How’s it going everyone? I’ve been inactive on the forums for awhile… I hope everyone is having a great summer!
What do you get when you cross Zack Baldwin’s sweet trials course, my semi-sweet trials course, the woodsy corner of my backyard, and a whole lot of nails?
Anwser: The Ultimate trials/ Muni course.
We’re in the process of moving zack’s huge course to my yard, where we are making this big course. We have a lot of pallet/ spool/skinny type stuff between the two of us for the trials course. But we’re also making Muni “northshore-type” stuff. (You can see the start of it in the 3rd pic.) We thought we would share this project with y’all, and get some input as well. So if you have any suggestions, post em up here.
Later,
Jess
p.s. what you see in the pictures is about 3/4 of all the wood supplies. There is still another huge spool at Zack’s, small spools, pallets, an 80 ft trail (made up of 2x4s moveable stumps, 3 sawhorses, and posts), a monster truck tire, and other shtuff.
Looks awesome, where did you get all that stuff. Mainly the spools and monster truck tyre. But anything really, I need to get stuff like that! Looking awesome though, alotta great possibilities there.
Nice! Are you using nails or screws with pilot holes? I find that 2x4s split when I nail into them. The problem with pilot holes is that you need a cordless drill. Also, nails are much faster and cheaper. How are you gonna deal with wood rot? Or is this more intended for the short term?
How skinny will the north shore stuff be? It’d be cool if it got to be as thin as mabey 2" that high off the ground.
For the trials course, what will the general obstacle stuff be? More leaning towards small takeoff/landing zones or leaning towards skinnies and bigger moves? Is it gonna be like Zack’s old one? I hope you’re gonna use that rail he has, or is it in his yard for good?
Happy building:)
P.S. Your yard is about three times the size of the entire plot my house rests on:( .
Robbie- To get spools you first need to find a constuction site of some kind. Cable and other stuff comes on the spools, and the workers usually don’t need them after that. Kindly ask the construction workers if you can have them.
They’re putting in an auditorium at my high school, and in the construction area I saw a bunch of big spools. I talked to the principal, he talked with the workers, and they gave them to me, no problem. Monster truck tire? I have no idea… someone gave one to zack.
Bevan- just nails, maybe some screws. Wood rot? Blah. How skinny? Different sizes throughout the whole course. It will be kind of similar to zack’s old course. We don’t have an exact plan or anything. Yesh, the rail is at my house now. You can see it in the truck in the picture below.
I know, I’m pretty lucky to live here. Especially since Granite Bay has gotton so expensive. Good thing my parents bought our property 16 years ago.
in the pic below you can see the last big load of stuff transported from Zack’s to my house
For the UNICON 11 trials course, we were able to get huge used tires (I think they were tractor tires) from our local tire store’s recycle pile. They were even kind enough to deliver them to the MUni venue free of charge.
Wow, that’s a lot of wood! I really wanna ride that stuff. How stable is it? Any idea about the trials obstacle types?
As for spools, I got a set of power line cross bars and two 2’ high spools by stopping by the local electricdal maintainance shop for the city on an abandoned military base. They were glad to get rid of the spools. If my car had fit they would’ve given me some four footers, too. And they had tons of pallettes they wanted to goet rid of. I don’t use pallettes, though.
Jess, you might want to consider using square drive screws instead of nails, everything goes together a lot sturdier and a lot quicker. I get mine here and buy them 1000+ at a time: http://www.mcfeelys.com/
At that rate they aren’t too expensive…more than nails but WELL worth the difference.
The nice thing about square drive is that you won’t strip them out…plus when a piece does rot (and they will) replacement simply consist of popping out a few screws and putting the new lumber in place.
Here’s a section of North Shore we just finshed making at my house a few weeks ago. It’s 300+ continuous feet of elevated bridge and two 6 inch skinnies. Because it loops you can stay off the ground indefinitly! There will be a few skinnies and maybe a teeter that will pass thru the middle of the circle but then we’ll move on to the next session which will roll off the back side of this loop. Here’s vid of one of my friends who helped me build it hitting it on his bike.
Mine are in the ground, usually about 18 inches. You will never have North Shore stuff as sturdy as if you dig post holes for the supports. It makes everything ROCK SOLID! Plus the soil here in the South has a lot of clay in it so when you tamp/pack it back into the holes it’s about like pouring cement around the posts!
I have some things on my land that we did not put the supports into the ground and it is super rickety and requires a good deal of maintanance…
Digging post holes is not fun but it’s worth it…a high dollar set of diggers makes all the difference in the world. These DG16 Buckeye Post Hole Diggers are expensive but they’ll dig a hole in under half the time/effort…they’ll cut through roots like its butter!
That’s absolutely fantastic!!! You have the best parents. When can we expect to see photos and videos of the course being used? I love the green (or black? I can’t tell) horizontal ladder! Was it made specifically for unicycling on? You’re very lucky to have access to all that great stuff.
What I want to do here at home is learn to weld, then make a rail (both flat and curved) that is detachable and can be set up in a big 20m long windy path that goes high and low. I’ll have some 10mm wide sections and some 50mm wide, and some 100mm with 120 degree turns and some 50mm with 90 degree turns…it would be brilliant and I will do it eventually. For now though I’m stuck with making small wooden obstacles that don’t take up too much room.
It kind of looks rickety in the picture, but it’s actually really sturdy. You can jump up and down violently on the 2 suspended pallets and it is rock hard.
Zod- those screws sound really good. I think we might use some screws (most likely normal cheapy ones), but for now, we are just nailin. Whew, your course looks pretty nice. Super clean and well-built. It was worth the overnight download to see that video. Thanks for the tips.
darchibald- Both. Only a couple are on the ground. Most are in there 6 in. to 16 in.
Andrew- Zack and probably John foss are coming tomorrow to work on it. We will surely be testing it out, since we haven’t yet. We’ll most likely get some footage of it.
Zack welded up the black horizontal ladder. Just for unicycling, yes. It’s a fun obstacle, because you can hop between the rungs, on the rungs, or ride the edge.
I agree, I’m really lucky.
Hey, I wouldn’t say you are stuck with the small wooden obstacles. I saw your video, and it was wicked. Keep coming up with awesome combinations, it’s awesome.
Thanks Jess, yeah one of those ladders is one of the first items on my list of things to make when I learn to weld. I’ve wanted to make one for a long time - it’ll be good to see one in action. At a bike trials competition I rode in they had a ladder with round rungs spaced well for bikes, but it was a tease for me because I was forced to hop on the tops or I’d slip through.
Didnt know if it was worth starting a nw thread or not seeing as what i have is not that impressive, heres a small playground i knocked up with 5 palletes, we cut them up to be smaller and easier to move and store and also needed spare wood to reinforce the slats that kept snapping. some pics here of it all and ryan about to gap.
(note its a bit crap but that suits our crap trials skills so its fine for now, and i can just keep adding stuff, going to bring some of ryans obstacles up today, to add to it all)
When can we expect to see photos and videos of the course being used? I love the green (or black? I can’t tell) horizontal ladder! Was it made specifically for unicycling on? You’re very lucky to have access to all that great stuff.
Sorry.