June 2013

One of my hobbies is aggressive inline skating, which is doing tricks and grinds on inline skates. I suddenly had the idea of making a grind rail from bamboo!

The picture below shows the design I was thinking of. Basically just a piece of bamboo supported by two wooden blocks. The ends were going to be lashed to the blocks using inner tube or string, through holes in the blocks.

Until I realised that I could just use the split piece of bamboo! All I did was sand down the nodes using an angle grinder, and apply some wax. Slides great and is very lightweight. Because of the large area in contact with the ground it doesn't move around, and if you slip of, well, there's not far to fall!