PLYWOOD SKATER Finished

Ted,

That's too far back for me, man. Do you just use one sheet of carbon paper and it transfers itself over to the wood? I grew up typing in the 90's .

Thanks and I'm goign to build mine in 2 weeks.
 
Justyn

I'm really stingy, I used one letter sized carbon paper and just moved it from one area of the pattern to another until i've completely traced the pattern onto the plywood.
 
i just printed the frame in parts onto 3 separate sheets, lined them up, taped them together, cut them out, and stuck them to the plywood with spray glue. once i'm done cutting i will just sand the paper off or paint over it. easy. no tracing and more accurate...
 
Thanks to all for making this such a great opperation. I hope we all use it to it's fullest. Anyone else waiting to buy the HVX?
 
Mark,

Your step-dad did a great job. I'm hoping to get to mine soon. Also ya'll some great advice on glueing plans to the wood. I think that seems an easy solution.


j
 
I totaly screwed it up!!!!

since i only had 1/2 inch i glued the two together and then today i read that you need 1/2" for tjhe main part....

So i think tomorrow i will go to my plastic shop and see if they can cut all the parts in acrylic... It will look much better then.
 
Teddy or any of you guys that build your own skater dolly, did you test what´s the max weight it can deal with?
 
Just finished my skater last night. Woo Hoo!!!

Teddy's plans made it so easy to build. Here's my two cents on the construction for anyone taking on this project.

1. use a nice jigsaw. i mean top of the line. if you don't have one, rent one from home depot. i started off using my $50 black and decker and ended up scrapping everything and starting over with a nicer saw because all of my cuts sucked. cheap saws don't cut perfectly at 90 deg. up and down which is what you need.

2. don't buy $12 rollerblades from target for the wheels. go get some nice wheels and bearings from your local skate shop or sporting goods store. the cheap skates have awful, out of round wheels and cheap bearings. after returning my $12 skates, i ended up buying a set of nice indoor hockey wheels (72mm) and abec 5 bearings for about $30 from the sporting goods store. silky smooth. you will see one of the spare wheels in the video below.

other than that the whole thing went real quick and real cheap. dolly works great and tracks perfectly.

here are my first shots with it.

http://media.putfile.com/Skater-Test
 
cheezweezl said:
Just finished my skater last night. Woo Hoo!!!

Teddy's plans made it so easy to build. Here's my two cents on the construction for anyone taking on this project.

1. use a nice jigsaw. i mean top of the line. if you don't have one, rent one from home depot. i started off using my $50 black and decker and ended up scrapping everything and starting over with a nicer saw because all of my cuts sucked. cheap saws don't cut perfectly at 90 deg. up and down which is what you need.

2. don't buy $12 rollerblades from target for the wheels. go get some nice wheels and bearings from your local skate shop or sporting goods store. the cheap skates have awful, out of round wheels and cheap bearings. after returning my $12 skates, i ended up buying a set of nice indoor hockey wheels (72mm) and abec 5 bearings for about $30 from the sporting goods store. silky smooth. you will see one of the spare wheels in the video below.

other than that the whole thing went real quick and real cheap. dolly works great and tracks perfectly.

here are my first shots with it.

http://media.putfile.com/Skater-Test

I decided to give it another go to , i bought a hole saw for the two sizes and now it came out perfect. I could probably build them for like $125 for people.
 
Webdog,

I think you'd have quite a few people interested at that price. Just as long as it would have the calibration decals and use good wheels and trucks. I'm sure with shipping, if you kept it around 200, you'd be doing a service and certainly making some profit.

I have actually gone the other root and used this project to justify some tool purchases with the wife.
 
gumonstro said:
cheez, what about the max weight it can deal? did you do any test?

not really but it holds the dvx just fine. one thing though. you have to keep the camera low or it gets wobbly. i'm using a bogen 3232 tilt head and it's fine. it's what i shot that video with. i tried using a larger, taller fluidhead and it put the c.g. too high. wobble city.
 
cheezweezl

That is true. the skater becomes "relatively" unstable once you raise the center of gravity. I was wondering at first why the original design maintained a low and fixed dovetail mount. and this is probably one reason.
I could not find an off-the-shelf sturdy head that is low enough that would give us the creative flexibility of shooting objects at a low level yet can be adjusted to tilt up and down reasonably, this is why I made the mount myself.
I left out the details of my DIY mount and brake in the assumption that you guys have access to a wider source of mounts and heads, but for those who intend to DIY EVERYTHING, let me know. My mount design is simple and maintains a low profile 'almost' true to the original design height. its only 2 & 1/2 inches high from the Plywood skater base.

gumonstro

I mounted the DVX together with my DIY mid format lens adapter and the Plywood Skater held. In fact the skater works smoother with the weight. Kindof, lets the wheels really hug the table/floor.
 
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