Project 1: Snowskate

'Tis the season of sledding. But as an addict of longboarding, trays and blowup swans just don’t quite do it for me, and real snowboards are just way too serious. The solution: a snowskate – a skateboard on skis.

materials:

-skateboard deck ~ any plank 30-35 inches. I’m cutting it out of plywood -blocks of wood for risers ~ can be made from plywood or 2x4 -old skis or a snowblade -8+ screws with big round heads ~ the + is in case they strip -8+ screws to sink flush -grip tape -paint ~Hummingbird

ideal tools:

-jigsaw ~ wood and metal blades -electric drill ~ drilling bits and screwdriver bits to match your screws -sander ~ low grit, like 50 or 80

Yes, let’s combine a skateboardish chunk of wood with some other chunks of wood and some cut-off skis to make our very own Hummingbird snowskate. You can carry it like a sled, stand up and carve it like a snowboard, pop it like a skateboard, and rock it like a snowskate.

This is a fairly technical project to start out with, but I’ve wanted to make one for a while now and I’ll take it nice and slow. You are going to need a few tools for this one, so check out my other piece, ‘A Word on Tools.’

Now let’s get down to business.

The most expensive, non-DIY part of this project is the ski/skis. For some far-fetched reason, the metal edges of skis are very important to their maneuverability, and unfortunately they are beyond our ability to recreate. Therefore, we must find real skis. Store bought snowskates use snowblades – those short fat skis curved up on both ends. A snowblade would be ideal. However, my house happened to have some really old skis sitting in the basement that I am going to use (with parental consent, of course). If you don’t have piles of skis in the basement, hit up the DIY fav’s: garage sales, thrift shops, pawn shops – in that order, since prices will probably also be in that order, from low to high. You also might get lucky at an actual ski shop if they have an old bargain bin or something. Cross-country skis generally don’t have metal edges, so shoot for downhills.

If you found a snowblade, awesome. If not, we’re going to have to shorten some skis. I was lucky enough to do this part of the project at home, where I had access to lots of tools, in particular, an angle grinder. A grinder has a disc blade-thing that’s thin and black and kind of sparkly. And when you use it to sharpen or cut metal things, lots of sparks fly and it is visually impressive – think of Letterman’s Grinder Girl (unfortunately, I was solo and couldn’t photograph and grind simultaneously).  If you don’t have access to a grinder, you can buy metal-cutting blades for the jigsaw. If you don’t have a jigsaw, try a metal file. The metal file might be good to cut through the whole ski, or you could try switching to a handsaw. I cut them off at a right angle to the length of the ski, and tried to angle/round it up from the sliding surface, though the angle won’t be enough to be functional and therefore isn’t necessary; these skis are strictly for going only one direction. You could also try cutting them off at angles to the length of the ski, so that when the two skis are together you’d form a fishtail/V shape. That might look cool.

But before we actually cut the skis, we need to secure our deck.

A normal skateboard deck will work alright – store snowskates are usually just a little bigger though and have special spongy grip tape. I’m going to be using a piece of plywood that I cut into an appropriate shape. The bent ends of a skateboard might be kind of cool, but a bit superfluous to our design. All you really need is some sort of plank around 30-35 inches. A solid board of oak or maple would be pretty nice and hard, but I would recommend plywood. With plywood, you can by a big 4 x 8 foot sheet for about 30 bucks and it will last you for several projects. Go with finished pine, ¾” thick. (There’s also rough pine, and usually some nicer stuff like maple or birch, and several different thicknesses of each). One medium problem is getting it from the hardware store to home. So you might have to cut it up a bit, which they’ll usually do for you. Sometimes they charge a little per cut, but the trick is to realize you need it cut after you’ve paid so that they don’t feel like charging you for just that small amount. (Acting tip: with board in hand/cart, make it to the door before turning around in realization.) Try to cut it as few times as possible, just so you have more to work with, but if need be, go ahead and cut it hamburger style twice, so you have four 4 x 2 foot boards. The direction of the grain of the wood is something very important in woodworking, but with plywood, each layer switches direction for added strength, so don’t worry about it.

With wood at home, now let’s draw a shape and cut it out. I had some other skateboards to go off, or you can just do an ellipse with string and nails. But I’d go for something fishy if it’s gonna be unidirectional. And if you’re going to use a handsaw, you might want to stick with straighter lines. Any writing utensil can be used to draw your outline since the marks will be covered up when we sand and paint it. Then go outside to saw away. My house has a big curb thing that I usually just hang the wood over, but taking a table outside is nice too. You just need something steady and a little off the ground so that your saw blade has room to work. Hold the wood down with one hand, maybe even stand on it if you can. It can be tough to saw on the line, but patience, young Jedi.

Once you’re cut out, sand it a bit. I lucked out with a wood working housemate who bought a belt sander at a garage sale. Orbital sanders are next best, followed by pad sanders, then your hand. Just rub the sandpaper back and forth over the edges and surfaces for a while. Since this board will be handled mostly by your feet, you really don’t have to sand that much, just enough so that it looks alright and you won’t get slivers.

Now it’s time to figure out the skis. We’re going to use both skis because unless you found some fatties or a snowblade, a single short ski will just sink. If you’ll notice, a skateboard has things called trucks, which hold the wheels away from the board. So we want our skis to be a bit away from the board as well. But instead of trucks, we’ll just use wood since we don’t need any turning capabilities, so they’re basically just big risers. They should hold the skis about 3 inches from the deck, and since skis taper a bit, the back riser will need to be a little skinnier than the front. I tried using a normal pine 2 by 4 at first, but it split when I tried screwing into its thin side. This was probably because I didn’t pre-drill the holes (I don’t quite remember), but I grabbed some maple I had lying around instead. You could also use your sheet of plywood and cut it into a couple rectangles and layer them up. This would require some interesting screw work though – either really long screws, or using short screws to connect each layer, moving their placement around each layer so you don’t screw into other screws. It’s totally doable, I just happened to have some nice maple 2 by 4 to use, so I used it.

A very important point that I’ve learned over the years is to always pre-drill your holes. Use a drill bit just a little smaller than the width of your screw to clear a path for your screw and you will have much less cracking going on.

Cut the skis off so that they’re a few inches shorter than the deck, so that the tips are an inch or so out front, with the tails ending about four or five inches from the tail end of the deck. You’ll place the risers at the very tail of the skis and as close to the front before they curve up. Take some time to line up the risers just right. Then use a little duct tape or something to hold them in place so you can turn over the board and screw them in place (pre-drill first!). Use screws about 1 ½” or 2”. With the maple I used, I could get by with the shorter 1 ½” since the wood is so darn hard and will hold strong.

Risers in place, let’s paint! Of course Hummingbird is the optimal color, but even if you don’t choose Hummingbird, you’ll probably want to use some sort of paint or varnish. It will be getting snowy and wet so any protection you can give the wood is appreciated. Two or three coats should be good – just read the directions. You can paint over the screws holding in the risers, or you can take the risers off and paint them separately if you want to keep the screws silver.

You can paint the skis too (just not the bottom sliding surface) if you want, but I’m going to keep my 1980s Elan design intact. Once you’ve given the deck ample drying time, place the skis on the risers and mark where to pre-drill. I’m setting the skis so that they touch each other at both risers. The exact placement is open to interpretation, but I think the more the skis think they are one, the better. The wood drill bit will work for the ski, and I’d say two screws into each riser will be sufficient. After pre-drilling, use a larger bit about the size of the screw head and drill in just the tip. If you don’t have a bigger bit, try angling and circling around with your normal bit. This will create room for the screw head to sit in flush with the bottom of the ski. Holes in the sliding surface are not ideal, but it’s kind of the only way since skis are so thin, and besides, it shouldn’t really make a difference for our purposes.

We should be looking like a snowskate at this point; we’re almost done! But now we need to add something to help us stay on the board. I found a roll of grip tape at a hardware store for 3 bucks and am going to apply that in a cool pattern. I’ve also seen snowskates with screw heads sticking out all over the top – the roundish head, not the sharp end. So I let the screws holding my risers stick out a bit, and they’re big and round, not the kind that is meant to sink flush like I used for the skis. I’ll only have two lines of screw heads where the risers are, but with the grip tape I think I’ll be good. This can easily be tweaked later anyway.

Ok, so we’ve made a deck and risers, attached the skis, added grip utensils, and of course, painted it Hummingbird. Nice!

Well, now let’s pray for snow and I’ll see you on the Slope!