If There's a Drill, There's a Way

Punny titles aside, we've been getting lots done at Altus Longboards this week. The board that we said was finished being filed has now been drilled, so trucks can be topmounted. I plan to take a set of wheels, trucks, and bearings out of the many that I own to go and attach to the board, so I can briefly test it out. There are essentially 3 steps that remain.
1. Cut out the drop-through mounting hole so that it can be switched between topmount (baseplant screwed in on bottom of board) and drop-through (baseplate screwed in on top of the board and 'drops through' the board to connect the kingpin to the axle).

2. Take fine-grit sandpaper and make sure our board is divinely smooth.

3. Stain our board and paint the design on the bottom.

After all these steps are complete, I'll be taking the board for a full test ride up on the Stanford hills.

Here are some pictures of our work today:

First Board!

Today we finished out first board!  It is all cut out and we're just doing finishing sanding and filing now. It's not completely finished, but the overall outline is finished being cut out. We plan to sand it to perfection, and then stain it a dark brown color. The second board is still getting cut out. The rough outline is visible, but we still need to sand it. We got a lot of work done today. Takaaki and I went to the workshop at 6:00 right after track practice, and we worked till 11:00. That means we took 1 board out of the press, totalling 4 boards in progress, and finished one and got another to the stage where we just need to file it. There are two pressed boards that have not been cut out or filed yet. However, we're making noticeable progress towards our final goal. Here's a picture!

Filing and Filing

We're making slow progress toward our goal of finishing a deck. The power sander in Make X is not working, so we have to file by hand to get rid of the excess wood around our board. This is problematic, because filing by had takes an extremely long time. We hope to acquire a handheld power sander from our mentor soon, that will speed up the process enormously.

On a happier note, the second board came out ever better than the first! It contoured to the press perfectly due to the increased 1800 pounds of force that we put on it with additional clamps. Just like the last deck, there are absolutely no air bubbles in the construction, meaning that it is extremely unlikely to delaminate as well as sturdy for the ride.

On the bright side of having to file manually, we're getting the deck extremely precise. Here's a picture of our filing progress:

1 Board Out, 1 Board In

We took out the 1st board in the press this week. It turned out great, it has contoured to the press as well as laminated without a single air bubble. The press was unscathed after its first job, and we tossed in another board that we're gonna be taking out in about a weeks time. We spent this week beginning to cut out the actual board. All thats left is to file it down precisely, sand it, and finish it. We may or may not include a graphic on the bottom.

The only problem we encountered with the board was finding that it didn't completely contour to the press. We found that the curves that the board had by the end of being pressed were not as steep or extreme as those in the original press. We solved this by using more clamps this time around. Hopefully we'll have our first completed deck in a couple weeks!

Here's a picture of the second deck being pressed along with the first one, already pressed: