Hi there
I am planning on making my own deck for my esk8, and I was looking for some advice on the materials and construction. I am planning on using birch plywood with carbon fiber or fiberglass between the layers.
Will birch ply be OK or should I try and source some maple ply?
What kind of adhesive should I use?
Should I use 3 layers or 5 layers? the deck is going to be 34-40 inches and I want it to be fairly stiff.
Any advice would be much appreciated.
Birch ply will be fine, especially if you are reinforcing with fibre.
You will need to use resin as an adhesive for the fibre to work effectively. There are different types of resin and each has its own qualities, 3 common resins are epoxy, polyester and vinylester.
Layer count depends on the thickness of your plys, the type of fibre and resin you choose and the amount of flex that you want.
The type of fibre that you use will also come in many different forms and you will need to pay close attention to fibre direction and weave type; bi-axial, quad-axial, standard weave, twill weave blah blah blah
My suggestion would be to look closely at a board you would like to mimic and experiment.
After you have done an absolute shit ton of research. There are no hard and fast answers for what you are asking, and your end product will only come out as good as the thought and effort you have put into it.
if you’re going birch ply, make it at least 12mm thick and use tri-axial fiberglass to reduce the torsional flex. birch ply has a lot of torsional flex in it
Just saw this on another thread, might be of interest in this topic. http://www.roarockit.com/ basically a kit to make and form your own deck. I’ve no idea how well this works, but certainly looks pretty interesting.
I am curious to try out the roarockit kit, also working on building a hydraulic press.
@geohan how do you think you will press the deck? There are some neat methods with threaded rods or g-clamps that don’t require a full mold or press setup.
might try vac bag, if that fails I will use clamps
I used 10 clamps. Works fine. Make sure to use enough clue, that’s the key 
21 Layers of 0.6mm maple veneer…but that’s way to much.
Wow! I have toyed with this idea in my brain but always come to the conclusion that there is no benefit for electric. Did you complete a build with this?
It’s still in the press. I’ll take it out tomorrow and give it a final cut. Than I have to wait for the axis and order the other parts.
Whats with the odd shape?
That’s to hide the electronics 