An advising from crass led me to decide to make a drop through version of the Phat Cruize Big Gun. I had really enjoyed the Big Gun as a hard carver and had made use of it's ability to carve with no fear of wheelbite. The only thing I could have wanted from this sleeper deck is for it to be dropped a bit to give it's massive size added stability.

As luck would have it one of our riders, BomberMark has some experience with woodworking and deck modding. So after getting a big gun donated to silverfish for this project by Eider of Phat Cruize, we hit up Marks’ roommate who has a really solid wood working shop with every tool we needed. What would make someone want to drop through a deck that is almost 60” long? Who knows? All I can say is it turned out sick.

Tools Used

First thing we did was transfer the Feral template to steel giving us a rigid base to outline the area we would be cutting out. We bolted down the template and then drew around it to as a guide.

Next we took a routing drill bit to bore out starter holes for the jigsaw. It didn’t matter too much as to the placement as long as they did not go outside the lines. It would have been a good idea to either drill on another piece of wood or tape off the back to minimize splintering. We tried to maximize the removal of wood on the lead and trailing edge of the truck. Then we took a standard drill bit and on an angle and drilled out the wing holes.

After we had finished off the hole boring it was time for the jigsaw with a very steady hand Mark followed the outline and cut out the base of the drop through. After sanding down the edges with a file, hobby knife, and clearing out the wing holes to get the truck to fit it looked good. At this point if you just want to do a drop through you could be done. However we wanted the deck flush with the mount.

We loaded up the router and set the depth, following closely the lines on the deck we started routing, halfway through the first hole the router started smoking. The router bit had started to drift down and went way deeper than we had set it to. It looked real bad. However very little of the damage was deep enough to cause concern and it had not really messed up the integrity of the mount so we just applied some putty and let it set while we routed the other end.

Once we had the bit set correctly we made short work of the next flush hole. It would have made the process much quicker if we had made a router template. When we do this again I am sure we will make one. The final cleaning of the flush mount went easy just minor alterations to align the mis-drilled Randal or deck, whichever it was. Once we had it straight we started working on the set putty and finished routing out the nose.

The putty had to be drilled as it had filled one of the holes. Quick work of that and the flush mount looked good. We dropped in the trucks which sat a little tight on the holes and didn't drop right in. We set up the baseplates and inserted the screws and bolts by cinching down bolt after bolt the truck slipped into the deck with a perfect fit. A nice flush finish.

If I had it all over to do again I would have done a few things different. Mostly I would have been involved more all I did really was watch. Mark did all the work which I didn't mind I was more busy asking questions and taking pictures but I would like to do it again and actually be involved. Mark suggested making a router template ahead of time and that would have cut our time down quite a bit. Also making sure the router bit is secure would have saved us some putty. All in all even with the putty error it took 3 hours start to finish. I am very pleased with how it turned out.