December last year, after watching a lot of Woby Design on Youtube, I wondered if it was possible. Make a divot tool out of upcycled broken skateboards.
March I finally got in touch with a local skate shot to see if they had broken boards kicking around. Weirdly I have never skateboarded (aside from a plastic bananna board on a gravel road in my youth), just thought the look could be very neat.
We started with breaking the boards down into strips, then gluing them up into chunks.
After the glue ups, the chunks got broken down back into veneers (for lack of a better word) about 5/8" thick.
Each sheet/veneer had things drawn out on them, holes drilled, and then cut out on my bare bones little bandsaw. After that, the slot of the tool was cut, connecting the hole dilled previously to what would be the tips.
Fast forward through a lot of sanding and contouring on a bench sander, and we got somewhat close to a divot tool shape.
Here is where we our problem really magnified. While cutting the slots, it became evident there was a bad glue section. No problem right, we can reglue and clamp, which we did. A lot of regluing tips onto these. Almost all in the same spot. I could deal with that.
Because of the grain orientation, and I think because the strength of a board itself is in the layers, the way I cut things for the look left this all very fragile.
Your normal divot tool, made of plastic or metal, well is pretty rigid. The wooden one was getting a lot of flex (even before more contouring and shaping). Flex that the glue could handle, but that the actual original layers the board couldnt handle.
I thought a lot about what could be done to strengthen things. Paint it with layers of epoxy? Dip it in resin? Drill a hole in each tine and say insert a nail that would be glued into it. All might work, but to what extent? Slightly stronger maybe. Probably no where close to a desired level.
So this is where I cut the cord. Attempt over. Gutted. Disappointed. But kind of relieved too. There was a lot of time spent on these, but a lot of it was 1 step forward, 2 steps back. A lot of fixes and a lot of rework. The irony in this is that I didnt just cut and shape one piece... noooo. I actually did about 20 of them. A big batch, that used up all the blanks except for the one slab pictured above lol.
The look I still think is really neat. Just not practical for actual use at it stands.
March I finally got in touch with a local skate shot to see if they had broken boards kicking around. Weirdly I have never skateboarded (aside from a plastic bananna board on a gravel road in my youth), just thought the look could be very neat.
We started with breaking the boards down into strips, then gluing them up into chunks.
After the glue ups, the chunks got broken down back into veneers (for lack of a better word) about 5/8" thick.
Each sheet/veneer had things drawn out on them, holes drilled, and then cut out on my bare bones little bandsaw. After that, the slot of the tool was cut, connecting the hole dilled previously to what would be the tips.
Fast forward through a lot of sanding and contouring on a bench sander, and we got somewhat close to a divot tool shape.
Here is where we our problem really magnified. While cutting the slots, it became evident there was a bad glue section. No problem right, we can reglue and clamp, which we did. A lot of regluing tips onto these. Almost all in the same spot. I could deal with that.
Because of the grain orientation, and I think because the strength of a board itself is in the layers, the way I cut things for the look left this all very fragile.
Your normal divot tool, made of plastic or metal, well is pretty rigid. The wooden one was getting a lot of flex (even before more contouring and shaping). Flex that the glue could handle, but that the actual original layers the board couldnt handle.
I thought a lot about what could be done to strengthen things. Paint it with layers of epoxy? Dip it in resin? Drill a hole in each tine and say insert a nail that would be glued into it. All might work, but to what extent? Slightly stronger maybe. Probably no where close to a desired level.
So this is where I cut the cord. Attempt over. Gutted. Disappointed. But kind of relieved too. There was a lot of time spent on these, but a lot of it was 1 step forward, 2 steps back. A lot of fixes and a lot of rework. The irony in this is that I didnt just cut and shape one piece... noooo. I actually did about 20 of them. A big batch, that used up all the blanks except for the one slab pictured above lol.
The look I still think is really neat. Just not practical for actual use at it stands.
