Transitions - done!

This week was finish the transition week. I had false dreams of getting the flat built and getting to tie it all together by Sunday. I was actually worried that I would get ahead of schedule and not be able to afford the plywood. Well thank goodness I am on schedule!! I spent the week getting everything together on the 6 transitions. The bracing, the coping setup, is all done!!



I am proud to say that they are really beefy and should hold up. I am still being cheap about putting in the double braces but I will probably do that on Tuesday. At least for the two 8' Q-pipes. I'll probably do it in the lower transition area. Some people double up every two 2 x 4's. This is great when you are on a limitless budget and are building a 15' vert ramp that Danny Way is gonna shred. But I think that gettin' it in where it counts will work fine for me.




I am also concerned with the bounce factor. I rode a rad vert ramp that had a metal frame and less beef and it bounced!! So slams were not as horrific and painful and it was still very fast. I rode two other vert ramps that were built so well that it was like falling on concrete!! I rode a few other outdoor vert ramps that were mushy with rot and rain damage. So somewhere in between will do fine for me!!




I spent most of Sunday building the coping supports. I had a few bastard screws that stripped at the last second. I switched out drill keys and I had to cut off the head of the stripped ass screw!! I was so ticked! Then the drill fell off the top of the transition and bent the nice bit extender so I need to get one of those pronto. It seems to balance my drill very well - I gouged the shit out of my fingers three times after loosing that thing.



I decided to use 2 x 10 x 6' @ 8' to mount my concrete coping. So that required a little extra prep. I had to cut the top of the transitions in order to make a bed for the concrete coping. This was like cutting off one of my toes. It felt really bad to take away some of my vert!! But I wanted both sides to be even and the concrete is gonna be 2 3/8" thick so it should feel balanced with the 2 3/8" metal coping on the opposite side.



My reasoning for this is that I need to get good at both metal and concrete coping on big shit. I may eventually just put concrete coping on both sides. But I just wanted to have the steel there for now... I really hate metal coping and would rather just do all concrete but I need to get proficient at both because there is so much shit out there today and I need to really shred Kokomo next year!!

So for next week:

-Build/prep the deck frames (put 'em aside for later)

-Mock up the flat bottom and level everything out and get it all square

-Build flat bottom and tie everything together

-Get it all level and square

If things go well:

-Pour coping on Sunday

-Then raise some $$ for plywood, ugh