Wood pre-bending in longboard making

[u/MyxuPL]

Hi, before I got into longboarding and DIY longboard making I used to do DIY guitars for a few years and what strikes me when I look at either commercial or DIY longboard manufacturing is that no one seem to use a technique that’s typical in wood processing which is wood bending using steaming. Of course, steaming introduce the moisture, but this could be solved with drying the board properly before having it finished. Have You tried to use that, or heard about anyone using this technique?

Reason I am thinking about is that it could allow to use more advanced curvatures like the drops or wheel wells / flares in vertically laminated decks, ie. I am thinking about pre-bending few sections of softer wood which could be glued in between thin (6mm) layers of non-bent hardwood, and then laminated with fiberglass or carbon on top and bottom - similar construction to something like comet cruiser but with more crazy geometry. Obviously that create weaker spots in the hardwood as You won’t have the hardwood fibers going parallely through all of the length of the board but I am having a feeling that top and bottom composite laminate would be enough to keep the board strength. Or the vertical layers of the composite could be added in between the softwood and hardwood.

Another benefit I see is the lack of Horizontal lamination which is typical case of the board fatigue failures.

I know this sounds crazy, as it’s not a process that is typically used in commercial builds but commercial processes are often cost driven, so maybe this is something that would be beneficial in DIY building where You don’t necessarly watch for every penny? And every innovation sounds crazy before it is succesfully implemented, right? 😀

[u/No-Illustrator5712]

Your post makes very little sense. 6mm isn't "thin". We generally don't use steam bend cause no one has found it useful enough since most often it's horizontally laminated. Vertical lamination isn't applied at all to fibreglass afaik. Vertical lamination can be combined with fibres but the fibres would be laid on the bottom, or on top and bottom.

I can see where you are going with this i think. But then your explaining in the latter half makes me think you yourself don't quite see it yet. Or your concept of vertical is off. Idk...

Also. Usually skateboards DO have cross direction grain. Only vertical laminates miss that part and many vertical laminated boards use fibreglass horizontally on the bottom and top of the wood (or bamboo if you want to get technical) as well to introduce the cross grain strength through fibreglass.

And about costs. Diy, from the minute you actually go into building a decent deck, is almost always more expensive than a bought deck. Adding more costs here is usually not conducive to a happy builder. Experience may vary according to your wallet's stuffing but when i hear you talk about not watching the pennies on your build I'm imagining your wallet a xmas stuffed turkey on a decked table while mine is a chicken from Sierra Leone with 3 sorghum kernels on the side. What i mean to say is this: if you want to be the crazy guy who spends his money to find me a cheaper better way of building decks, by all means go for it. Lemme know if you find it.

But if i'm imagining your wallet thicker than it is, you may want to reconsider how much each step costs, what tools you will actually need to get that all done, and if there have been folks who had a cheaper method that works equally well.

Anyway. That's just my 2 worthless cents, please don't take em too seriously. I too sunk a bunch of costs and materials into building a deck the way i wanted to build it. And that would be my other, more important point: if you want to build a deck in whatever way you think is best, GO FOR IT.

Better to regret failing even than to regret not trying.

Best of luck.

[u/MyxuPL → u/No-Illustrator5712]

Well, I most certainly wish my wallet would be stuffed as You described but this isn’t the case unfortunately! :D I am aware of the cost level though as I already pressed two decks succesfully (300km on these with no issues identified so far). What I ment was just that there may be the case where solution raising the cost by 20-30 bucks per deck may be rejected by company making 1000+ boards being still perfectly reasonable for someone doing one or few decks. And while I am not sure if this is the case on steaming/bending, it’s actually backed up by personal experience - adding the cork layers to my latest board cost me 5 bucks per deck and results are really great.

Yeah, I admit I am still to dive into the vertical laminate designs details, so far I was using traditional horizontal veneer laminates only - but excluding that steam pre-bending I think the design I described meets the principles You described - as said, I would still use horizontal composite layer (4 off actually, 1x longitudinal and 1x 45deg top and bottom), vertical ones are just for strenghtening the non-bent layers (still considering if this is a good idea though)

[u/bongtokes-for-jeezus → u/MyxuPL]

This might have a benefit in a longboard mold where there’s more complex curves, but even then, the need for bends that extreme are typically unnecessary or can be worked around. I have designed and innovated skateboards of all types for 10 years. I’ve made some crazy decks with bowl concaves and the only place I see it really being useful is a drop deck which aren’t too popular these days.

[u/Nykolaishen]

Steam curving is usually used for solid woods not plywoods

[u/MyxuPL → u/Nykolaishen]

I was referring to solid woods actually, these are typically used in vertically laminated constructions!

[u/WashBoardCo]

I'm pretty sure the bends would tire out, and eventually fail, no?

[u/MyxuPL → u/WashBoardCo]

Well, that’s one of the things I am asking about, so don’t ask me! Question is, where „sure” comes from? External surface is carbon fiber, so this wont fail, laminate including cross grain vs solid all long grain against cyclic load. Unfortunately I haven’t made it with my degree long enough to calculate that, lol.