Elastic Skateboard

From MidnightWiki

The concept is to give the trucks some sort of spring mechanism so that they can "bounce." I would like to built one for personal use. Too bad I'm not a mechanical engineer and have very little idea about how to actually go about that.

The Plan

Normally, when the wheels hit the ground, the vertical velocity of the board is pretty much instantaneously reduced to 0. The proposed "spring mechanism" would resist that acceleration over a distance of at least a few centimeters, eliminating the shock of landing (and the toll on the knees). Other aspects of riding would also be affected, including ollieing and coasting. The basic idea is to allow for the motions of board and rider to be smoother and the interactions between board and ground to be more fluid. There's of course nothing wrong with the current style of popping the board up and smacking it back down on the pavement again--this is just a different idea.

As far as the mechanism of this "mechanism," I think there are a few possibilities:

• metal spring (like in a regular pogo-stick, probably the most feasible)
• air pressure (like in the razor pogo-stick)
• magnetic

The wheels would be polyurethane long-board wheels: large and soft to avoid the rumbling of smaller trick wheels.

Apart from the modified trucks and larger wheels, the other components would be standard trick-board components to keep the form-factor small and portable. This is not a long-board: you should still be able to at least ollie it.

I'm looking for design suggestions, people who can tell me how to make this, or people who want to help me make it.

Problems

• In order to achieve a nice bounce, pogo-stick springs are pretty long. There might not be sufficient vertical space in the trucks to accommodate a sufficiently long spring.
• More moving parts only adds to the fragility of the board. Repeated high impact drops may break the trucks prematurely.
• Otto has a broken femur. This just screams problem. -EKN