kraffft work

[Brain Smoothie]

damn i would of trekked down to providence if i'd known there'd be nacho's

[enemy combatant]

damn i would of trekked down to providence if i'd known there'd be nacho's

SIGGED!!!

[kraffft]

You never know what there's gonna be in Providence.. or Bristol..

Here's Rus's generous donation to the ongoing wrestling match with reality going on in this thread.. Various unfinished projects, abused protos, mispressed/miscut blanks, delams, cut-offs, and a warped uncut template..

Should keep me busy for a while.. can't thank you enough Rus!

[scratch]

Mr Kraffft... glad to know my trash will find a useful life beyond the Soda Factories borders... catch ya soon my man & again thanks for the beer & nachos!

[Delta]

so when're you two getting married?

[kraffft]

so when're you two getting married?

Rus is pretty hot and all.. but I'd rather marry someone that doesn't have U.S. citizenship yet..

In other news.. the first kraffft board of 2010 is under construction.. It's going to make you wish you were 5 years old.. so you could grow up riding it.. no promises on when I'll get the documentation up by.. but it's the only thing I'm working on until it's done.

[kraffft]

Here's a board I made last night out of a new deck that had snapped at the bolt holes, and an old deck that had wrecked tails.. Screwed and glued. Set up with 54mm Otangs (inheats?) lathed down from a severely coned set.





Just rode it all day today.. ramps, bowl, downhill.. makes things a lot easier for me being 6' 2".

and here's a peek at the main thing I've been working on lately:

[Wolfin]

I'm intrigued.. The wheels are mounted inline with the deck? Is it capable of turning, without sliding? I want a video xD

It reminds me of that one deck that had wheel cutouts that weren't on the edge of the board, and the wheels fit through the deck during a turn.. Can't remember what it was called.

[kraffft]

Had some technical difficulties with a new/used camera and lost most of the initial testing footage.. need some more snow in the region too.. looks like maybe this weekend..

Here's some details for now though..

The main inspiration for this project was wanting to skate all winter.. and seeing ready-made quarter pipes, ramps, and snake runs lining the roads.. in the form of snowbanks! As soon as I realized that, a longboard/snowboard hybrid had to happen.

Got a good deal on a smallish size snowboard from another Luke off of craigslist.. Small is ideal here to keep the wheelbase reasonable. Could easily be another foot shorter.


The wheels are positioned where the nose/tail start to turn upward.. otherwise that would be a main point of abrasion during transitions between snow and pavement.


Drilled out the corners to keep them slightly round for more strength, then jigsawed.


How'd this pic get in here?


Brackets for mounting the wheels and stiffening the board are old bed frame angle stock.. Scavenged metal is often a mixed blessing though.. this stuff had been heat treated and was pretty hard to drill, but that makes it much more rigid for how much it weighs.


The idea with the three wheels is to have the center wheel be a little higher, so balancing level you roll straight, and leaning onto the angled wheels turns the board.


The center wheels are slide wheels, and the outer wheels are soft freeride wheels. The slide wheels make the board ride more like a snowboard on pavement, and reduce the drag caused during turning by having four misaligned wheels touching the ground. The axles are 5/16" bolts with lots of spacers and speed rings holding the wheels in the right place.


The brackets are attached with lots of drywall screws, trimmed with a grinder on the bottom side. The initial height/angle adjustments were done by stacking washers between the board and brackets. Further height adjustments are easiest to do by changing the size of the wheels. Board camber was also adjusted with washers, and the reinforcing rails were tack welded to the wheel brackets.


Threw some mountain board bindings on there for the time being.. I think I'd rather ultimately have specialized skyhooks, designed to interfere less with pushing, and to be easier to bail out of.


As is, the board is more than rigid enough.. but way on the heavy side. An interesting side effect of the reenforcement method is that the board still has a lot of torsional flex, which gives you some independent control over front and rear steering.

Wheel height is the heart of this design problem.. Deck clearance needs to be high enough to not bottom out on every irregularity while on pavement, and the wheels have to be recessed enough to not slow you down too badly in the snow.

Then the height difference between the center and outer wheels needs to be big enough so the soft wheels barely touch while going straight, but small enough so the center wheels aren't protruding too far.

The outer wheels are angled on two axes.. one setting the turn amount and the other matching the lean, so the wheel surface gets maximum contact.. (I forget what these axes are called in relation to wheels.. yaw and roll respectively with airplanes)

The amount of turn is relatively fixed.. so I started with fairly mild turn, close to the turning radius of the original snowboard. The angles could be adjusted or the wheelbase could be shortened to get more turn.. Basically you want a reasonable amount of turn for the top speed you want to ride at.. and at lower speeds drift, slide, and hop to get sharper turns..

One design decision that relates to the lean characteristics of the board was to set the outer wheels a little bit inside the edge of the board.. This means if you lean too far you get rail bite, but rail bite in this case is a positive feature, because if you're slipping out on black ice the metal edge will scrape, helping stabilize you.

Another perk is that the board doesn't get stopped if you hit big cracks or ridges.. the entire bottom surface of the deck is basically a lapper.. The wheels cant sink far enough into a crack to get stuck, and the board hits anything that would be tall enough to stop the wheel first.. Designing and building the board from scratch, I would have the nose/tail be way oversized,, somewhat like sleigh runners.. so it could slide up onto curbs, and handle abrupt transitions between snowbanks and pavement better.

Of course the UHMW snowboard base and steel edges inevitably get thrashed.. your bearings get wet and salty.. and your wheels wear down and need changing.. but all of that can be reduced somewhat.. more rugged board design, simple maintenance tools, grease in bearings or easy to wash bearings, and all the wetness definitely reduces wheel wear.. Snowmobiles and similar things apparently make it work anyway.

The whole concept relates pretty directly To the Flowboard, and the Freebord.. so check those out if you're having trouble imagining or believing that this thing works.. and mad props to those two inventions.. since knowing about them definitely helped bring this project quickly to the level it's at currently.

Maybe I'll try making a DIY Freebord some time with the fixed center slide wheels, instead of casters.. and I bet Freebord Slashers would be the best soft wheel for this Snow/pavement hybrid.. (or Hesher Snowballs!)..

It definitely needs a better name than Snow/Pavement Hybrid though (Snowskate is already taken- short snowboards without bindings). Ideas?

I'm not aware of any other human/gravity powered boards that can ride on both pavement and snow (and ice, slush, frozen footprints, sand, and shite), so if you know of any definitely pass on the info.. but otherwise consider this an initial challenge: What's the ideal snow/pavement board going to look like?

[enemy combatant]

How'd this pic get in here?

Dr.Frankenstein I presume?

[unclewinkie]

I love it when this thread gets a bump! I love seeing kraffftwerk!

[scratch]

That snow skate is the coolest thing ever... I have seen it in person... Snow? Bah...I want a 60 mph tow-in on a banked Autobahn style stretch of pavement with that thing!

[luftywaffles]

Wow that thing looks amazing

you need to put up a video of you riding that thing

[Wolfin]

How 'bout "Snybrid"? >_>

[kraffft]

Snybrid is pretty good.. No real need for a name beyond something short to refer to it as anyway..

Sno-brid
FreeFlowBoard
Hybro

Road/snow hybrid..

It's funny that there's nothing referred to as a 'road board'..

or avenue boarding, drag boarding, gentleman boarding..

Random word generator is hilarious for this..
Random Word Generator (Plus)

Silly boarding
Bargain boarding
Spiral board
Fright boarding
Contact boarding
Scarf boarding
Edge board
Dash board.. or plenty of bad puns waiting to happen.
Waste board
Wake boarding!
Muck board
Style boarding. Damn style boarders are everywhere..
Everywhere boarding
Depth boarding
Ghastly.. just an all around good word.
Omni boarding
Avalanche boarding.. you'd need a real surf/snow hybrid for that.
Monkey boarding.. someone has to teach a monkey how to skate.. parks.. and then that monkey has to teach me. I think I might need to combine a rope swing with a half pipe to learn how to skate vert.. could be a rock climbing harness or whatever..
Revel boarding
Pokey boarding.. imagine if they had skate parks in jail..
Fissure boarding.. you thought mountain boarding was xtreme
And then there's your hybrid spiral muck style boarding..
or your full-contact fright fissure boarding..

[Archy]

"Allboard"

[Longbord1]

Video plaz.

[benmasters]

lol i like omni boarding.

[kraffft]

you need to put up a video of you riding that thing

Video plaz.

Yeah I know it! I realized that I had been avoiding this thread cuz it's taking a while to find some snow.. and at this point I'm too beat up to do the riding myself.. If anyone in the region wants to spend a day testing and documenting this thing, I'd be down for it. (preferably someone with a good amount of long and snowboarding experience). Looks like there's a fair amount of random snow coming this week too.

But in the mean time I should get some more stuff up here.. and continue using it as a place to go crazy to stay sane..

[enemy combatant]

Snybrid is pretty good.. No real need for a name beyond something short to refer to it as anyway..

Sno-brid
FreeFlowBoard
Hybro

Road/snow hybrid..

It's funny that there's nothing referred to as a 'road board'..

or avenue boarding, drag boarding, gentleman boarding..

Random word generator is hilarious for this..
Random Word Generator (Plus)

Silly boarding
Bargain boarding
Spiral board
Fright boarding
Contact boarding
Scarf boarding
Edge board
Dash board.. or plenty of bad puns waiting to happen.
Waste board
Wake boarding!
Muck board
Style boarding. Damn style boarders are everywhere..
Everywhere boarding
Depth boarding
Ghastly.. just an all around good word.
Omni boarding
Avalanche boarding.. you'd need a real surf/snow hybrid for that.
Monkey boarding.. someone has to teach a monkey how to skate.. parks.. and then that monkey has to teach me. I think I might need to combine a rope swing with a half pipe to learn how to skate vert.. could be a rock climbing harness or whatever..
Revel boarding
Pokey boarding.. imagine if they had skate parks in jail..
Fissure boarding.. you thought mountain boarding was xtreme
And then there's your hybrid spiral muck style boarding..
or your full-contact fright fissure boarding..

Now I'm bored!!!