Bigger-er-est - By Kilwag: Posted 8-8-07
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Bay College CAD Design Class Tackles World's Biggest Skateboard.

You have to feel bad for Australian Grant Hicks. No, not because he's related to Taylor Hicks (He isn't) but because his reign in the sun was short. Here's a guy who was thumbing through his Guinness Book of World Records, saw Tod Swank's record and thought "I can break that easy enough." Unbeknownst to him, some students at Bay College in Escanaba Michigan were already at work eclipsing his record. Tod had his run, and it was a good one that lasted about four years, and he got some press out out it. Grant's record looks like it's going to last about five months, because on April 17 the Bay College CAD Class is going to submit their gigantic skateboard that measures in at 31 feet long, a full 11 feet longer than Grant's, and almost 20 feet longer than the Tumyeto group.

 

And it looks like it's a done deal. If anything, the Bay College version is the one that has the closest resemblance to an actual skateboard. The real place where Bay College excels is in the trucks. The trucks look like scaled up versions of real trucks, albeit alternative technology trucks that are by far not the most common type of skateboard truck. Do those look familiar? They should. Students had to go out and buy some real skateboards to study and make comps from, then they voted on which concept to pursue. The model using Seismic brand trucks is the one they went for. The Tumyeto groups skateboard had trucks modeled on conventional trucks, but they didn't scale well. Imagine if your hangers were the diameter of a pencil and you'll get the picture. By contrast, Hick's trucks were some sort of alternate engineering altogether. They looked nothing like a real skateboard truck, unless you think of maybe an early Stroker prototype, but then again those didn't look like actual trucks either. Hick's trucks have another distracting feature - gas shocks to dampen the turning. Bay College made there trucks as a weldment, sheet metal, round stock and tubing burned on a burn table and welded together. Although hollow on the inside, from the outside they look like real Seismics, and for all intents and purposes, function the same way mechanically. Mounting the springs was their biggest problem with the project overall.

Bay College really put in the attention to detail. They tried to scale a skateboard up as a whole. The model was 31 inches long by 8 inches wide, so the finished product is 31 feet by 8 feet, and weighs about 2400 lbs. They used a spray on pickup truck bed liner for griptape, and even the look of mounting hardware is replicated. The 1 1/2" threaded rod with nuts are welded to the steel frame inside the board. The frame is surfaced with wood, hollowed in places to conserve weight. The screws on top are 3/8" plate burned to look like Phillips head screws. The wheels are drag racing slicks on common rims that are coincidentally scaled about right. The axle nuts are non functioning, but were fabricated out of sheet metal to complete the look.

 

1000+ man hours, six months and around $10,000 later, Bay College CAD design class have the largest and most accurate looking skateboard in the world. They've had 28 people on it so far, which is more bad news for Grant Hicks since he was planning on creating a brand new record for most people on a skateboard, and he thinks his shocks can be set up to hold about 20 people. Bay College's board needs about 12 people to make it turn reasonably. Like the Tumyeto board, Bay College's board doesn't have a brake. Hick's board has sort of a dead man's brake, which is a hand lever that has to be squeezed or else the brake will engage. Definitely the safest of the absurdly large skateboards.

August 17 is the day the Bay College president and some other state officials measure, ride, and video tape the skateboard for submission to Guinness. It's at the U.P. Sate fair, where "U.P." stands for Upper Peninsula. It's like Canada up there. I think Michigan is the only state in the Union that has major unconnected land masses separated by water. (OK, Hawaii and Alaska.) What happens after the state fair? Unbelievably, the board is going up for sale. I guess the candy sales (no joke!) weren't enough to fund the project. According to team member Jeremy Brock "We all take a lot of pride in the work that we have done on the board. It sucks that we are selling it." It sure does. You'd think the college would want to keep it on display somewhere.

 

Enjoy the pictures below, courtesy of Jeremy Brock. There's video as well. I've seen clearer footage of Bigfoot! These guys may be engineers, but they sure aren't photographers. Are they skaters? Not so much, it turns out. Then why build a giant skateboard? It turns out the school has a history of giant engineering projects. They built an oversize tricycle, which I can't find on the web anywhere. They must have sold that too! In any case, the skateboard seemed like a much more interesting class project than one of the other available options. the world's biggest easel. Considering I have barely been a half sideways imaginary acquaintance of Tod Swank's since the 80's (and not counting the 90's), you'd think I'd be more sour about a largely non-skater project such as this, but I'm not. It's just too good of an execution to harbor any ill feelings. And even though he may look like some skatepark brat's dad, Hicks has been a longtime surfer and skater as well. Come to think of it, skateboarding was the reason I dropped out of college, twice. (Is it still called "dropping out" if you are asked to leave?) Real skaters ought to be out skating anyway. After the session we can look at the fruit of someone else's labor. Bay College ought to bring this thing out on tour and rent it out for parades and the like to earn back their investment and promote the school.

Keep checking back for updates as the record attempt goes forward with the red tape. Thanks to Jeremy Brock, without who's help you would just have followed a link to another newspaper's regurgitated story.

 

 

Bigger-er-est - By Kilwag: Posted 8-8-07
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photos © DeanTyrell