kraffft work

[kraffft]

I don't know about a quick-release clamp or anything, but you could easily make an on-the-fly adjustable kingpin, given you have a drop-through deck. Take a longer bolt as your kingpin (like, 5in), with a good amount of thread. Mount your hangers and bushings to the baseplate using TWO nuts, with the bottom nut (furthest from the bp) at the very end of the bolt, and the upper bolt affixed to the baseplate. This would let the head of the bolt extend above the baseplate, which you can adjust with a small wrench or skate tool. You could use a bolt with coarse threads for faster adjusting, I suppose...

This would be nifty, but I'm not sure how useful it'd be. If your goal is better speedboarding, time would be better spent training your tuck and strengthening your ankles. Not to mention you would probably lose stabilty just reaching down and trying to adjust something...

This is about what I had in mind, with the added consideration that you'd need a way to keep the entire kingpin from rotating when you turned the top nut, since neither end would be fixed in place (like a keyed shaft and hole). The top nut could be a large wingnut (with nylon insert).

A similar wingnut could work for adjusting wedging, though it'd be more of a contraption..

Skill is always more important than gear in racing.. but adjustability can be nice for other reasons, particularly for learning what set-up you like. A simple adjustable wedge that would work with any truck and topmount deck would help a lot of people (it's a pain to repeatedly change hardware, and you don't get the immediate comparison). Fun design problem too..

[Chainmaillekid]

HAHAHAA!!!

Glad to see Im not the only one who distroyed my camera this last weekend
( which is going to delay my own Werks thread )

YouTube - The last thing the camera recorded

Which is scarier... Blood or heights?


Also, here's our take on the whole Quick release/ adjustablility thing:

YouTube - Quick release

[kraffft]

That fire hydrant idea has a real brilliant sweetness about it.. blurring the border of fantasy and reality.. love it.

good jumping off point for all kinds of fastener interface schemes too.. slide pucks could be skate tools.. skateboard could be a pry bar.. skateboard could be a leatherman/multi-tool/swiss army knife.. only with all larger tools on it. hammer, anvil, pruners, large wrench.. maybe a road maintenance board equipped for repairing dangerous cracks.. ultimate vandal board for smashing things, breaking windows..

but more where the world is the tool..? Using a low pressure air bladder for something.. where you can inflate it by deflating any car tire...

and then departing back in to the heart of skateboarding.. "using and abusing your surroundings in as creative a way possible" (vaguely paraphrased from memory- lonboardertwan/EC)

One thing I've been doing with the slide wheels is working on various curb tricks (sliding into a curb being a very common occurence, especially if you're new to sliding). The UHMW makes it possible to ride it out if you hit the curb in certain ways.. either rubbing the sides of the wheels against the curb or the rolling surfaces.

I'd like to be able to slide into a curb hands down, ride it for a second, and push off of it into more riding/sliding..

I'll get some video up soon.. since I fixed my camera!.. It just needed to dry out and be taken apart and cleaned.. should get a backup anyway. I think that officially makes heights scarier than blood.

apologies on the delay with the paypal setup.. I haven't had much of a legit identity for the past decade, so it's been a lot of bureaucracy to become a productive member of society again .

Two new prototypes getting posted soon as well.. If you're interested in turning over the same problems I'm thinking about, and seeing what solutions you come up with independently.. here you go:

-Opposed muscle exertion balancing. Harnessing and storing force from body motions that normally have no resistance and adding that force to normal motive muscle exertions.

-Human powered longboards. Using your body to power a (hands free, lean/steer contraption) in ways besides pushing or pumping.

Otherwise.. I'm always starting over.. this is a new phase, just about recovered from halloween (which was a phase that might need some disclaimers appended to it).. Always interested to test the limits of forum discussion.. what are some ways to take the public scheming to new and different levels? If you don't have any ideas.. you're about to suffer through mine instead..

Another disclaimer I have to work on is the: "no I am not a god among men" disclaimer.. The absurd compliments are nice to hear.. but I'm just a nerd.. there's plenty of us around. More nerds should learn how to use power tools though.

[kraffft]

The two problems phrased above are specific explorations within the general territory of:

-how to make skating uphill easier?

-how to skate faster, more efficiently, on level ground?

Directly augmenting muscles obviously has wide application beyond skating (and has been done before in lots of ways.. though those ways haven't necessarily been applied to skating).

Chainmaillekid is also insisting that I make slide wheels for my Honda..

[BDirthead]

Chainmaillekid is also insisting that I make slide wheels for my Honda..

Great idea! Now how do you design slide wheels for your car that allow traction when starting, but can change to a slide functioning wheel?

[speshlspeclsteak]

that sounds like a recipe that can only end in tears

[VampMN]

that sounds like a recipe that can only end in tears

And sheer awesomeness.

[Barf]

Great idea! Now how do you design slide wheels for your car that allow traction when starting, but can change to a slide functioning wheel?

What you need is a rubberized air bladder, surrounded by steel belts, with a thick, durable rubber tread wrapped around the whole thing. Then the magic part: drive from clean pavement onto ice.

[LaneMeyer]

Ok I got an idea been running through my head. Take a board, mount a regular truck on front and then a swivel wheel in back. Or some kind of ball wheel in the rear. The thing would kick and fish tail all over the place, could be a really fun ride once you got the hang of it.

[Wolfin]

Board with caterpillar tracks for snow ridin'?

And maybe a small snowshoe for your pushing foot

Ok I got an idea been running through my head. Take a board, mount a regular truck on front and then a swivel wheel in back. Or some kind of ball wheel in the rear. The thing would kick and fish tail all over the place, could be a really fun ride once you got the hang of it.

That's pretty much a freebord, just without the back truck? >_> I can see that being hell to keep straight. "It's impossible to drive straight!"

[LaneMeyer]

Board with caterpillar tracks for snow ridin'?

And maybe a small snowshoe for your pushing foot




That's pretty much a freebord, just without the back truck? >_> I can see that being hell to keep straight. "It's impossible to drive straight!"

I think they already invented that I heard it's called a snowboard

[Wolfin]

I think they already invented that I heard it's called a snowboard

Pff try pushing a snowboard down the street and see how far you get! Besides, this is much more... tank-like.

[Delta]

tank treads instead of wheels?

[kraffft]

Ok I got an idea been running through my head. Take a board, mount a regular truck on front and then a swivel wheel in back. Or some kind of ball wheel in the rear. The thing would kick and fish tail all over the place, could be a really fun ride once you got the hang of it.

I'm having trouble imagining that this could be possible to get the hang of.. The main problem being that if you have less traction in the rear, a board is going to want to 180 as soon as you put any sideways force on it. Then once it 180's is it still ridable?

I've only ridden ripstiks and freebords a small amount.. and I'm still getting over some instinctive distaste for casters.. but I like the trick they have of setting the caster at an angle to keep it tracking forward.

Board with caterpillar tracks for snow ridin'?

And maybe a small snowshoe for your pushing foot

Snow/ice/winter longboard will definitely get experimented with as it gets to be more decembery and january.. The pushing boot relates to an experiment that's going to happen much sooner, which should be a real mind bender if it works at all.

A tangent that thinking about winter boards for a second is sending me on though.. Bicyclists have experimented a ton with snow tires.. screws poking out of the tread being a common one.. the problem with it is that having that much metal dramatically reduces traction on clean pavement... Commercial road bike snow tires just have ball bearings or very tiny metal points.
There's possibility there for making a slide wheel that has a smoother, quieter ride than the usual slide wheels.. or also a wheel that wont slip easily on black ice.
To actually ride (for transportation) on snow, slush, sand, etc.. might require those tank treads.. or maybe a mountain board..

[DarkMatter]

I've had this crazy idea gyrating around in my head for a while. I'm not sure if anyone's ever though of it before (haven't looked). What if there was a wheel that had a soft durometer on the outside and a harder durometer on the inside? It would be arranged in layers, possibly getting gradually harder. I can see how temperature may cause problems for such a design...what with expansion and contraction and all. Dunno how much temperature affects something like a wheel. Also, pouring could be a problem, assuming that's how you would approach making it. Otherwise, I think it's a pretty good idea. Always open to improvements and thoughts on this.

-Cheers

[Barf]

I've had this crazy idea gyrating around in my head for a while. I'm not sure if anyone's ever though of it before (haven't looked). What if there was a wheel that had a soft durometer on the outside and a harder durometer on the inside? It would be arranged in layers, possibly getting gradually harder. I can see how temperature may cause problems for such a design...what with expansion and contraction and all. Dunno how much temperature affects something like a wheel. Also, pouring could be a problem, assuming that's how you would approach making it. Otherwise, I think it's a pretty good idea. Always open to improvements and thoughts on this.

-Cheers

Baker Wheels - Dubs 54mm Dual Duro || Valkry Online Skateboard Shop

Autobahn Dual Duro LE III 51mm Wheels > Wheels | Active Ride Shop

[Marleyfan1101]

They say necessity is the mother of invention. After looking at these things, I have come to the conclusion you have a CRAZY life.

[Rich Nelson]

Baker Wheels - Dubs 54mm Dual Duro || Valkry Online Skateboard Shop

Autobahn Dual Duro LE III 51mm Wheels > Wheels | Active Ride Shop

those two wheels just have a harder duro for the core, which isn't really different then pretty much any longboard wheel.

I'm not sure i like the idea of a split duro wheel, i fell like it would likely be very unpredictable, and probably have an odd wear pattern.

[kraffft]

What if there was a wheel that had a soft durometer on the outside and a harder durometer on the inside?

I can't tell if you meant discs of different hardness sandwiched together, so the rolling surface would have stripes of different material, or a hard core with soft rolling surface (which has clearly been done, as pointed out by Barf and SD974).

A couple related items from the to do list:

-Wooden wheel with bicycle tube rubber rolling surface.. (mainly for prototype purposes)

-Wheels with removable urethane outer rolling surface.. so when you get a flat spot, or bad coning, you can just put a new outer layer on, instead of replacing the entire wheel. (There's a good trick, used in a lot of situations where a very tight fit is needed, where you cool the inner part to shrink it and heat the other part, so they assemble easily, but when they reach the same temperature become basically fused..)

-Various ways to turn shortboard wheels into longboard wheels.

-Flat spot repair. Cutting the good sections off of one bad wheel, making the same cut on the damaged area of another bad wheel of the same make, and screwing/gluing/melting the good section on.

-Soft wheel with hard studs (so only the studs touch the ground), for a smooth riding slide wheel (idea from yesterday).

-Tiny inflatable wheels (50-80mm).

-Wheels that deform predictably while cornering, to increase grip (this might be a place where the sandwiched disc wheel design would be useful.)


It's getting hard to contain my excitement for another run of doing a new skate project every day.. more than just my camera needed to be taken apart and cleaned, I'll say that much.. but the essential chores are just about done.

[B-Boy Megatron]

you know those kangaroo boots that make you jump real high? imagine what it'd be like to push with one only on your pushing foot. def a lot easier on a tall board.