Over the past couple weeks Gordon and I have been plugging away on a project together. It has been a lot of fun working WITH somebody else in the shop! It is rare that I get to share my enjoyment of woodworking with others in this capacity. Often times it is only shared with finished products, not throughout the many steps of the process.
Anyways, Gordon got the idea to build a long board from searching around the web. Surprisingly there is a wealth of information on this topic. After we both did some reading, we determined the best procedure and approximate shape/design for the board. The trucks and wheels were ordered off the internet and arrived in about a week.
The first step was to determine the what woods to use. We ended up with, from left to right, red birch, tiger maple, cherry, tiger maple and red birch. The color differences of each wood will really pop once we get some finish on it.
Next we had to begin the joinery. For this, a regular glue joint would probably be plenty strong but since this will have abnormal loads from the rider’s weight I wanted another structural component. So for this we opted for the Festool Domino. This is a tool used to cut small mortises perfectly sized to fit their manufactured tenons. You can see on the right a number of the mortises that will accept the Domino tenons. Once glue is applied to the edges and the Dominoes, these joints should withstand any forces applied to them.
Next we clamped the 5 pieces of wood together and allowed the glue to cure. A few days later we took the clamps off and then began to clean up the both faces of the board. We did this first with the jointer to get once flat face, and then planer to get a parallel face and uniform thickness. In between passes at the planer we slowly crept up on the thickness by standing on the board supported by two pieces of wood. This gave us an idea of how the board would flex under a person’s weight once the trucks and wheels were installed. Long boards are meant to have a certain amount of flex to assist in turning and also ride comfort. We planned it down just under 3/4″ which we felt was appropriate.
Once the thickness had been determined, we moved on to the shape of the board. For this, we first drew the shape we liked on a scrap of MDF, then cut it out and cleaned it up. This becomes a template for us to use when we flush trim the long board with the router. We traced this template and then Gordon roughly cut out the shape on the final product leaving about 1/8″ from the line. Then the template was clamped to the board and routed flush.
After the cuts are routed flush we had a lot of time hand planing all surfaces flat and clean. Once we were satisfied with the surface we moved on to round over all the edges like a normal skateboard.
The board is now in the finishing room. The scheduled finish has 3 steps; boiled linseed oil, dewaxed shellac and water based lacquer. We’re hoping to taker her for a test drive this weekend.
Thanks for reading! - NWB
