rust dust

Add one more distraction to the list...

LOG

Instead of working on the ramp, we did this... ah, just one more thing to add to the list of why we can't get this ramp finished!

tomorrow night

You should probably scroll down and pause the playlist at the bottom of the site - otherwise things get crazy.

back n' forth

Now that we have the corner pieces in place, all that we have to do is glue it together.


Click for a bigger image.




Big shout-outs to Keith for coming over and taking charge. The third pipe was a bitch to get in place (no thanks to me), but Keith just handled it.

the bends

I've laid lots of pipe in my day. I also have installed a lot of metal coping on ramps before too. But doing the round wall was a bit different. We weren't absolutely sure what to expect and the first 45 minutes Lance and I were pretty nervous. I know it might be hard to believe, but our radius cuts weren't exact. Let's call it "natural variation". This is all good and dandy, but the pipe roller doesn't believe in this "natural variation" but rather "exact measurements". We had the pipe rolled at 46.5" and were gonna take our chances. This was a pretty good guess, but when we put it on the ramp we had to make some adjustments. How, you might ask? We cut the fucker. What, you might ask next? Well, ok, just the backside of the pipe.

If you look closely enough, you can see a little cut in the back of the pipe. This allowed us to open the pipe up and meet the actual radius of the corner. It worked pretty well, but we were a bit scared that the screws would fail and the pipe would pop off and break our legs. But it didn't and the future looks bright.



Oh yeah, on one of our test runs, Lance Lightfoot put a nice hole in the bottom of corner number 1. It was good and bad. Bad because it makes it tough to test it and good because it exposed the design failure early and now we can fix it before we get too far. But still, Lance could lay off the calories.

movement

all of march went by without a post/update, which is probably for the best. but there has been progress (no pics, sorry) and even some skating. the big news is we're having some pipe bent for the corners. should be ready this week if all goes well. just have to install it from there, put the decks on and lay the rest of the masonite. done deal. feel free to comment and call us pussies or whatever for not pouring 'crete. it's springtime -- we'll be slashing plenty of crete in other pits. our shit's gonna be fast and tight....just like your moms. late

Totally unrelated...

Reggie-44-life

CONTEST-4-life!!

Everyone loves a contest...Enter as many times as you like by commenting to this post (or don't and go check something way better online like paul's email to the berrics, or maybe, rihanna's black eye). Bonus pts for making up names more clever than 'anonymous'. Multiple choice.

The REAL reason the bowl sits idle is:

A). Paul has yet to finish "working" on his bathroom in order to refi his house and wifey aint letting him near the bowl until it's ready to handle some real bowl action.

B). Paul's still perfecting his photoshop skills.

C). Pauls neighbor rolls coping for a living but yet Paul refuses to drop off pipe for the man, or even talk to the dude despite the fact that that's really the next step for us to take with the build process (paul -- get a grip we're trying to skate in '09!)

D). All of the above

E). This is stupid I hate your lame blog and your unfinished ramp, i'm going to skate shelter (i.e., i'm 13 yrs old).

PRIZE: All correct answers win a coveted free entry pass to skate the tightest 2.5 ft indoor bowl in rensselaerrrr new york, on it's celebratory opening day, jan 1, 2014. Thanks for playing and good luck-4-life.

Not a whole lot of bowl movement...

but a lot of bowel movement.

D4L proudly annouces the lastest team member, Micah Owen...

Not too sure about the cry baby, but the kid is pretty damn cute.

Corner 4 complete

Finished the second layer on corner 4 this weekend. We now have a really tight bowl, fully skateable/carveable, with 2 layers of 1/4 inch osb laid down (and flaking away exponentially as I skate this thing more and more). The thought now is to use 1/4 ply, one side sanded, for the final skin. We still got some masonite but we're going to hold on that, feeling that the mini monster could use that extra strength from the ply. May take the masonite back or just hold it for future use. Also gotta get to town on the coping. Sorry about the blurry pic, hopefully some more pics or video to come. Oh yeah, keef made some man-steps to get into the bowl. I haven 't taken a pic of that yet. And probably won't.

Hommies gotta skate

Well, we took about 10 days off so I could go on a skate mission to New Jersey. Lance had to stay home - he's on 24 hour call for the next 2 weeks. But we did get after it the other night. We worked really late, 2am, but got a lot done.



I'll put up a Jersey post tonite. Stay warm

Another late, cold night

But we still got somethings done. Due to Lance's hard work last week (see previous post), we were able to cut the arcs and build the last corner. While Lance and keef got that going, I started the layer on corner 3. We didnt' get as much accomplished as we wanted, nevertheless, we were still pretty psyched to see the progress. Now I just have to convince the wife to let me out one more time before next weekend!

I gotta tell ya, building this without a "floor system" is proving to be the biggest problem. This is because the templates all float. So we tack and pre-assemble the corner and everything looks great, then we trace out the arcs, then we unassemble, cut the arcs and put it together for the final time. But, of course, when we put it back together, it doens't look quite as good as it did before. Gaps just tend to show up out of nowhere. That's kinda the drawback to the method we're using, but on the plus side, this thing is nothing but a bunch of 1/4 pipes and will be easy (knock on wood) to disassemble when the time comes.

last week

knocked out some ribs over the course of the week in prep for keef and pj to come over on the weekend. slow start and got progressively motivated. standard camera phone blurriness...

Locked in...

Well, I didn't post the results from over the last weekend because it didn't look that impressive. Because we don't have a frame to work off of, we have to set the corners in the right place - which can be tough and is def. time consuming.

But it is official. The final corner is now in place. Lance needs to upload photos (if he feels like it), but since this picture was taken, he has completed a bunch more rows. Hopefully after this saturday, we'll have an updated photo - and a bowl completely framed out.

So, if you want in, you now have to climb over.

Teaser

Just a tiny sample of the madness we got our selves into...

things just keep getting better

With the help of Seth we were able to rip through the third corner. 3 sets of hands made the difference... Keef, we expect big things.


This kinda gives you an idea of what we're working in... it's pretty much a boat.


We are able to get some kickturns in and what not, but the thing that really sucks is that until it's done, we really can't skate it the way we want to. But when this side is done... damn.

shut up and skate

Got 2 layers on the u-bowl now. And we put on some temporary black pipe to help scratch it. Dropped in and it was tough, but it was very clear that once we get the other side done... it's on.

kick turns? You betchya!

I finally got a second layer on one of the corners and to my surprise, it actually came out pretty decent. After putting down the first layer I thought this thing would be all kinked out, but the second layer took care of that concern. After it was done, we moved some wood and cleaned up and got some kick turns in - and a little bit of some carve action. The one corner isn't done yet so it was a bit sketchy to roll on it. But it felt really good to roll around for a bit.

There have also been some concerns as to how skateable this thing would be. It's too small, no flat, low ceilings, etc. Well, based on the tiny bit of skating we got in, I'm happy to say that this mother is fully skateable. It'll be tight and quick, but we barely scratched the surface and we can't wait to get her done.

(the corner that has the skateboard on it is the corner with 2 layers)

Seasons Greetings 4 Life...

just a little message from our sponsor (with the help of 20+ inches this past weekend at mt snow). more importantly though, we got....

1 layer done...

kinda sorta have it figured out...

It's still very dim... but there is light at the end of the tunnel

My side

Lance's side...

Skate this, bitch!!!

Yup, we got ourselves a real mess going. As you can see, one of the hardest things we gotta figure out is how to build this thing and keep all the wood inside. In fact, I think we used up half the night just rearranging the garage. So although we made it somewhat skateable the other night, it is completely not skateable now.

Keef came over again, who is normally very useful, but on this nite he was already about a 6 pack deep before he even got there. So, he wasn't the full 110% that we're used to seeing. At least not his work capacity - his hate level was high as usual. Nah, just kidding Keith. Keef and Lance got going on the third corner and I got to layering some ply on the finished corners. We all got things started, but (as you can tell) didn't get to far. We're hoping that the wives will lets us have at it again tonite.

Until then...

well, we .. skated...??

...my board had cobwebs on it and i'm not as limber as i was back in the day when we started building this thing... but we got this far friday night. getting after the roundwall tonight.

(again sorry for the crappy photos, we'll get it right next time, of course. and if you were here getting blogged up long enough to hear some Maiden or one of the other classics -- assuming you turned up your volume -- you can thank puccio. nice touch pj!)

skin it

Well, we actually think we're ready to put down some layers. Infact, it was kinda shocking to think that we might have something to do some kickturns on by this weekend.


Stay alert, stay D4L

\^^/

after finally getting the hang of the compound saw and the concept of the whole thing, me and keith almost finished off the ribs on the far pocket wednesday night. few more to go then hopefully cutting arcs and putting down ply, possibly this weekend.

light bulb...

quick and dirty miter/bevel action got some shit done last night. felt good. future looks bright (not that one can tell through my phone cam).

Level? Square?

Those are some good ideas, I guess. But in our world, we prefer the "eye it" technique. We don't have the luxury of having a frame to work off of so nothing ever really stays in place. We could stare at it for days and be like "but see that right there? that's gonna screw it up over here. And this, I dunno if this is gonna work", etc. Ultimately, we just gotta screw the f-er together and hope that it all comes out right in the end (and we don't feel to many kinks).


As you can tell, things are moving along. But heed my advice, if you don't got the time, forget about it. We could have been skating your basic ramp about a month ago but decided to take this on. It'll be worth it, but in the meantime, we're building - not skating.



Hopefully we'll have the other corner finished by the weekend and then we'll put down some layers - get some kick turns in. Lance Jr. is on the way so we gotta finish her up.

Huge shout-outs to our boys Keef and Seth. These dudes don't even skate and they are always down to help build. Keef was the one who said "lets keep going" at 1 in the morning - we kept at it till 2:30. That's what we call heart kids. Heart. And a steady flow of beer. I think this is the third build they have taken part in. Needless to say, they are both Down 4 Life.

Looks can be deceiving...

Update?

You want an update? Really? You? You really want an update?

How about this for an update...

We're getting shit done!

Now turn off your interweb and go skate.

xtra xtra!!

sorry. despite the title, nothing exciting here to report, so go skate and stop reading this weak excuse for a blog update. do something more constructive than i'm doing right now. or don't and just continue reading.

paul brought over a slice a pie last night, and he got my extra set of hands as he so desperately requested. i'm hoping all he needed the extra set of hands for was to twist the cap off his budweiser though, because as you can plainly see from these blurred shitty pics i took at the end of the night, that's about as useful as i was and we didn't get terribly far, through no fault of paul's. yeah we're negative about everything lately in the garage and here on d-4-l so if you're a positive motivation, "keep your head up", "you're doing great" kinda reader....EZ, we'll have none of that.

just kidding. we appreciate the comments and on-lurkers. there should be more to show in the coming few days or so; keep checking and stay down 4 life.

first slice of pie...

The other night didn't go so well with Keith and Nick, so I took home the templates and wood and mumbled in frustration to to them both that I had to figure out the "process to make this happen". Well, I figured it out. It's not that bad at all, just a lot of cuts. in fact, for me and my process, it's a minimum of 6 cuts per rib. But generally it's more than that because there is a lot of trimming that needs to happen to get that sucker in just right. All in all, it took about 3 hours to do this one corner. But, I'm quite confident that that will speed up considerably when I really get the process down and I have an extra set of hands - or two.





I'll try to post a little video of how I cut the ribs. Until then enjoy some photos that I just grabbed off the cell phone...

Oviedo, FL


Bondville, VT


USB Flash Drive - Santa Cruz Screaming Hand


Burden Lake, NY


Stamford, CT

Total Failure

Put in a solid 2.5 hours and this is what I came up with... couldn't get my head around it. But things have moved into my garage for some trail and error work. Once I get it figure out, we'll be all set. Unfortunately, until then, poor old Lance has got to look at this for the next couple of days...

Took the weekend off...

but we actually got some skating in. I headed down to the Delaware Water Gap and Lance went all the way down to Wilmington, NC. Not sure if Lance got any documentation, but this is what I came across...

Allen is the owner of the ramp and he is my new hero. In a perfect world, we'd have one of these ourselves, but until then, we'll just have to make do with our little space.

some action footage of Allen (in the grey shirt - ps... he's 43 and just got back into skating after a 20 year layoff. Keep the dream alive, keep it alive!!)


Delaware Water Gap Vert Ramp from Paul Puccio on Vimeo.

slice a pie?

took a little while for us to figure this out but the end result is pure 30-degree curvy goodness...

4 dudes and not much accomplished...

...but as one can see not-so-clearly through the drunk-cam, it's time to build some roundwall!

last night, couple wideass 1/4 Pipes