makeing a slider
 

does anybody have any suggestions on what material 2 use without spending alot of cash

hey man take a look at this! one of my buddies tried this out! http://www.wakeboarder.com/display.phtml?id=278

For slick material, I found some cheap stuff at Home Depot--it is flexible white plastic that comes in 4'x8' sheets and is ~1/8" thick. I think it is for some kind of wall paneling. It was $20/sheet. You can cut it pretty easily with a boxcutter. It's a lot cheaper than Trex and a lot easier to manipulate than PVC pipe.

Anybody have other ideas for floats? I looked into buying some dock floats like that and they are pretty pricy.

Greg... its called FRP (Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic) and it does work fairly well.

Get creative with your floating material... barrels are great.... I used an old pedal boat one time... honestly, wood floats pretty good for a while... a few chunks of foam have floated just about everything we've ever built.

2 huge pieces of advice...

#1: Long... MAKE IT LONG... no a 16ft rail is not fun so don't ask LOL

#2: if you're doing something with an angle... make it mellow. The minute you think you've got it right... make it more mellow. Never fails, inexperienced builders always make stuff too steep.

Have fun... building/shredding rails is one of my absolute fav parts of the sport!

ive never been able to figure out how they are permenatly attached to the bottom in the shallows.