all decked out 10/16

I have been working on the decks all week. I started on Tuesday and worked all day Thursday and Friday. With afternoon/evening sessions at Wilson of course! It has been a bit of a draggy week though. No big sessions or anything. Kind of a bummer, more of the same as the outdoor season dies down. I keep missing the morning sessions so my buddies are no where to be seen!!



The decks were pretty straight forward. I did have to cut them down a bit. I stretched out the flat bottom to a true 16' but I had assembled them before I made that decision. The north deck is screwed into the 6 x 6" posts that are part of the barn frame. I made a joist hanger out of 2 x 6" and have the back rail laying on that. The rest of the frame is supported by vertical posts. The decks are made out of 2 x 6s that I had laying around. Mostly scrap wood or old wood but it is sturdy.

The south deck was a little tricky. I had to hang it up with tie downs and slowly swing it into space. It was too heavy to prop up and with only one body and two hands I couldn't do it all at once. So the beam and roll up door rails came in handy. I am glad that I didn't cut them out just yet!!



I used these 3" x 7" rough cut cherry beams for the vertical supports. My father got them from somewhere 30 years ago. We had a bunch more but one of his work buddies bought them off of him years ago. The shit my dad used to have, he either gives it away, lets it rot or burns it. Strange!



SO after I got all that together, I realized I had one sturdy but ugly ass deck! The old posts are gnarly as hell, even warped and bowed out. They must be 100 years old!! But they are so strong still! I think I am gonna cover them up because I used brandy new wood for everything else and the frame looks sooooo sweet. It is solid though so no worries people!

Well, I finally got the frame together. After many weeks I can look at the ramp and get a true feel for what it will be. I spent the morning leveling off the North end of the ramp. I had some trouble though. The metal shelves were taking up about 1/2” that I needed. The frame for the barn was sticking out a bit and left no room to move the shelves back. SO I had to notch them out. This took about 2 hours.



What a big pain, especially because I had to work with the barn closed up to avoid another allergy attack. It was like really hot in there today. Especially working with the grinder and getting in an enclosed spot under the transition.




After all that, the flat bottom was easy enough to level off. I will have to do some shifting though. The North Quarter pipe is shifted about 1 1/2" to the East. Close enough though, I'll just have to mush it over a bit.

So for next week, I’ll have to finish getting the bricks in throughout the entire frame. I also need to figure out the 8’ sections of flat. I was not anticipating the raising of the whole ramp. I’ll need to do some bracing. I may double brace every two or?? Research.



I hope to have the decks installed by the end of next week and begin pouring the coping and getting the metal coping together as well. Then it will be time to get the plywood and masonite. I’ll need some help sheeting the ramp so whoever can spare some time – chime in…

Flat Bottom ugh ugh

I watched Fight Club with Man Night Eric and now all I want to do is kick my own ass! Well, I kinda did this morning. I have been having so many allergy attacks lately that I finally broke down and got some of that Zyrtech and it made my head spin the last few days. So I have been a bit off.




This morning when I got out to the ramp I climbed up to the top to measure the distance between the lip and the rafter. As I was climbing up I went to grab for the 2 x 4" on top and it was a 2 x 10" so I missed the grab and fell backwards. As I was decending in a panic, trying to run down the 2 x 4" surface I slipped my foot between two of them and immediately went into leg slap mode. SO luckily I kinda loosened up and pushed up with my arms and torso, trying to relieve the pressure my weight would have put on my leg. So, I did not hear a snap. But I was kinda jacked up from that one. I got some nice swelling and my ankle is all week now. Nice.

So after I got my shit back together, I climbed up again and telling myself to grab for a 2 x 10". My fears of yesterday and the past caught up with me. The ramp was too close to the joist. SHit. SO, the only thing to do was to wipe yesterday's work clean and move the ramp back. It is going to work a lot better though. I decided to move the quarter pipe section back enough to allow for 16' of flat. Which I really needed anyway. I was just trying to get more deck on that side and had to deal with the rails for the roll up door.



SO I am only gonna have 3' of deck on that side and will just cut off the rails all together. I'll weld them back up later. But now, the flat should be good and hopefully everything will line up.

I spent the rest of the morning re-leveling that whole side and getting it square. Then I had to extend the flat out 9 1/2". I decided to just take apart the whole thing and add longer rails to each flat bottom piece. I didn't want to risk adding a new smaller piece in and then have it shift or crack and later get a kink in the ramp. So I did the pain in the ass thing, but the better thing for the ramp.

I was able to level out half of the flat too so then I feel like I made a little progress today. I got a true 16' of flat, no future head smacks on the joists and a level ramp.

Tomorrow, I'll level off the rest of it and try to get the decks secured to the ramp.



Also, I started to get another pain in the ass allergy attack and decided it was time to quit for the day. I was trying to get a sesh going at Wilson. SO, I drove to Chi with one eye exploding and my head feeing like it was dipped in pepper. I got to the park and it was just as bad as when I left. Of course there was a rad sesh going on. I took one run and realized that I was about to die in there. Having blurred vision, disorienation, and histamine overload. sucks.

Flat Flat Flat

This week it is the Flat Bottom express. And not J-Lo.

I began building the Flatbottom on Thursday and got half of it done. I got the other half built by 11am Friday and spent the rest of today leveling the ramp off. It looks like I'll be leveling all day tomorrow as well. But things are going as planned. However, I will have to raise the ramp about 3" which will cut down on head room again.. Ugh!!



I am also starting to get an anxiety attack over the distance between the joist for the barn roof and the lip of the ramp. I checked it out before and should have room but I always get all spazzy. I let the cat out of the bag at Wilson the other night. I wanted to wait until I had the frame completely built. So hopefully, I'll be able to tie everything together tomorrow (Saturday) and then take some pics of the ramp in its skeletal state and then blow it out to Chicago!



I am not to worried about people randomly showing up here. I doubt that very many people will make the drive anyway. Even though I did it every day this summer!! The funny thing is that most will probably not like the ramp. But I am glad that I was finally able to build something that I wanted. I talked to Bill last night and he was totally stoked on the ramp. As soon as I explained the dimensions he said "Fuck thats an old school vert ramp!" "I used to ride that shit all the time!" So if he is in agreement then I have nothing to worry about!!



I took a bunch of pics some step by step stuff but it is self explanatory.

More, more, MORE!

I got some more work done this morning before work! Sometimes you can get so much done in a short period of time. It is like, where did my weekend go?? I was out of gas on Saturday for sure and Sunday just was making up for Saturday. Anyway, I did get some things done.



I built the frames for each deck which rules. So now when I am ready it is just prop them up and screw 'em in! Well, I am sure it will be more than just that, it always is. I have enough vertical posts to get that done too. I just have to think of a strategy to lift that shit up and prop it without busting a gut.



Maybe some help would do me good>?? It is hard to get people to come out to the south country like this. Calabro is away for the month and others well?? What is the point!!!! The point is that I am having a blast building this thing. I wish I could do more!! Maybe I can do it as a side job this summer! What a dream.



I also bit the bullet and finally did some double boards on the 8' transitions. I will sleep much better knowing that I put the beef where it counts. The 6' wide transitions should be stable enough and now the 8' Ts are ready for anything. I hope!!!

So more to come this weekend!! Lots of leveling and flat bottom construction. Yes!!

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

Gettin' things going

Yes, I worked all week on the ramp and got more stuff done!! I have been spending an hour or two after work and working for about 5-6 hours on the days off before night sessions at Wilson. So things have been going well.





I was freaking out earlier in the week. I thought that I grossly miscalculated my wood supply. But I did not do too bad. I will have to go and get more 2 x 4s but it could be worse!!



I got the quarter pipes all built now. I just have to add in a few boards here and there when I get more. I also wanted to leave them open so I can get in there and level it all off. That seems to be the deal here.

I am starting to get exited about it all again!!