Expand Quote
Just did some wheel wells with a wood rasp and they turned out way better than I expected. I just wanted to get a cruiser setup with big wheels that was still low to the ground. Still a little more tweaking and clean up to do before I clear coat em.
Here’s a link to the album with before/after and some commentary:
https://imgur.com/gallery/SC4xSQy
The gallery I linked has a bit of an explanation but specific to the tools/technique, after marking where I thought they needed to be placed, I started removing the wood with a wood rasp. I tried to use the point where the truck pivots (I’ve got a set of Thunder 151s on it) and the point where the axle threads would end up in a deep turn as the center line for the rasping motion, starting by removing some wood there and then gradually changing the angle but keeping the handle side of the rasp centered on the truck pivot point so it would make the arc of the outer edge of the well more naturally. Once I got going, it was fairly easy to see/maintain the shape of the well even though I was doing it freehand.
As the well started to get close to the final shape, I had to be a little more careful with the angle of the rasp cause I didn’t want to get too thin at the edges. I was shooting for getting the outer edge just to the end of the fourth ply without going into the fifth but still needed to deepen it further in so I was sort of scraping out wood with short strokes just in the middle of the well, staying off the edge of the board as well as avoiding making the well extend further toward the truck baseplate area. The rasp I used was nowhere near the level of quality that a pro-level tool is so I ended up with some ugly grooves in there but nothing that couldn’t be sanded out. (You can see remnants of the grooves pre- and post-sanding in the photos in the gallery)
The layers of glue create little dark lines as the cut deepens and act as a guide for shaping the well. If they end up as fairly smooth arcs vs. wobbly lines, that’s a good indicator that you have a reasonably smooth and consistent groove in the wood. To test, I started by just remounting trucks with the kingpin nut off and tilting them to see if the greatest depth followed the angle of the axle. Later, I mounted wheels and went out and did my best to lean hard and get them to bite, then went back and deepened the wells in the spots that were still contacting the wheels.
Once I was satisfied with the shape and depth, I just took little pieces of 60-100 grit sandpaper and smoothed everything out by hand. While I found I could alter the shape of the well a bit with sandpaper, I don’t recommend relying on it to make significant changes to the shape, it takes way too long to remove much wood this way. The sandpaper was just to clean them up aesthetically more than anything.
Other than the rasp (mine came with a junior tool set my 5yo got for Christmas) and sandpaper, you just need a pencil and something to measure (I used a flexible metal ruler that I could press down to follow the concave of the board).
I’m happy to clarify anything that’s too vague if you have questions. Overall, it took me maybe four hours over a couple days but I bet my next effort will be quicker now that I’ve done it once. It would’ve been quicker to use a drum sander (don’t own one) or a dremel (have one but I wasn’t confident in my ability to make smooth cuts with the relatively small sanding drums or discs) but I wasn’t bummed by how long it took. I might consider getting a better rasp for next time and maybe looking at what dremel attachments could work for the final sanding step.
Ultimately, being able to roll on 60mm wheels on Thunders with no risers is sick. I highly recommend it.
Topic: Making your own wheel wells? (Read 10533 times)