Skate board quarter pipe/bowl...

John Pollman

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Location
Rochester Hills, MI
Hi folks!

Been busy the past few days and that's a good thing. ;)

My son is a big time skate boarder and spends quite a bit of time skating every week. He's been skating for about four years I think and his main hangout is at an indoor skate park here in Rochester. I've gotten to know the owners pretty well and done some work for them on their home as well as some additions at the park. Each October they have a big competition and it's usually packed. They like to keep the park "fresh" and add something or make changes fairly often but there's a limit to how often they can do it. Well this year they decided that they wanted to remove a small ramp and three-stair unit and in its place build a new quarter pipe at a ninety-degree angle to the original and connect the two with a "bowl corner". As I said before, I've built them some ramps and such before but nothing this ambitious. He just hit me with this a week ago on the September 25th. Their "Shred-Fest" competition is on October 23rd! I knew it would be tight but told them that I should be able to get it done but I'd have to get going NOW. :eek:

I immediately got busy doing some research on building these things and getting a material list together. It's pretty complicated but nothing I can't handle. The biggest thing is that this is a pretty good size project for the time frame and I'm only ONE guy. I've got it pretty well figured out except for getting the 2-3/8" steel tube coping bent into a roughly 81" radius arc. After MANY phone calls and not being able to find someone to do it I figured I may have to cut it back to 2" thin wall pipe and buy a tubing roll former at Harbor Freight. Luckily I finally found a place that I know can handle roll forming the larger diameter pipe but I haven't heard back from them yet. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. ;)

A On Wednesday morning I got busy with the demo work on the existing ramp and prepared to start construction on Thursday. By Wed. afternoon I had everything removed and was ready to go. I was at the BORG bright and early Thursday morning and got the first load of stuff. Two grueling twelve hour days in a row and here's where I'm at...

This is the "three-stair" and ramps that I removed...

3 stair by Budster48309, on Flickr

I spent most of the day Thursday making the template and cutting all of the ribs in preparation for assembly on Friday. Here is a progression of pics...

Here's where I was at by the end of the day Thursday...

qp1 by Budster48309, on Flickr

And here's what I did on Friday...

qp2 by Budster48309, on Flickr

qp3 by Budster48309, on Flickr

qp4 by Budster48309, on Flickr

qp5 by Budster48309, on Flickr

Sorry for the poor quality of some of the pictures but I snapped them with my cell phone because I forgot my camera. I was pretty tired last night but I'm sure that I'll be able to be finished in plenty of time for the competition though. If my source comes through and can roll form the coping, I'm shooting for completion by next weekend. That will give the kids a couple weeks to break it in and get used to it. Seems to be going pretty smoothly and I think for a one-man job I'm happy with the progress. I'll post some more pics later as completion nears.

Take care!

John
 
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Heck no!

At the tender age of forty-six, and having two shoulder surgeries and two knee surgeries in the past five years I think I'll leave it to the youngsters. I don't bounce as well as I used to. :)

John
 
Done!

Well it's ready to skate but the other day I had an idea for a little bit of additional work that should be pretty cool. I mentioned it to the owner and a couple of the employees there and they like the idea. Instead of just stopping it flat on the end, I'm going to put a couple more hip type ramps on the end. Everyone is anxious to skate it though so I finished up a couple hours ago and cleaned up. They can skate it for a couple days and I want to meet with the guys and discuss the additions before I get started building them. The thing of it is that they will be a piece of cake compared to the rest of this project. I've got about sixty hours into it so far but the new stuff that I came up with will only take 2-3 hours tops I'm sure. I'm glad to have this one behind me! :)

Here's what the finished product looks like...

qpdone.jpg


qpdone2.jpg
 
That looks great, John. :thumb: I see it didn't take long for them to start pitting stickers on it...that must mean the skaters approve. :thumb:

I have a nephew who worked as a carpenter for a year or so with a company that built commercial skate ramps. He helped put together ramps and such for one or two of the X-Games.
 
Thanks guys!

I knew it was going to be a big job but it turned out to be a lot more work than I had anticipated. On the bowl section, it's formed out of FIVE layers of 1/4" sheets. The book I read on building these things called for starting with one layer of 1/2" plywood and then two layers of 1/4" plywood followed by one final layer of 1/4" masonite or something similar.

The one they were building in the book though used two constant eight foot radii. (The vertical one for the templates and the horizontal) The existing quarter pipe that I had to match used a vertical radius on the template that wasn't consistent and the horizontal radius was only 83". It was too tight to try and bend 1/2" plywood without screwing around soaking it and such and that would have been impossible with the time constraints I had for this job. I ended up finding some 1/4" OSB that was pretty flexible. I wasn't too sure at first but decided that by the time I screwed down four layers as the base it should be fine. The final layer is 1/4" furniture grade Birch ply.

I didn't worry too much about minor gaps in the first two layers of the OSB but on each of the third and fourth layers I tightened things up a bit and it was pretty good by the time it was ready for the final layer of Birch. The final layer wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. I just laid it out by cutting an 12" long piece of OSB at ten degrees and laid it on the fourth layer of OSB with the point at starting point of the radius. Then I just used my rotary laser and lined it up with one edge of that small template. Then I could just get a clear straight line on the bowl and I made marks while the laser was running. Once I had the first one done, I just moved the template over and repeated the process eight more times. Then I just took a Sharpie and a long flexible straight edge and drew in all of the lines to make them solid. It made it much easier doing it this way and I wish I had thought of it while doing the first four layers!! ;)

After all of the pie shaped pieces were marked, I used a piece of builders paper and made a template to cut from. It worked out very well and went OK. On some of the pieces I got lucky and they fit well after only one or two minor adjustments. On others though, it was five or six trips back to the table saw for a tweek here or there to get it just right. Now they're not "furniture grade" invisible joints but they look pretty good. Heck it's not an end table, it's a skate board ramp.

I went back over there for a little while this evening and the kids were skating on it like crazy. At this point, it looks like it's a hit!

John
 
Very good job John. I missed the skateboarding generation and phase completely so i have no idea how the guys go through or round that bend. Any chance sometime you could get us a cell phone pic just for giggles to see how its used. Dont need no faces showing just the board going round with a skater on. :)
 
Oh I know what you mean. I don't know how they do it either. My son is always saying "Dad, look at this". Sometimes I find it hard to watch because I'm afraid of what's going to happen. He's one of those kids that can flip the board and rotate it mid-air and then land on it. And that's just the start. It's amazing what they can do with those things. I'll post some pics of it in use. I've got to get back over there and get a couple things I left behind so I'm sure I can snap a pic then.

John
 
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