yo burnside cat
ross macwhinney
resources on the web about how to pour concrete for ramps? Pittsburgh has
weather comparable to oregon (rainy as fuck) but colder in the winter. But
we also have the highest number of bridges and overpasses in the country.
which means that there must be some decent spots for mini-burnsides or
something. anyways, let me know. wrod!
--On Saturday, February 10, 2001 11:46 PM -0800 Bret Taylor
<p...@europa.com> wrote:
> Burnside would not be there if it had not been for Me, Kent and some
> others. The city had nothing to do with it. We paid for it and built it
> without their permission.
ItzF8
>something. anyways, let me know. wrod!
checkout: www.skateparkguide.com,
or write the cats on these websites:
members.home.net/wrogers and
www.sas.upenn.edu/~blathrop/fdrsplash.html
ross macwhinney
thanks though
--On Thursday, February 15, 2001 7:04 PM +0000 ItzF8 <it...@aol.com> wrote:
> possm wrote:
Bret Taylor
bank at Burnside. Its easy to learn, especially when you have an asshole
contractor yelling at you all the time. :) I don't know any online
resources. I'm sure you could find something pretty easily. Maybe a book.
Fore mixing, you have to learn to work fast and not add too much water. I
learned with a wheelbarrow and a shovel. You mix as fast as you can, while
adding a tiny bit of water at a time. (You can add a bunch right at first to
start mixing) You have to do it quickly, or it will set up before you get a
chance to apply it. This is also a reason to do some small stuff first, to
learn how much concrete you can handle in one batch. You can get into
trouble if you have a ton of concrete that is setting up and you can't work
with it fast enough.
Start small. You have to be comfortable with concrete before you build any
big stuff. When we did the big bowl, I shaped the trannies out of dirt, but
Mark Scott and Gavin did the rebar and concrete work. I watched them do it.
The tricky part is getting the concrete to stay at the top of the bank
without sagging. We used cinder blocks to make the vert. Since then Mark has
built some parks with big trannies and lots of vert. I don't know how he
gets the concrete up there without it sagging. Maybe he shoots it up there
with one of them gun thingys.
Good luck.
-Bret Taylor
ross macwhinney wrote in message <10844716....@monkey.psy.cmu.edu>...
Smakutus san..
>
> I was working for a contractor mixing concrete the summer I built the first
> bank at Burnside. Its easy to learn, especially when you have an asshole
> contractor yelling at you all the time. :) I don't know any online
> resources. I'm sure you could find something pretty easily. Maybe a book.
>
> Fore mixing, you have to learn to work fast and not add too much water. I
> learned with a wheelbarrow and a shovel. You mix as fast as you can, while
> adding a tiny bit of water at a time. (You can add a bunch right at first to
> start mixing) You have to do it quickly, or it will set up before you get a
> chance to apply it. This is also a reason to do some small stuff first, to
> learn how much concrete you can handle in one batch. You can get into
> trouble if you have a ton of concrete that is setting up and you can't work
> with it fast enough.
>
> Start small. You have to be comfortable with concrete before you build any
> big stuff. When we did the big bowl, I shaped the trannies out of dirt, but
> Mark Scott and Gavin did the rebar and concrete work. I watched them do it.
> The tricky part is getting the concrete to stay at the top of the bank
> without sagging. We used cinder blocks to make the vert. Since then Mark has
> built some parks with big trannies and lots of vert. I don't know how he
> gets the concrete up there without it sagging. Maybe he shoots it up there
> with one of them gun thingys.
You see photos of those guys shooting the concrete up on the tranny's..
I wish I was 20 again. I'd get a job working for a concrete crew to
learn all this stuff.
Outt..
Jeff.
ItzF8
> that's just fucked.
>
>thanks though
Nah, it's all good fellow PA cat.
and you're quite welcome.
Randy Wanker
> built some parks with big trannies and lots of vert. I don't know how he
> gets the concrete up there without it sagging. Maybe he shoots it up there
> with one of them gun thingys.
The use of those guns is called "Gunite" and its a tool commonly used to
create swimming pools and the like. Spendy - but not to rich fucks like
Bret.
But gun tool or not, its important to understand one fascinating property of
concrete:
It gets hard not because its "drying." It gets hard because its "curing."
For that reason, you can actually do concrete work underwater.
Around the turn of the century (1900) a sailing ship ran aground about 100
feet from the shore off the coast of southern Washington. It was carrying
concrete, and for 40 some years after the wreck the ship's masts remained
standing out of the water because they had become cured solid in the ship's
hold of concrete. To this day, over 100 years later, the concrete still
remains in a huge lump just off the shore of Long Beach.
The first banks we built? If Bret recalls, Burnside was a parking lot. The
only time a car was parked there was when someone wanted it stolen or
stripped. The lot was full of sleeping bags, used needles, discarded
clothing, broken bottles, and lots of feces. Ahh the good old days.
Across the street was an abandoned lot, with vegetation covering vast mounts
of dirt and broken concrete. And feces.
The first banks were built by simply filling and then carrying five gallon
buckets (scrounged from restaurants) full of dirt from the lot to the
slanted wall. The dirt was poured out and piled and shaped to form a
primitive "tranny" between the wall and the parking lot.
When the "tranny" was big enough (which meant we were tired of carrying
buckets of dirt across the street) we simply mixed the concrete right there
on the parking lot. Broke the bags and dumped out the stuff. Took the five
gallon buckets and went to the fruit and veggie wholesaler two blocks down
and filled them with water from a spigot along side their loading dock.
Then carried the buckets back and mixed concrete.
Concrete was put on the "tranny" from the bottom and worked its way up.
Eventually we'd have something that more or less cleanly represented a
tranny we could skate that went from parking lot to wall.
Then we spent the night under the bridge ensuring the junkies or BMX dicks
didn't screw up our work.
In about two days it cures enough that you can skate on it, and you can then
kick like hell, shoot up the wall, and come back down. Its cool -
especially if you have nothing else going on.
But some problems emerged. First off, having concrete simply taper off onto
asphalt and another concrete surface created a scenario where pieces of
concrete would break off and create lips that would eventually claim the
blood of many of us.
To counter this on the parking lot side, we started breaking up the asphalt
with picks and sledgehammers, creating hole/trench we could then fill with
more concrete. This way, we wouldn't have simply this tapering off of
concrete. Instead there was like an inch or two of solid concrete that
basically intersected with the asphalt in such a way that you weren't
breaking off chunks.
But unless we were willing to break these holes/trenches on the concrete
wall we were building against (and we weren't) we'd always have to deal with
a lip appearing. To this day this is an issue at Burnside. Its all part of
building concrete anything against another surface.
Another issue was related to the use of concrete itself. When you buy ready
to mix concrete you are getting cement and some rock. The cement is the
important part of concrete; the rock simply an aggregate.
Its hard to separate the rock enough that you can get some nice surfaces,
especially up towards the top where your new tranny meets the wall. And the
problem with simply mixing concrete without using an aggregate is that
concrete itself is brittle. It breaks faster and easier than it will when
you've used an aggregate.
So we started buying cement, sand, and gravel separate. In large quantities
its cheaper that way anyhow. We'd mix our own concrete with cement and
gravel for the main part of the tranny (particularly where you know people
will land, just as you add more "rib" supports on a half pipe half way down
the tranny to accommodate those sloppy landings). We'd mix a special
concrete with sand and cement for the tops of the trannys. Which was a
little better, but its still a problem.
Eventually we built another tranny maybe ten feet from the original one and
started doing transfers from one bank to the next. That's fun, because you
make it or you don't. If you don't make it, you are basically sliding down
a near-vertical wall to a 90 degree intersection with asphalt parking lot.
Doing these transfers required a great deal of speed, and I decided it made
sense to build a bank on the other side of the park, allowing you to carve
around it and keep your speed for another run at the wall.
It was built around the supporting post for the park. Its no longer there,
but because the large supporting posts were surrounded by gravel and not
asphalt, it introduced a fascinating problem: how to dig into seriously
impacted gravel. Thank god guys like my brother Jason are freaking
muscleheads and don't mind wearing their hands into nothingness trying to
crack packed gravel. I even sucked my girlfriend into doing some work.
Eventually we ended up with a half moon bank. We concreted it and were able
to carve, keep speed, and hit the wall.
Up until now these "trannies" were more like loading dock banks. The
trannies weren't anything like you'll see at Burnside today. To get there
we had to take a step back and reuse something we learned building ramps out
of wood.
I'm assuming for the moment that not everyone here has built ramps.
The trannies for a ramp are defined by something called "templates."
Templates are typically 1 inch thick sheets of plywood that are cut into
trannies. This is a place many people screw up. Its tough to have an eye
for a tranny when you are looking at a piece of plywood laying on the
ground.
I used to lay out the sheets, put a stick in the ground, and tie a string
between a pencil and the stick. Then I'd play with the stick's position
relative to my sheets of plywood until I was drawing trannies that looked
right.
Then I simply cut that tranny, then used to as a template for the other
three templates. Get it? That way, they match.
Templates were (and still are) used to define a tranny. Check out this
picture:
http://www.grindline.com/comh2.html
Note that the edge of the tranny in the foreground has a small wood template
being used to enforce its transition. In the cases of these parks, the
gravel is shaped as well as possible using wood templates as guides whenever
required, and then these smaller templates are used as guides. Check out
this picture:
http://www.grindline.com/comg1.html
Note the walls and the beginnings of trannies cut into the surrounding clay.
Gravel will be laid down and the trannies will be fine tuned, using the
templates you see at the right of the picture above as a reference.
Take a look at this picture:
http://www.grindline.com/come2.html
Note that the guys on the right of the picture are using a 2x4 to ensure the
tranny in the middle matches the tranny on the left and right.
Its important that you use the right kind of trowel, too. Get something
called a "pool trowel", typically available for $15-25 at any masonry
supply. Its rounded at the ends and allows for you to bend it while
creating and defining trannies. Your regular trowel will trash the tranny
because it was designed for sidewalks.
And remember to keep bike fags and other types off your banks for like two
days. They will trash it. Even if it looks "dry" you have to remember it
takes about five days to completely cure. In fact, the longer it takes to
cure the stronger it is. Which is why we'd continue to keep the surface wet
(but not soaked) for days after we made a bank. Better we have to wait two
weeks to skate something and have it rock solid tan to get anxious and end
up trashing a bunch of hard work in a short period of time.
When you get your methods nailed, check this line:
For concrete companies the issue of what to do with too much concrete is a
serious one. Lets say you need a foundation poured for your home and you
assume you need 15 yards of concrete. The truck shows and you find out you
only need 13. The driver is sent away with a truck full of curing concrete.
Bad.
Its not like these guys can just dump that stuff anywhere. Typically they
have to bust ass to a far side of town and pay to dump it in a landfill.
Costing the company in many ways they'd love to eliminate.
You can get the number of the dispatcher for a concrete company and explain
to them that you have a project and would appreciate it if, next time a
trucker calls in and says they are stuck with extra concrete, to send them
your way.
Just be sure you are ready to deal with the typical one to three yards of
concrete. The trucker is going to give you all of it. And its curing, so
its ready for laying vert, but dammed hard to work with for all other areas.
We learned this line after that studio finished filming "Free Willy" and
some dick stole our tools. The Chief of Police bought us new tools out of
pocket and turned us on to Ross Island Sand and Gravel. Oh, and the movie
studio bought us a cement mixer. Stoked.
These and other such details will end up being hosted on Bret and my
historical reference of Burnside: www.burnsideskatepark.com We'll have
plenty of picture of these banks being built.
That is, once we get around to completing it.
Smakutus san..
Wow Randy.. Excellent post. You guys rock at Burnside.
I have worked with that bag concrete from Home Depot on my porch before.
Have you tried to use a electric round type sander or a belt sander on
the concrete to get it smoother than you could just doing it the regular
way? My step dad told me it wouldn't work, but I used a rough sanding
pad on my concrete work after it cured a hour or two (It was still gray
but hard enough to not move around by hand..) and it feathered into and
stuck better to the old concrete than his job did not sanding it.. Our
local concrete park has somewhat rough "sidewalk" concrete on it and I
wondered if they could have worked it a bit more to get it smoother.. I
also hear about the Cali Van's park having concrete that is too smooth,
so that even softer old school wheels slide too easy on it. Any comments
on this?
Outt..
Jeff.
Bret Taylor
>create swimming pools and the like. Spendy - but not to rich fucks like
>Bret.
Yeah I have one in my garage I bought just for the hell of it.
>But gun tool or not, its important to understand one fascinating property
of
>concrete:
>
>It gets hard not because its "drying." It gets hard because its "curing."
>
>For that reason, you can actually do concrete work underwater.
I guess I can go ahead and build that park at the bottom of the ocean now
that I know that.
>Around the turn of the century (1900) a sailing ship ran aground about 100
>feet from the shore off the coast of southern Washington. It was carrying
>concrete, and for 40 some years after the wreck the ship's masts remained
>standing out of the water because they had become cured solid in the ship's
>hold of concrete. To this day, over 100 years later, the concrete still
>remains in a huge lump just off the shore of Long Beach.
Around the turn of another time a whale ran aground on the coast of Oregon.
The Army Corps of Engineers used dynamite to explode the whale into pieces
that the seagulls could eat. It didn't work too well. Cars for miles around
were crushed by giant pieces of whale blubber.
>The first banks we built? If Bret recalls, Burnside was a parking lot.
The
>only time a car was parked there was when someone wanted it stolen or
>stripped. The lot was full of sleeping bags, used needles, discarded
>clothing, broken bottles, and lots of feces. Ahh the good old days.
Some of those needles were still useable. And I could always find some butts
that had some good tobacco in them.
>Across the street was an abandoned lot, with vegetation covering vast
mounts
>of dirt and broken concrete. And feces.
Brown gold, as we called it. Texas shineola.
>The first banks were built by simply filling and then carrying five gallon
>buckets (scrounged from restaurants) full of dirt from the lot to the
>slanted wall. The dirt was poured out and piled and shaped to form a
>primitive "tranny" between the wall and the parking lot.
Primative by today's standards, mind you. Technological wonders at the time,
they were.
>Then we spent the night under the bridge ensuring the junkies or BMX dicks
>didn't screw up our work.
"Can't we all just get along," Kent used to say.
>These and other such details will end up being hosted on Bret and my
>historical reference of Burnside: www.burnsideskatepark.com We'll have
>plenty of picture of these banks being built.
>
>That is, once we get around to completing it.
I'm lazy.
-Bret
Randy Wanker
First off, my name is Kent. The Randy Wanker thing is a joke:
Second off, we don't rock. We just rose to the occasion. What _would_ rock
is getting others out there to do the same thing. When it happens once its
interesting. When it happens over and over its a revolution.
And if you don't really want to build your own, start working with your city
to build one. Not sure how? Ask me and I'll give you tips. If cities like
Aumsville (pop 3000) can build world class parks designed and built by the
guys who brought you Burnside and Newberg and Lincoln City, they can do it
in your town.
Grindline update: building a new park in Redmond Oregon that's going to be
freaking sick as hell, and then on the road to Belgium to build another.
Yes, Burnside blood is coming to Europe.
I'm serious. Get it built in your town. Its happening to smaller towns
than yours.
> Have you tried to use a electric round type sander or a belt sander on
> the concrete to get it smoother than you could just doing it the regular
> way?
Nope. You can get your concrete as baby butt smooth as you want by
massaging it with a trowel, letting the aggrigate shift to the bottom and
working directly with the cement.
> and it feathered into and
> stuck better to the old concrete than his job did not sanding it..
This is interesting. Do you mean to say that by sanding the hard surface
the concrete is attached to you get it to stick better, such as sanding wood
surface before you apply paint?
> Our
> local concrete park has somewhat rough "sidewalk" concrete on it and I
> wondered if they could have worked it a bit more to get it smoother..
Yep.
> I
> also hear about the Cali Van's park having concrete that is too smooth,
> so that even softer old school wheels slide too easy on it. Any comments
> on this?
Concrete will last longer than any wood ramp anywhere. But, the elements
and usage eventually make it "stickier" and eventually downright rough.
Other things that straight up trash concrete include direct exposure to
steady ice and melting cycles, and salt. Nothing screws up concrete faster
than salt, as you can see on most sidewalks in the mid west and the east
coast.
I've skated parks that were straight up death to ride they were so smooth,
and after ten or so years of usage and the elements are now pretty rough.
Burnside is getting that way, incidentally. Visitors are often surprised
how rough it is. Its ten years old, and due a revamp. Which is going to be
hard as hell to do.
All of the flatbottom is two inches of concrete directly on asphalt. What
are we going to do? Jackhammer it? Layer over it?
Something we spend a lot of time thinking about. Its not like laying down
another layer of masonite.
Oldschoolsk8
<< I also hear about the Cali Van's park having concrete that is too smooth, so
that even softer old school wheels slide too easy on it. Any comments
on this? >>
I was out at Vans Ontario this evening, and after sliding out (again!) in the
snake run bowl, I noticed something about the concrete: While its still
extremely slick, there's now a cracked texture to it. Close up, it looks like
snake skin. The cracks are very fine, and you can't feel them, but the entire
snake run and bowl are completely covered with them. I'm not sure what that
means...
MIchael "that, and the BMX bikes have made a mess of the ramps" Kaelon
Randy Wanker
the
> snake run bowl, I noticed something about the concrete: While its still
> extremely slick, there's now a cracked texture to it. Close up, it looks
like
> snake skin. The cracks are very fine, and you can't feel them, but the
entire
> snake run and bowl are completely covered with them. I'm not sure what
that
> means...
I'll bet you they put some sort of varnish over the concrete, like they do
in warehouses to protect the concrete from the elements.
That cracked shiny layer is what a warehouse floor looks like after a bit,
Randy Wanker
Oregon.
> The Army Corps of Engineers used dynamite to explode the whale into pieces
> that the seagulls could eat. It didn't work too well. Cars for miles
around
> were crushed by giant pieces of whale blubber.
I have a video of that very event at:
http://www.randywanker.com/whale/whale.rm
5.5 mb. And not streaming for some reason.
Smakutus san..
> > and it feathered into and
> > stuck better to the old concrete than his job did not sanding it..
>
> This is interesting. Do you mean to say that by sanding the hard surface
> the concrete is attached to you get it to stick better, such as sanding wood
> surface before you apply paint?
ok.. My only time messing with concrete was when my step dad helped me
patch my porch that was sinking on the back edge.. He used these bags of
patching concrete but later some of the the new edges broke loose (plus
they were rough..) So I looked at it and thought that I may be able to
feather the new edge with the old to get it to stick (And not have the
rough edge..) better.. As of now my edges are all still staying in place
while more of his are breaking apart. Next spring I'm going to redo the
rest of it and do it my way.
I had a old square sander and used the roughest grit sandpaper I could
get.. The paper actually lasted longer than I thought it would. When
sanding the concrete was still dark and wet looking but it was dry (but
cold..) to the touch. Next time I'm going to try sanding earlier to see
if it's easier to get the smooth surface faster.
I would think you'd want to use at least a wire brush on the old surface
you are putting new concrete over to get rid of any dirt or loose
concrete/black top that's there and you give yourself the best possible
sticking surface.
I still think you guys rock.. Keep it up. I hope to come outt there
sometime and skate it.
Outt..
Jeff.
Smakutus san..
>
> Smakutus san.. wrote:
>
> << I also hear about the Cali Van's park having concrete that is too smooth, so
> that even softer old school wheels slide too easy on it. Any comments
> on this? >>
>
> I was out at Vans Ontario this evening, and after sliding out (again!) in the
> snake run bowl, I noticed something about the concrete: While its still
> extremely slick, there's now a cracked texture to it. Close up, it looks like
> snake skin. The cracks are very fine, and you can't feel them, but the entire
> snake run and bowl are completely covered with them. I'm not sure what that
> means...
I think you see that sorta thing when ever you see the real smooth shiny
concrete surfaces around.. (What do they do different to this shiny
concrete surfaces that they don't do to sidewalks or driveways?) It must
be a age thing eh? Are you using the Beer City wheels there Mike?
Outt..
Jeff.
hidden agenda
or whatever down. Before we could put down the self-leveling concrete, we
used floor buffers with big pieces of sandpaper on the bottom of them to
sand the floors. We weren't trying to sand the concrete though, we did it to
clean the surface and pull up dirt that was ground into the concrete so our
leveling mix would stick better.
h.a.
"Smakutus san.." <smak...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:3A8EE799...@earthlink.net...
Oldschoolsk8
<< I think you see that sorta thing when ever you see the real smooth shiny
concrete surfaces around.. (What do they do different to this shiny
concrete surfaces that they don't do to sidewalks or driveways?)>>
It doesn't look like any concrete that I've seen before. It's a grey, very
shiny surface. All of the surrounding concrete is more of a white color, and
isn't as slick. The pool isn't quite as bad, but it's got some kind of blue
coating. It's kind of entertaining watching little kids that go into the snake
and bowl just to play around, because it's so slick that they can't climb
out...
<<Are you using the Beer City wheels there Mike? >>
I figured that if Kryptos and Sims won't stick, I might as well at least run
the fastest wheels I can. I'm still just a bit sketchy on the concrete at Vans,
because I still slide a lot. It's weird hearing other people slide while just
carving. I'd love to start throwing K-slides in the pool and big bowl, but I
just can't get the wheels to grab again at the end of the slide. I just slide
down to the bottom on my ass...
MIchael "why didn't they surface it like the outdoor street course?" Kaelon
andy
Tom M.
<ra...@randywanker.com> wrote:
>The use of those guns is called "Gunite" and its a tool commonly used to
>create swimming pools and the like. Spendy - but not to rich fucks like
[snip]
>That is, once we get around to completing it.
Great post (written by someone who has obviously been in the
'trenches')!
Fascinating!
Tom M.