affordable as you can get. Practice on some cheap wheels though, because this method is pretty much freehand!

(Youtube video in the post.)

Schlongboard de Vader

I have yet to put together a schlongboard, but it is on my to-do list! The concept is simple. Drill new truck holes in the kicks of a regular popsicle style deck, and throw on some trucks with some wedged risers. You get a longer wheelbase but still short board for $45US or so. You are still stuck with a 7-ply deck which may be a bit too flexy.

This video although in spanish is a great example. The graphics and style are nice, and he also shows it mounted with Gullwing Sidewinders which are a neat truck (but admittedly opinions vary).

Wheels like the the Orangatang In Heat Have me very interested in wheel shape. I intend on trying the In Heats for a carving setup at some point. Further, there seems to be a lot of interest among skaters of obtaining a lathe for saving their flat-spotted wheels.



Over on the 'fish folks are working towards a low cost reproducible lathe out of available parts. Because casting wheels is fairly expensive, it seems like eventually there could be a market for 'uncut' wheels. Imagine something like a Nersh wheel, in 80mm, with completely flat sides, only a core bored out for the bearings. This would allow people to experiment with just about any lip shape they wanted. But I know the down side.. wheels are already expensive, and there are not enough people interested in cutting wheel lips for personal use. And people more interested in experimenting in wheels are lathing molds and mixing 'thane.

Loop Skateboard

Some things have no goal, no purpose but to exist. I salute you, brave wanderers, and thank you, for this act.



[ via Gizmodo ]

Skateboard Deck Presses

There is a lot of great information on the pages of a mister "Toothless is my middle name", but this page about building a skateboard press is the one that has me excited. I am really not sure why I turn to this instead of the "Dimm" press. I am sure both can turn out some nice boards.

If you are going for mass production you can go all the way to a concrete mold method. Seems like you could get into a decent amount of trouble with that.

For my own baltic birch aspirations, I may just be going for another flat board, and whatever heavy objects I can find around the house.