Plywood Skater Market

R

Randall Ayers

Member
I am about 60% done with making the plywood skater.. following the all-famous photo's.. it's been kinda hard getting the measurements right but I'm getting there. My question is do you guys think it would be worth it if I were to make a couple and try and sell them on here?
 
definitely i think there is a market for skater dollies here.
(I might buy one if the price is right)
 
yeah for sure... I'm not going to try and make a huge overhead on them.. i'll take pictures and video when it's finished and then just charge a few dollars more than it cost to make.. Should be done by mid next week...
 
I'm curious what people would pay for a skater. Mine's going to be out of 3/8" aluminum plate cause I want to be able to jump up and down on it, but if I made a lighter, cheeper DV version what would it be worth?
 
Lots of people either dont have the time, tools or skills to build one. Also most people don't need one that doubles as a pogo stick.
 
Kdawg said:
Lots of people either dont have the time, tools or skills to build one.
Click to expand...

Skater dollies are cool, but after struggling with various versions, options, attempts and materials I have to say it wasn't as easy for me as I thought. But here's what I ended up with:

skaterdolly.jpg
 
Texanite said:
Skater dollies are cool, but after struggling with various versions, options, attempts and materials I have to say it wasn't as easy for me as I thought. But here's what I ended up with:

skaterdolly.jpg
Click to expand...

Such a sweet little system. Would love to add this to the HBS gallery. Would you like that?
 
That rig Texanite made is gorgeous! wow!
Cudos.

FWIW; I think it's cool that DIY types make stuff available to all of us (like this).
even if there's a fee involved (or outright commercial endeavor).
it's very cool, and gratifying- all at the same time.
 
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NoNoob said:
That rig Texanite made is gorgeous! wow!
Cudos.
Click to expand...

Thanks NoNoob. I have to give props to all those who came before. The design of mine is definitely based off those others and the original plywood skater. I changed a lot of things, but the basics came from the plywood... oh, and that P&S Technik thingy too ;)


sek0910 said:
Beautiful...are these for sale, and if so, how much?
Click to expand...

Thanks sek. They're not for sale, per se. I actually have two of them. It must have been 9 months or so when I first started work on this. I originally made one of wood as a prototype and then started getting acrylic parts cut. It's gone through a lot of revisions and even now I'm not sure it's perfect. But in the end I have two. I had some kind of long term plans of making these and selling them, but it's somewhat costly and time consuming and that idea went by the wayside at some point. Nobody has any money these days anyway :)

I've been swamped with work and haven't even been on these forums since last October, but I got a little free time just last week and decided to get back to my skater project. I'd been using these old wheels and bearings that I pulled from a pair of used inline skates and they were a little rough, so I pulled them and put in some brand new wheels and bearings I bought last year. Since I was all new and fresh and had some time, I decided to shoot some tests. I put the tests on Vimeo, they got added to an HV20 channel and a couple people asked to see the dolly. So I took that photo and put together an embarrasingly cheezy video of the dolly itself. Then I stopped in here, saw this thread and thought I'd post.

Anyway, I figured I'd actually sell this one at some point, since I have enough pieces for two, and I don't need two and I've barely even used one of them. The price would have be at least something like $350 and up though. It wasn't cheap to get made, but I know that money is tight for everybody and selling it isn't paramount to me right now. I know that other places sell them for like $600, $800 and higher, but I'm not sure anybody actually buys those. LOL If I put it up for sale in the marketplace forum, I'll let you know :)

Thanks again everybody.

EDIT: I mentioned the video of the dolly being used, but didn't post it. Here's the dolly in action: http://www.vimeo.com/3026439
 
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nice video Texanite! thanks for sharing it.

i think many people don't realize how much effort goes into making one of these skaters, especially one finished to such a high standard as your 'black beauty'.
$350.00 seems a fair price, if one embraces the time and material aspect.

making an on-going commercial concern? that's different, and you have to take into consideration what the larger costs are- not just the DIY/cottage industry sense of it.

a question on function during shooting (if you don't mind):
do you actually utilize the numeric scaling on each wheel axis when setting up the shot?
or, do you just 'eye-ball' it and go from there?
do you use any other type of lining up of the axis- like laser pointer?

a material question:
the acrylic base material- how thick is it? is it one piece? where do you find it?

appreciate your time in making a response.


oh yeah, do you have an outtake of the dolly flying off the dining room table??
HEY- there ain't nothing cheesy about the video either. liked the ice in the glass lighting!
 
Texanite said:
Skater dollies are cool, but after struggling with various versions, options, attempts and materials I have to say it wasn't as easy for me as I thought. But here's what I ended up with:

skaterdolly.jpg
Click to expand...

Looks amazing. Nice work

My step dad made one for me in his shop in about a week, out of plywood, from plans I sent him. But it is a thousand times less polished than yours. Works fantastic though, have used it many times, and cost less than $60 in materials. He used wood he already had in his garage :)

It's strong as hell too. We put a RED on it to test last week and it didn't even budge. But only flat on it.

I had a tripod head mounted, but honestly, with an HVX/SGPro combo up on a tripod head, it got very unstable. I had to stabilize those dolly shots in post.

How does yours perform with weight on those rods and how big a rig have you put on there?
 
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NoNoob said:
nice video Texanite! thanks for sharing it.

i think many people don't realize how much effort goes into making one of these skaters, especially one finished to such a high standard as your 'black beauty'.
$350.00 seems a fair price, if one embraces the time and material aspect.
Click to expand...

And I should say that I don't personally think the $350 price is high, knowing what I now know :) I can't imagine trying to actually factor in real-life work hours into the price, it'd be a million dollar dolly! LOL

And as far as the skater market is concerned, even the plywood skater ended up being a $250 item, if I remember correctly. There used to be a guy, or maybe multiple guys, who were selling them on here and on ebay and I'm pretty sure their wood versions were in the $250 ballpark. Abd getting the acrylic sourced and cut isn't cheap either. Doing it on a larger scale would bring my costs down, but at some point during this project, it was obvious that I had already thrown too much money into the hole and should stop while I was ahead :)

NoNoob said:
a question on function during shooting (if you don't mind):
do you actually utilize the numeric scaling on each wheel axis when setting up the shot?
Click to expand...

That's a great question. I spent a lot of time setting up those dials and even coming up with my own working 'chart' of degree settings (even though mine looks like the plywood skater, it's not exactly the same and the plywood skater's distance charts don't work) In the end, how do I set the wheels?????.... I eyeball it :)

I had plans to do a laser holder attachment, but as time and money kept flowing on, I gave up on that. Of course, by that point I'd already bought a bunch of laser pointers... what the hell was I thinking...


NoNoob said:
a material question:
the acrylic base material- how thick is it? is it one piece? where do you find it?
Click to expand...

It's three pieces layered, not only for added structural integrity, but also for the aesthetics :)

NoNoob said:
oh yeah, do you have an outtake of the dolly flying off the dining room table??
Click to expand...

LOL No, thank goodness it didn't happen, but I'd get one wheel totally to the edge of the island in the kitchen before stopping it. I did have a couple moments when my heart-rate increased, because even though my hand was always touching the dolly during that move, I was having to walk around the corners of the rectangular island, so there were times that I was stretching to even have my fingertips on the dolly as I pushed it. I really wanted a full 360-degree shot for the video, but I think what's there is close enough

NoNoob said:
HEY- there ain't nothing cheesy about the video either. liked the ice in the glass lighting!
Click to expand...

Thanks. The cheesy one was actually a followup video which I took down last night. Some people had asked to see the dolly itself, so I took some still photos of it, got the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and made a cheezy video where I slowly revealed parts of the dolly. It was a little... umm... melodramatic :) And since I'd posted the picture here I figured I could take it down.
 
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