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Old    norcalz71            07-14-2004, 7:33 PM Reply   
my friend and i decided we are just going to build an in ground slider for this weekend. we will get it in the shallows and pound posts in for the base. We're planning to use 2x4's (probably 4-5 over a 12-15 ft span) and my question is how far would you say they need to be pounded in? The ground they will be set into is some pretty firm clay that we can pack tight around the base. SInce the lake is dropping, we will probably need to pick it up and move it over the course of our 9 day stay. Max height of the rail will be about 3 feet or less, so how much 2x4 should be below ground to make it solid? thanks
Old     (wakebordr11)      Join Date: May 2001       07-14-2004, 9:59 PM Reply   
I would rethink your plans... 12-15 feet isnt too long of a distance... and I would suggest 4x4 lumber for the vertical posts. What my friends and I did was buy these metal spikes that clamp onto the ends of the 4x4s, the 4x4s are pounded 30 inchs of the spike plus another 2 feet or so the slider is 2 feet high in about 4.5ish feet of water. I would also suggest making it 20-25 feet long atleast, our slider is 48 feet and it goes by quick...
Old    norcalz71            07-14-2004, 11:10 PM Reply   
i would definitely love to make it longer, but this is my first ever slider, to build or hit, and i have to be able to haul it to the lake. perhaps i will make it a bit longer, like 20 feet, but then portability becomes a problem. about how much do these metal spikes run?

thanks
Old    sbvfive            07-15-2004, 6:39 AM Reply   
I know the feeling of a needed to have portability, my first rail was 10 feet. It was the biggest waste of money ever.....I eventually moved up to a fully portable 40 foot rail, and even that is kinda short. I also reccommend not using 2x4's as posts, you are gonna have to go with 4x4 or heavy duty fence post. My advice it to build it in sections and assemble it at the lake.
Old    norcalz71            07-15-2004, 8:34 AM Reply   
so if im going to build it in sections, how would you recommend i got about doing that? should i just make a flat bar with a slant bar on the front end that drops in the water for easY entry to the rail? thats how my design is now, with a 5 ft slant bar and an 8 or 10 ft flat bar. ill admit it seems short, so how should i fix it? this will be fixed in the ground, and then removed when we are done.

thanks
Old    sbvfive            07-15-2004, 8:53 AM Reply   
I use metal brackets, like the "L" shaped brace kind that attach deckboards to braces. 2 on each side of the sections. You don't put them flush with the edge of the section though, you leave some space, then us a carraige bolt to tighten the hell out of them. This will squeeze each section together tight enough to make your top surface flush. For a three foot high rail, you probably need a 12 foot up section (slant) minimum to keep a shallow enough angle that you don't get booted. But if it is only three feet, just make it a flat bar and ollie up. If you only do a five foot up section you'll end up haveing to ollie on anyhow. I'd get 4 16 foot 2x6, and 4 or 6 4x4's. What you do is stand 2 2x6's next to each on the floor balancing on the 2 inch side, parallel, and put the 4x4's in between them spaced evenly. Then thru bolt them, at least two bolts per. Make your 2nd section the same way, then calculate the angle of the up section and cut it. Then get 2 16 foot strips of fiberon decking, countersink screw it to the 2 inch edges of the 2x6's and you are good to go. Make the bracket to connect your sections, and done. I will try and draw a pic and email it to you.
Old    norcalz71            07-15-2004, 11:19 AM Reply   
awesome thanks bro, any idea about how much that would run? since this was more a spur of the moment idea we were going for low cost but i dont think this would be very hard to do your way. it would be nice if i could make something more lasting that i could take around to different spots. thanks
Old    norcalz71            07-15-2004, 3:22 PM Reply   
ok i think we got our final design in now, should be about $100.

we're going to have 2, 10 foot sections. each section is composed of 2 vertical, 8ft 4x4's supporting two side by side 2x6"s, and the 2x6's will bolt to the side of the 4x4's. capped on top of the 2x6's will be 3", 10 ft sections of PVC. there will be two seperate but identical sections like this, allowing us to setup a slant bar, slant bar to flar bar, full slant, full flat or an a-frame.

what do you think? will there be any problems cutting the PVC on one "side" and slipping it over the 2x6"s skinny side?
Old     (wakebordr11)      Join Date: May 2001       07-15-2004, 9:42 PM Reply   
that sounds like a decent plan... but allow me to make a few suggestions. First... with 3 people you can have a 50 foot rail assembled in 3 hours or less. Second... setting it up in pieces will be difficult to transport and very cumbersome. The metal spikes were some of the expensive hardware, I think 15 dollars a piece or more. Also if you make your sections it may be difficult to adapt them to the area, I suggest building it at your house, disassembling it... all the lumber will fit in your boat, and then transporting it to the site, assembling it will take a short amount of time with some simple tools... sledge hammer, hammers, nails, screws, lag bolts and a nice cordless drill with 2 battery packs, and if you need to do some on site fabrication, a power inverter and necessary power tools could come in EXTRA handy. Our design only cost us 185 dollars and we utilized 2 16 foot 2x6's from my house... so add those to the price and you tick in at just over 200 dollars, dont forget you will need 2x4s to brace underwater as well because it will be a little wobbly from side to side.
Now our design is similar to the one in wakeboarding mag if you have seen it, however we modified it a little for a more cost effective solution and it has been flawless so far. We have 4 4x4s, 3 spaced evenly at 16ft so that equals 32 and then another about 12 feet out, again dealing with your slant, figure out the angles and depth of water we had to fab this on site. We then strung the 2x6s with the tall way for better strength from 4x4 to 4x4. We used brackets designed to accept the 2x6s to the 4x4... i forget what they are called, they are shaped like this if you can imagine it... Ll and you screw where the letters are into the 4x4 and then they extend out and you screw them into the 2x6. Then we laid our fibercon decking on top of all of this and countersunk the screws. Sorry for the long post, I will get pictures tomorrow if you are still around... I hope but with 3 guys a very nice slider can be built in less than 3 hours, just dont cut corners... it is 38 feet on top and while I havent travelled to the end yet... Ive been close and 38 feet plus the 10 up... sounds like alot but at 22 it goes by very quick.
Have a good time, be safe, wear the helmet and good luck, take pictures becase the first rides are sure to be some wild ones.

- Duane
Old    norcalz71            07-16-2004, 12:22 AM Reply   
duane, thanks for the input, your plan is about what we are doing, heres what we've got:

4 posts, 4x4 8ft tall these are our verticals

4 2x6, 10 ft "rails", these are bolted used 3/8" carriage bolts to the sides of the top of the 4x4's, giving an overall width of around 6.5", and gives us an overall length of 20 ft

4 3", 10 ft long PVC pipes, these are going to be attached on top of the 2x6 "rails", and will be our sliding surface, however my dad might know a company that he has connections at that could get us some sheet plastic, would that be better?

we will use some various 2x4's i have around to brace it under the water. the slider is in 2, 10 ft long sections thus allowing us to make a 20 ft flat bar, step up, a-frame, etc because there is a pivot point.

as you said, we plan to build it all here, then unbolt everything, take it to the lake and then assemble on shore and walk it into the shallows.

as far as transporting to the lake, how would you recommend we do this? the boards will not easily fit in our suburban, nor on the boat (let alone myself or my dad let lumber in the boat). i thought i could possibly lay the boards on the lower cross braces of our trailer, below the bunks, and just tie them down nice and tight, and the PVC could go in the boat or the burb? what do you think of the trailer idea?

thanks


Old     (wakebordr11)      Join Date: May 2001       07-16-2004, 10:01 AM Reply   
I never thought about that... but I had my boat out at the time of my friends and I gathering supplies. We used many sheets of plastic and towels and just made sure everything was supported and held down in the boat... I am (seemingly) anal about my boat but theres a reason it looks as good as it does after 5 years of hard use... We only had a 10 minute trip to the launch so we were able to avoid going too fast and bouncy roads. I see you have an open bow boat, so you should be able to put most of the stuff on the floor... being most of it is 8 foot lumber, support it with sheets of plastic and towels and you should be fine honestly... I havent slidden pvc but a single pipe of pvc may be hard to balance on, I like the fiberon composite deck boards we bought but they are very expensive, you should be fine with the PVC just make sure its like schedule 60 or whatever.... some good thick stuff. and yea your plan sounds good now that Im able to visualize it a little better, it will be solid. Either your trailer idea or if you lay everything in the boat very cautiously and thoughtfully will work with the transportation.
Good luck

-Duane
Old    sbvfive            07-16-2004, 11:55 AM Reply   
Yeah, looks like you got it all set. The PVC is pretty slick, but will work great...if you can handle the extra cost, fiberon is the stuff, 20 feet worth should run you like 35-40 bucks, but it is awesome. Sheet plastic is probably the best of all, problem is no one can ever find the stuff. If your dad has a hook up, go for it!! Sheet plastic and fiberon are easier to make smmoth joints, the PVC is doable but a little harder. Strapping the stuff to the trailer is doable, I have seen it done, just strap the hell out of it cause you don't want 2x4s slamming into the hull!! Basically, to transport it on the boat, you just gotta suck it up and throw it in the boat. I had the same issue, cause even dissasembled they 10 foot sections are a little cumbersome to move. We took old blankets and comforters and wrapped the edges and sharp pieces to protect the boat. Let me know how it goes, and post some pics!!
Old    norcalz71            07-16-2004, 2:48 PM Reply   
thanks for the help guys, we just finished building it all except slotting the PVC, which my friend is doing at his house on the table saw.

Im kinda irritated with myself, because i have actually been moving some things for my dad this week from their manufacturing location (he used to work there) to our shop. Oh, what is the sole purpose of this manufacturing place? plastic forms for displays and such. Im surrounded by every plastic imagineable and it didnt hit me. Gahhhhh, next time.

Anyway, i will definitely have pics and eventually video (have a sick new dig vid camera, just no computer strong enough to do the editting). Assuming we can sink it in the mud, which will be the haardest part, it should be pretty sweet. 20 ft long, slant or flat, and approx 8" wide w/ 2 pieces of side by side PVC. We've got a bunch of boards and a wakeskate to try it on, and a week to do it. If anyone is gonna be at bullards bar this weekend, feel free to hit it and/or offer suggestions on it, and wish us luck.
Old     (rodmcinnis)      Join Date: Sep 2002       07-16-2004, 2:56 PM Reply   
I support the idea that 12' slider is too short.

Our first ever slider was a plastic canoe/kayak turned upside down. We had stuffed it with empty gas cans managed to get enough floatation under it to support a boarder going across the top. Note that it would NOT support someone sitting on top of it, but it had enough mass to resist a boarder going by at 20 MPH.

It was hard to do anything other than say you "hit it". By the time you were on you were going off again.

We upgraded to a 30' Rave inflatbale slider. That actually works well for us. I can ride up the ramp, 50/50 the entire lenght and ride off the other side and feel good about it. My son can do all sorts of tricks, which there wouldn't be room for on a 12' slider.

If you aren't a craftsman by trade, you might want to try a dry run of this assembly before you get it out to the lake! Build you slider in the back yard! Figure it will take you twice that long to put it together in the water. When you get it together, jump on it from a variety of different angle and see how it responds.

I would doubt that you would be sucessful making the pieces to size and assembling on site. I would expect that you would have to make all the posts oversize, then cut to the appropriate height. Likewise with the horizontal supports.

A few words of advice:

1) You don't always hit the rail from the correct angle! Figure that the rail has to survive your weight crashing into it from the side.

2) gaps in the rail are really, really bad! Even a 1/4 inch gap can rip the bottom out of your board. If the ends of the gap are at different heights it will be a major trip!

3) Figure you will be falling off at all angle. Have the slider deep enough that you won't get hurt falling on the shallow side.

4) Having a slider break underneath you can cause serious injury!

Also, be aware that sliders are really hard on boards! You might as well take the fins off the board because they won't last long. If I showed you the board that we use for hitting sliders it would probably be enough to convince you not to use a board you cared about!

Rod
Old     (dococ)      Join Date: Mar 2002       07-16-2004, 3:05 PM Reply   
Rod speaks the truth. Based on my experience, I would say that all of his advice is right on the mark.
Old    norcal_99            07-16-2004, 3:05 PM Reply   
Why not make a floating slider instead?
Old     (wakebordr11)      Join Date: May 2001       07-18-2004, 7:07 PM Reply   
floating slider is going to probably double the amount of lumber you need, build times etc, not to mention the complexities of ancoring it. Double the cost = not good, especially for us younger less financially endowed guys. Fiberon is 35 bucks for 20 feet!? We got 16 foot 5/4 by 6 fiberon comp deck boards for 26... expensive but the stuff is awesome. slider has been working good so far and no complaints from anyone or being yelled at by local authorities... so thats always a plus seeing as we dont have a permit, another suggestion that Im going to implement... mark it with some reflectors. Anyways, get out there and build it people, its not as hard as it seems and they are worlds of fun

Duane

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