Only if you excuse me for calling you Alex in a comment a few weeks back. Sorry about that. Not sure what I was thinking. I'd be so excited to see your custom board get some exposure on Braille's channel. I'll definitely comment over there that they need to check out Chris from Good Roads.

All good! I told you: just don't call me late to dinner!

You may wish to check out the complete handbook of sand casting, I own it and it’s an amazing resource

how to make fingerboard truck

Pivot cup, kingpin hole and mounting holes are drilled/milled after casting on a majority of trucks. No need of trying to cast this elements at all.

Iron work is so sick though, if you've already got that experience you're half way there

Definitely badass DIY, punk as f@ck!

Thank you! I will give this a shot next time around

It's always good to have an excuse. Like, for example, if I get a heat treating oven I can make my own axles. No such thing as too many tools.

For sure, I had a huge smile on my face

Yo dude! Thank you so much for all the help! My casts came out much cleaner this time

Hm. Yes. I know some of those words. Hahaha! In all seriousness: thanks for the tips, that all seems like super helpful advice.

That seems like a viable solution, how do you make those inserts?

Thanks dude! I also searched for a video like this for many many years and didn't have any luck. That's a big part of why I tackled the project, I wanted to get this information out there

Hmmm, I like it!

Thank you, I'll try this next time around

Thanks dude! It was really gratifying!

Hit me up when you do! I'd love to see what you make!

Sick!

Yeah. I knew there was no way somebody out there wasn't drilling their baseplates like that, it just makes too much sense. And yes on the logo!

@@GoodRoads Will be watching progress with great pleasure my man! You are doing awesome work. What I was wondering is the cost effectiveness of this process. Other than being able to create custom geometry... is it economically viable to create for example a small production run to sell with proffit? The way I see it you are totally set up to sell complete custom boards at ‘custom board’ prices. Pretty sure there are folks willing to fork a sum that makes it viable as a bussiness model. Would you agree? I know you are sharing all your files for those willing to invest the time and effort themselves... which is great by the way! But your personal experience and time is certainly worth money to those who cant be bothered to get hands on. I am personally working on quad skate plates which are UFS inline boot compatible and the truck geometry is totally custom. I designed them with casting in mind but the prototypes are being milled atm (I have a friend). Interested to learn the economics of this process (cost of sand? Reusable? Gas? Other consumables?) and if you have ideas on how to scale up? Perhaps a tree with multiple parts in one go? In that case another method is needed to capture the shapes (lost wax or lost 3D print moulding) but yeah... Looking forward to more sir!

I am certainly not thinking about production level truck manufacturing at this point, I was just compelled to do it for the sake of having done it, but it might be worthwhile at some point to look at the numbers. I honestly think sourcing and processing the right kind of aluminum would be the biggest bottleneck. The rest is pretty straightforward and there aren't many recurring costs. It's just time consuming

Glad to hear it, I hope the content I put out is enjoyable diy/maker stuff just as much as it's board sport stuff

Yes. I definitely want to figure out knurling at some point

I think I'm going to try to go the knurling route, but some feature to lock the axles in place is definitely a good idea

Thanks dude!

That's definitely an option, I'd just have to make myself some nice precise jig setups

Thanks dude!

epoxy and glass bits - this is an actual thing already!

I got a tip to add some neutral oil to my sand which I want to try, any thoughts on that?

@@GoodRoads not something I'm familiar with, worth a small scale test at the very least.

Actually I hope to put many, many skateboard companies into business. Get out there and make your boards people!

Eventually I want to do mountainboard trucks which are about as wide as they get, so we'll get there!

I could just flip the kingpins on these, I don't know why I didn't think of that. Thanks dude!

@@GoodRoads I would epoxy them in so the nut don’t spin if the aluminium is soft .also I need to check out you home made wheels man 🤙🏻

I have considered that and I'm actually planning on going that route when I get to the base plates for RKP trucks, I want to see if I can get these to work with sand casting though since it requires less equipment

Thanks dude, I noticed when i was shooting the b-roll that it looks like the pivot cups on the Indys are actually drilled or machined or something. Definitely a detail to keep in mind going forward

@@GoodRoads Yeah, man. While you were typing that reply I was editing my comment to give some ideas. Ok, I just dissmounted a couple of my trucks and the pivot cups have drill bit markings, which tell me they were finished on a drill press. And I just found a 90s video of the venture factory where it's shown the pivot cups are drilled on a press. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/l7ucds9jxprepas.html

This is sick dude, good find! You can get a quick look at their runners and gates on the hangers too and I like the idea of using a single plate to form both the cope and the drag

@@GoodRoads Glad you liked it! Yeah I thought using a single plate is a brilliant way of making good compact molds with a perfect parting line, but I didn't know how to express it properly (english is not my first language), haha.

I think drilled holes would cause a weak point but there are a lot of factory made axles out there that have some kind of knurling on them to prevent slippage, I'd like to figure out how to make that happen

@@GoodRoads I wonder if you could use a vice or hydraulic press (harbor freight has cheap ones based on bottle jacks) to remove the axle after casting and replace it with a new axle that hasn't been exposed to heat? You could potentially make the casting axle slightly smaller than the final axle to achieve a very solid press fit. I know nothing about whether this would just tear apart the aluminum or if it would slide... maybe there's some sort of metal-on-metal casting release agent that could help with this?

Interesting idea

I'm not clear on what you're asking in the first part of your comment, the board rolls straight if that's what you mean. As far as a reusable mold for aluminum I've seen steel and graphite molds, and I imagine there are probably some ceramic solutions out there too. You could probably mill a graphite mold with a hobby level CNC, it's not a very hard material. If there are any other reusable mold materials out there I'd love to know because that would be fantastic.

I'd love to do that at some point