How to Make a Teeterboard | Springboard

What is up guy, In this instructable I will share with you how I made a wooden teeterboard mainly used for doing tricks, flips and acrobatic elements.

I devided the whole tutorial in 4 video tutorial parts, so you are welcome to watch them aswell.

Let's get started! -->

Step 1: 3D Design / Modeling

I will be using Europenan larch for this projects due to its excelent elastic properties and springness.

The point of every teeterboard is to have a strong and rigit board with just enough flex to suppres main forces and deliver them directly to the secong guy.

The board itself will be made from 3 layers of larch, each different lenght connected with neck bolts and washers.

In the middle I have used a 12 mm shaft that is gonna be welded directly to a steel plate in the middle and then lockede axialy with bearings.

Now, the frame is gonna be made from 40x40 mm square pipes. Most of them will have a 30° cut on both sides, and then of course plenty of welding and grinding.

Also, each leg will have a rubbery material on the bottom, to prevent teeterboard from sliding back and forth.

I will be using ball bearing, which already come with housing and shaft lock screws.

Step 2: Making the Base

For the base, I start with cutting down the square still pipes to a needed length.

I made all cuts with a common angle grinter and I must say that pieces came out pretty good for further welding.

With my arc welder set on 50A I have connected all pipes together and grind of any badlooking welds.

So, after the frame was complete I drilled 4 holes for our bearings and the base is finished.

Step 3: Making the Board

I firstly, cut down to size these long larch planks to a 3, 2, and 1 m boards.

The edges were a bit rough, so I use my electric planer to make them perfectly straight.

I also use a vibrating sanding machine to smooth front and back surface of each board to kindly look a bit more cleaner and to get rid of any unwanted wood chips.

From the renderings in part 1 you can see that the teeterboard is gonna be made from 2 parrallel 20cm planks on each side, so I decided to connect them with flat steel bars.

I cut every piece at 20 cm and later drill 3x 8mm holes in each piece. In total that was 48 holes and half of them I need to file so the rectangular screw head could fit in.

Just that took me probably more time than making the whole teeterboard together, so yea it was quite a bit furstrating job.

Next, I welded shaft to one of steel bars and the only thing left to do was to drill holes in wood planks and connect everyone of them together.

At the end I secure the boards to the base with 4 M12 screws and our teeterboard is finished.

Step 4: Testing the Teeterboard

In the beginning we have spent so many time on improving the perfect techique and slowly we were getting better and better but There was still something that didnt allow us to jump higher so I remove the bottom two board and the whole teeterboard became a lot more flexible. From that point we knew this thing is gonna be so friking awesome!

Thank you all for reading and watching this instructable. If you have any questions and ideas please comment down below.

Comments

[Buckaroojr]

How much did this cost to build?

[1gr81]

I am thrilled to have found this Instructable! It has been in the back of my mind, forever. Thanks for posting!

I was wondering if there was other wood (more readily available wood) that you could suggest? It seems like I saw where others had used Apple wood (??) or maybe even ash. I'm not sure which woods wood have both spring and strength.

Thanks, in advance, for any help you can give me. :)

[ChristineT72]

Be advised: As someone who works in the industry, I would not recommend this at all for amateurs. I've seen some horrendous accidents in many years.

[Jakes workshop]

That is true, thanks. The higher you go and the more advance stuff you perform the higher is risk. So far we didn't have any serious injury but keep in mind that is not a toy for sure.

[DIY Hacks and How Tos]

Awesome! My kids would have endless hours of fun with one of these.

[Jakes workshop]

I am pretty sure they will ;) But remember, you can get some serious injuries if not using it correctly.

[erenn]

Awesome! If anyone is interested in making this in Seattle please let me know.