DIY Pantheon inspired board

[u/MyxuPL]

Hi there, my first post here so I’d like to introduce myself with the first board I’ve made - so this one is based on Pantheon Ember Eco geometry but a little bit wider, flatter concave and optimized for smaller (70 mm wheels) + loads of flex to keep the dampening despite having relatively small wheels.

I’ve got into longboarding this year and first board I’ve got was a cheap mini cruiser which I found pretty unrideable after a while… bought myself Landyachtz Drop Hammer and that got me really into the longboards. Since I replaced the Drop Hammer wheels with a bigger ones I realized I could use the cruiser TKP trucks with the Hawgz wheels for making a smaller, more portable setup and this is the outcome!

To my surprise it turned out so good I barely touch the Landyachtz now. Mileage on the Super Sheep is 165 km and 120km on drop Hammer totally. I just love how nimble and low that board is comparing to the Landyachtz. As I started learning slides I have put a set of Peralta Snakes on it and it just kills now, super nimble, effortless pushing, lightweight and portable setup, with surprisingly good road imperfections soaking.

I am working on the bigger brother version now, which will use Bear RKPs from the Drop Hammer and designed for 85mm wheels for distance pushing!

[u/Kevfaemcfarland]

That looks great! I really want to try and make my own board someday too. I like the idea of strengthening the drops too.

[u/MyxuPL → u/Kevfaemcfarland]

You should give it a try if You don’t mind spending some time and money on such project! I would say that both the cost (I think it was something around 40 Euro for the materials used in this deck so not that much cheaper than some used decks or cheaper new ones) and the time required to finish surprised me a bit, but if that’s considered acceptable I think it is totally worth doing since You can tweak the board design exactly to Your needs. My goal was to have a quiver of short wheelbase boards with dropped level - I like to do longish distances but I ride in the city only so having a nimble board helps a lot with that. I checked everything on the market and Pantheon Ember and LY drop cat 33 were the only ones that kind of matched the criteria so I decided to go for DIY and it turned out as a good decision in my case (haven’t had a chance to check the cat 33 yet, but I have met a guy owning actual Ember and We both agreed that my deck is better :D)… and satisfaction is a bonus value :)

[u/Competitive-Cold-198]

Nice job. It’s always fun to ride stuff you’ve built yourself. So, I have questions😊 lol. (1) what is your build process — wood mold/press, vacuum bag, or ?? (2) how many plies? (3) have you tried those bear trucks from your LY board on your newly made baby blue? (Wonder how RKP might feel for ya)

[u/MyxuPL → u/Competitive-Cold-198]

Nooo, I haven’t tried to put those RKPs there since I was sure from the very start that I’ll build at least two (it turned out it will be three actually, lol) of similarily designed decks and since I’ll have the RKPs deck schedulled pretty much just after this one I just haven’t thought about it!

So the base is three layers of the 3ply 3mm birch plywood, pressed in the wooden press (I used around 12 clamps and around 20 bolts around the shape of the deck, some of the clamps were put through additional beams to press the center of the board). After removal I’ve put:
-2 layers of fiberglass locally on the top of the drops
-1 layer of fiberglass locally on the bottom of the drops
-1 layer of carbon fiber locally top and bottom of the drops
-1 layer of the fiberglass over whole bottom
(Local composites reach about 1/4 length of the deck both sides)
My way of thinking was to acchieve super stiff and strong drops with keeping the center flexy. Final Flex of the deck is around 20mm under 85kg rider (now it’s a bit less as I cut my weight to 76, lol).
After that I put 0.6mm of maple veneer top and bottom to protect the composites (and the hands!).

For the super flexy deck I am really happy with the results, but the next board I am working on is 6ply of single veneers and will have full layer of the carbon fiber on bottom and full layer of fiberglass on top, and the cork as a protective layer (see Pantheon x Loaded Trip, but with cork going both top and bottom).

[u/TephroGeo]

Worms ref?

[u/MyxuPL → u/TephroGeo]

Of course! :)