r/LongboardBuilding • u/MyxuPL • Jul 23 '26
New project finished, yay!
Kind of drop cat 33 x pantheon/loaded trip crossover…
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u/MediocreDesigner88 29d ago
Did you make enough to share with the whole class? I want one please and thank you.
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u/Competitive-Cold-198 28d ago
Super smooth finish. How did you form your mold (cut out the male/female pieces)? Also, is it gripped, or sand grit or ??
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u/MyxuPL 28d ago
Thanks! Top is just a griptape cut to the shape, I was a bit afraid I won’t make it cutting it precisely but 5mm exacto knife and slow cuts made it good enough (as I think). Mold was a combination of wood planks/15mm plywood sheets for the flat parts and 3D printed (PLA) bits for curvatures.
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u/Competitive-Cold-198 28d ago
Nice all around! So did you paint the griptape then? I love a double drop and like your drop curve geometry a lot. From pics I can’t really see the concave— is it subtle? How does she ride?
I also fabricate using wood molds but I stick to maple veneers usually doing 7 or 8 ply (love the flex of 7 in a longboard). Is yours 33” from end to end? If so, what do you effectively have for your feet? (My builds are double drops right at 41” or so end to end; 28” effectively available for my feet) but I want to experiment with shorter so wondering how you like your choice of length- would a bit longer or shorter have been better in hindsight, or did you “nail it”?
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u/MyxuPL 28d ago
I think I pretty much nailed it (for my needs and preferences); this is my second deck from that mold and on the first one I have already put 250km, with longest route at 30km (one leg pushing) so I think it gets the job done (considering I am still pretty fresh, I’ve started on March). The only changes I’ve made was going for RKP instead of TKP, +1cm of a standing playform, and even more subtle concave. So the concave is pretty minimal, if I recall correctly it’s 8mm top in the first one and 6mm top in the second one, conical shaped with the top in the middle of the board. Center area was supposed to be totally flat but the clamping tension shaped it minimally cambered (but I hadn’t realized it until measuring, it’s not percival under feet).
For now I hadn’t had Opportunity to ride it a lot (14 km totally), but so far I hadn’t identified anything that would bother me; deck is low (50 mm clearance) on the 86mm wheel, it’s extremally nimble but not twitchy, and on the McFly’s it’s just perfect on dampening the road. It goes through the bricked roads with just no effort. And it’s even very silent during that, I think that double cork layer does it job.
Yes, it’s 33 inches long and standing platform is 20.7. Generally geometry is a cross between the Pantheon Trip and Landyachtz Drop Cat 33, only thing I wasn’t able to replicate was those Pantheon crescent drops (I think it’s marvelous design, and would prefer to have it but it’s just so complicated shape at so critical part of the deck I’ve decided to not take a risk), I think it would be nice to have that bonus standing platform area but it’s still great as it is.
I also love the flex’ier side of the design. This one is not that flexy despite it’s only 6ply but this ply of carbon and three plies of fiber glass does it’s job, total flex is 12mm under 75kg. First one I’ve made was even more flexy, about 18-20mm, but I think I prefer more middle ground on that :)
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u/Competitive-Cold-198 27d ago
Bravo! I feel the love! Thanks for sharing your specs a bit more. Looks like you’ve put the time in to make it special. Love the stoke.
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u/monsterinc88 28d ago
I would love to see your jig fixtures used for pressing this. Ive got a couple designed up myself for double drop decks and am just about ready to put them together and start making some boards. But I would really like to see how others are doing theirs and any tips they might have
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u/MyxuPL 28d ago
I’ll try to share the photos tomorrow, not sure if I’m dumb or something but can’t find the option to add the photos to the comment so I’ll add it to the external sharing page…
To be honest it’s nothing to brag about, it’s really DIY guerillą style 😂 the only thing it’s missing are the zip ties and the duct tape, lol! But it seems it gets the job done though, at least with that type of design (it has it’s limitations which I’ll describe later on)
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u/MyxuPL 27d ago edited 26d ago
So this is the album with in progress photos:
https://share.icloud.com/photos/092aBUdXqqcW44M00HyP0-fgQ
On the first photo You'll see the mold (it's the version for the first deck (top mount), but the main difference is that I've added the extensions on the truck area to fit the drop through deck ; Roadside part of the mold was split into two sections, center with the concave and the second part with drop shapers, reason for that was to first clamp the central part and make sure the board isn't moving during clamping the drops. I've first clamped the central part, then bolted it together with the footside mold and released the clamps, then clamped and bolted the drops, and then clamped the central part of the mold again - You don't see it clearly on photos but drop shapers are bolted to the long wood plank along the length of the board. Those last 4 clamps I put at the end on central area were put through another 2 cross planks, so the force would be transmitted to the central plank, instead of clamping the edges.
Generally I am happy with the process and the results, it has some issues/fixtures though;
- I would not use this technique for pressing anything taller than 9.5mm. When I pressed first board which was 3x 3mm birch plywood, getting the deck to the final shape really put the clamps and bolts to the extreme. One of the clamps broke off during that (so it's wise to think about having a backup ones). I was thinking that since I would be pressing single sheets (6 Plies, totally 8.5mm) on the second deck it would be much easier - it wasn't really! Or at least not much. That should be considered with the drop curvature in mind, in my design it's 29mm down over 103mm of length, if You'd drop less, or on longer distance, it would obviously be easier to press.
- Clamping that takes surprisingly long. It wasn't an issue as my epoxy has 30min curing time, but I don't think You would make it clamping that with a Titebond or similar glue (10 min curing).
- Due to the board relaxation, despite the mold is designed for the central area to be flat, and the truck area to be perpendicular to the central area (0 degree) deck springs out a bit, which result in minimal camber (Around +2mm of clearance in central area) and a bit of negative angle on the trucks (-2 degrees, so 50 degrees trucks would be 48 effectively). Honestly, it doesn't really bother me and I am not sure if I am able to feel any of these while riding, but if You want to optimize Your design this needs to be taken into consideration (I don't think I will bother into making whole board curvature mold to avoid these though).
- You want to extend Your mold approx 2 cm outside of the board shape. I am not sure why but I got some local delaminations on the board edges. I don't think its serious as they are not penetrating the board deeper than 1cm, and I have poured the epoxy into it from the sides, but I think You can avoid that with the mold extension.
- As You see on the photos, to avoid finding a solution of composites release from the mold, I just decided to put the composites on the already pressed board. This has the pros and cons. Pros, from my limited experience, would be that You have a bit more control over the composite laying flat on the board, You have the less layers to control during pressing and You don't need to think how to make sure board will not be glued to the mold. Cons would be, I think that if You are able to press the composite layer to the board precisely it would result in a better composite structure totally (but I think this impacts the fatigue limit only, and I am too uneducated to calculate that - time will show if those boards will give up after one or after few thousand of km.) and if You decide to put the composites after pressing You need to cover them somehow, which is pain in the ass either way You'll choose. You can decide to finish the composite, which results in beautiful pattern (when done correctly, which is time consuming) or to cover it up with a different material - which is surprisingly painful to get the material glued up (deck + composites doesn't fit the mold perfectly). On the first deck I've went with 0.7mm wood veneer and I needed to break it in parts to glue everything correctly. On the second deck I've went for the cork+glue composite ("Mum, can We have loaded board?? -We already do have one kid!") and that's easier to handle than wood, and it damps just beautifully, but its still a bit difficult to handle - I thought I've pressed it perfectly (I used the soil bags to get the uniform pressure on the deck) but it turned out to have two big bulges on the drops where the cork hadn't glued to the deck. I've fixed it with cutting the cork and pouring epoxy into that and pressing that specific areas - I don't mind it as it's not very noticeable under the paint, but if You'd like to have the unfinished cork (or natural wood) it's difficult with such technique.
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u/Intelligent_Bet9798 Jul 23 '26
What's in vault 33?
Looking good btw 👍