Well, another powderskate get together has come and gone. This is the third winter we have put something together. It was nice to change the venue from the Sawtooths to our home area the Selkirks. Riding the resort and backcountry with a capable group of guys is hard to beat. Most snowskaters are used to riding alone so when you have 10 additional riding partners chomping to get at the terrain the fun factor definitely goes up. Here’s a little mini clip for you to enjoy.
Luckily, I hear good reviews on my decks. In the early days there was some breakage and still decks can be snapped but people like the concave and tail. My decks are big and that throws some people off but with big subs and steep conditions a wide stance can be beneficial. I joke with some of my friends that they are lucky they weren’t around for the early decks. My first deck that was mounted to a snowboard was 13” x 32”. Very mellow tail and old school concave. I sold maybe ten of these and still have a stack of NOS that never made it out the door. Luckily Circuit was selling snowskate grip at the time. I remember telling him that I was building wake skates, so as not to have my secret money making idea jeopardized.
Lots of people suggested longer decks, so that it would feel more like a surfboard. This deck measures out as 13” x 42” and is a blast to ride. I sold one of these to someone at the pass.
Decks dropped down to around 10” wide and 40 inches long. Scored some really crappy grip from a boat supply house??? sorry those of you who bought boards then. The 3/4” spikes should have been a clue that the gripped sucked.
I had some old splitboard hardware at the shop, one day while staring at it I got the idea for a sliding front truck. When an idea hits you, its like a drug. You go into a kinda trance, wallowing in the potential. It usually wears off and only then can you be critical of your own ideas.
I first posted pics of the sliding rails on facebook and yea, I was going through the idea trance at the time. But reality is never far behind. On both of these decks the channels filled with epoxy and was a bugger to get out. Actually made the decks worthless cause of how recked they were at the end.
I put these decks away and the idea of the channel out of my head for a bit.After a while, I visited a cnc shop and had some custom channels made that were better then what I was using. CNC time is not cheap but I was at least more excited to give it another shot. I came up with another idea for blocking the epoxy and glued it up. I felt pretty good about the press and began the process of cleaning out the channels. The first channel cleaned up pretty good, the second took a bit more time but the third and fourth were bad. I think I spent a good 2 hours picking at the epoxy but was able to at least make it rideable so as to see if the channels will even be strong enough. Why am I going through all of this? Weight. Trying to make things lighter. This set up drops a pound from the total skate weight. And while its not really worth it at this time, considering how much additional work it takes, things should go smoother if they actually prove to be strong enough for the job at hand. I’ll be riding it for the rest of the season so we’ll see.
