Quarter Pipes
Fig. 1
A quarter pipe is just as the name
describes it, a quarter piece of round pipe.
If you can round up at least three or more
4'x8' sheets of plywood and a fair supply of
2'x4's you can build yourself a small
quarter pipe ramp that will get you up to
vertical. A cash outlay for wood here will
still cost you less than $50.00.
There are several different ways to
construct a 4 pipe as far as the transition
goes. One method is to build an L-shaped
framework similar to the one shown for the
banked ramp, except that you create the
curve for the transition with 2'x4's. By
cutting and fitting lengths of 2x4 into place
you can create a solid curve and a
foundation for the plywood skating
surface. Bend a piece of plywood into the
framework and nail it into place (FIG. 1).
Note: The thickness of the plywood for
building this type of ramp should be no
more than %.
Using two or three layers of 4" plywood
is recommended here for the optimum
transition.
Fig.2
Another method of quarter pipe ramp
construction involves the use of plywood
templates to form the transition and 2"x4"
cross bracing to support the skating
surface. If you go ahead with this type of
design, using the template method, you'll
want to go back to the February issue (Vol
3, No. 2) and review part 1 of this article for
some pointers on making transition
templates using the string/compass
method. (FIG 2)
Regardless of the type of method you
use to construct a quarter-pipe, the radius
of the transition should measure between
6' and 8'. Also, because you are building a
single sided ramp, you'll be pushing into
the ramp from another surface such as the
street or sidewalk. In this case you want a
smooth connection between the street and
where the ramp begins. Try cutting the
edge of the plywood at an angle, where it
will meet the asphalt, before you nail it
down. Or, slap a thin strip of sheet metal
down over the critical area, tack it with
small nails and finish it off with a length of
silver duct tape to insure against flesh
wounds if you have to slide over it.
THER
INTERVIEW;
KIETH STEPHENSON
GREG GODFREY
STEVE LAWRENCE
Skaters/builders of the
Great Desert Ramp.
KS: We skate and then go back to
their house and party and wait for the
cops to come around. The cops don't
like us around here.
Is it a local scene with the cops
around here?
KS: Yeah! Officer Orloff. Orloff sucks.
Officer Ingersaw gave me a ticket for
BY KT having two different colors of hair last
summer. I was in my car with Gator
and Christian, and I was just taking off
and forgot my lights for about half a
block, I turned 'em on and this dude
pulls me over. He looks at my license,
and on my license I have really long
brown hair, and he goes, get out of
the car!
What's your guys' skate history?
know you've skated in CASL and
ASPO?
KS: Yeah, we used to make heavy
trips down there (LA, San Diego) for
contests when our cars weren't
thrashed
GG: We used to make trips down
there every weekend just to skate
some parks and contests.
KS: That's one of the reasons we had
to build ramps, 'cause everything's so
far away from us. There's no parks
here or nothing, and when the parks
finally closed, we had to start riding
ramps
SL: We had ramps before the park
was here. Little ones.
KS: Upland's about an hour and a
hall. The closest park, or used to be
the closest, was Reseda and that
wasn't even worth driving an hour for
Marina Del Ray used to take about an
hour and a half, that was worthwhile.
There's probably more lines on
this ramp than most skateparks
put together. What about the
contest here today? I know you
guys have seen skating like this
before, but to see it here on your
own ramp, what do you think?
GG: This contest is blowing my mind.
KS: It's insane. It's good to have
people around that are a lot better-
than you cause you can see
everybody's different lines. Every
body skates this ramp a different way,
They see things different, that's what
is so cool about skateboarding
Everybody sees skateboarding in a
different way. It's great. Everybody
out there has a different way. I've
learned so many new tricks just sitting
here watching
Especially since you guys know
every square inch of the ramp and
skating surface here.
KS: I think this whole contest thing is
great cause I like the coverage, the
video (HBO) coverage is going to be
insane.
GG: Yeah, I hope it gets shown all
over the whole nation.
KS: It's going to air here in Antelope
Valley next week and if the "big" guy
likes it, it may go over all the cable,
HBO, stations across the U.S. Can
you imagine, all across the country. It
will bring the skate action levels so
much higher cause all the skaters will
see it and just go, "hot"
People will be sitting, open-
mouthed, in front of their TV's
going. "Nooo Way."
What's a normal day like out here
for you guys? Skating, and what
else?
GG: This ramp almost didn't come
about because we were only going to
make it 16' wide. Then one day we
decided, "Hey let's make it 24', then it
went to 36.
KS: We were all into school, totally
into college, we sit there in our
classes working out new ideas. We
first tried to build a little like sub-
merged ramp at Steve's house and it
didn't work. So we got all bummed
and were thinking, let's build a real-
ramp. We started with 16 ft. and then
it was just like, let's make it a little
wider, and pretty soon, after we
decided to make it the biggest ramp in
the world, we had just decided to go
Steve, the first inception of the ramp
was at your folks' house. What
did they say when you guys first
sald, "Hey, we're going to build a
ramp."
SL: My mom didn't really care. She
like the idea of a ramp. After we built
it, we were skating everyday and
missing school and everything, and
my mom got really mad and so we
moved the ramp, and I moved out
We brought it over here and now it's
finished and I'm moving back in. She
was pretty much just all well, Steve's
into skateboards... All I've ever done
is build ramps. I must have built at
least twenty
KS: My parents weren't stoked, but
no one's stoked around here. They
never thought we would do anything
and now that they see the contest
happening, they're going, "Well, F
guess you guys did it."
Who's property is this?
KS: Tom Sanchez's, buy his hot hot
dogs, he's got a hot dog stand set up
over there. It's a long story of how the
ramp got here. Nobody skates that
lives here.
Do you think finding a site to build
on is one of the big drawbacks in
building a ramp of this size?
SL. You definitely need a lot of space
and make sure the neighbors aren't
going to be complaining
KS: You gotta have good neighbors.
There's a lot of factors that go into a
ramp. You can build a killer ramp and
the neighbors call the cops and you're
going to have to tear it down the next
day. It's not even worth it. There's all
kinds of ordinances in the city but they
don't even look at this place. The
neighbors are like a mile down the
road and it's not that big a deal. A lot
of them are stoked. Like that guy over
there, he's all "HBO's gonna be here,
I can't believe it. I'll put my land-
scaping sign out, free advertising."
Do you guys have any suggestions
for kids thinking about taking on a
ramp like this one?
KS: Hit up everybody you know for
money. Or steal your wood. Or have a
friend that has a T-Bill
Yeah, the T-Bill story, what's that
all about?
GG: That helped us out pretty much
Actually it built the ramp at first.
Thanks, mom and dad, for giving me
that T-Bill I didn't use it for college,
but this is the college of skateboarding
so it's cool.
How much money have you put
Into the ramp?
KS: About $4,000.
I counted about 60 sheets of
plywood on the surface alone.
That, multiplied by whatever
you're paying for a sheet of ply
these days is not cheap.
KS: Plus all the 2x4's and transitions
SL: And there's about 200 lbs. of nails
in the thing
it
KS: Yeah, $25 to $30 for a 50 lb. sack
of nails. Fifty lbs. sounds like a lot but
goes so quick. And we should have
put so many more braces in this thing
GG: Actually we should have notched
out the transitions for the cross
bracing
KS: That's what we wanted to do but
It takes a long time. We figured hell
we gotta skate. We're gonna put
down another ply after the contest
and run the grain from coping to
coping, then put masonite on it after
that. Watch when someone skates
over here on this part of the ramp.
(Keith notices a bad spot in the
superstructure of the ramp.)
KS: You know why this side of the
ramp is so weak is because when we
rebuilt it, we had to build in some new
sections and some areas still have
the old plys with the new layer over
that, and some areas just got one new
layer so it's kind of weak over there.
That's part of the add on pieces that
we built when we brought it over here.
Were there any major things that
held you back?
GG: Money
KS: Money again. If we had to do it
over again there are a lot of things
we'd change. If we had to do it again,
the ramp would be so much better
than this one. There's not too much
room for improvement, but then
again, there is
KS: Going back to some suggestions,
definitely put different levels in your
ramp if you're going to make it big
That's what we didn't like when we
first saw The Ramp Ranch ramp. It
was all 10 ft. high, there was no room
to learn or nothing. I look at this, I
mean, you could start learning a trick
at the 6 ft, get it wired, then go to the
8 ft., if you slam go back to the 6 ft. for
awhile. You need a ramp that you can
learn on. One that you can progress
on and do stuff and that's why we
made the three different levels. New
skaters can come here now and they
don't have to look at just the 10 ft. wall
and go, "someday I'll hit the coping."
Also we were talking to Rob
Roskoff and Craig Ramsay, and
those guys know a lot of stuff that we
didn't know. Everybody has their own
suggestions of ways to build ramps.
What are the dimensions of this
superstructure?
KS: It's 52 wide, and there's three
different heights, 10,8, and 6, and a
2 extension of the 10 wall on one
side and a four foot canyon.
What was it like building this ramp?
KS: Hot. We built it in the middle of
the summer and it took all last
summer to build. It used to be over at
Steve's house and his mom started
getting bummed on it so we cut it in,
nine pieces, put it on a flatbed and
moved it down here. We spent all
summer rebuilding it and then added
an extra 28
GG: It's been about a year since the
inception of the first version of the
ramp but we didn't skate it for the
whole year because of the move.
What prompted you guys to build a
mega-structure like this out here?
KS: There's nothing else to do, that's
the problem.
GG: There was a park out here but it
was lame.
SL: We've been building ramps ever
since we've been skating. It's the only
way to skate out here. The park was a
piece of shit.
So when we talk about this new
ramp resurgence, you guys have
already been there, yeah?
KS: We've been here. We started
building ramps and just decided to go
bigger and bigger. We saw that one,
you know, that one that was called
The Ramp Ranch, and we said,
"Man, we better build one of the
biggest
Is it really that hard, though?
GG: It's just a lot of work but it's fun
building it. You get a lot of ideas as
you go along.
KS: We made some mistakes. Like
once you get close to finishing a ramp
you want to skate and you start
throwing things together and going.
"Oh, forget it, that won't make a
difference." But it does, and you pay
for it in the end.
SL: What you need to make a good
ramp is patience.
KS: Patience and money. You need
patience and money or a criminal
mind. We ripped off a lot of wood until
we turned 18 and then we figured
we'd better start buying it.
GG: We almost got caught rippin
about 200 2x4's.
it's good to exchange ideas because
then you can get all kinds of input
from everybody else before you start,
and make it even better.
Where do you see ramps going.
from here?
GG: Bigger, better. They'll be getting
like pools pretty soon. In that new
THRASHER magazine, there's one
that looks just like a pool. It's so hot.
KS: He sketched though, only 8 ft. of
flat bottom and 10 ft. of transition
SL: If you've got enough imagination.
you can do anything.
KS: We're going to bowl the end of
this thing off.
That was my next question.
GG: Who knows, maybe we'll put an
S-turn in it.
KS: Look at how much land we still
have to fill...
Okay, we're going to have to get
this contest under way. Keith,
Greg, Steve, thank you very much.
THER
The original "Ramp Ranch" inspired many people to build bigger than average half-pipe super structures. Although the
original structure, (shown here) no longer stands at the original site in Atlanta, the "Ramp Ranch" crew claim to be
building a similar ramp in Florida. Photo: Mike Folmer
Parker Webb awesome "whole bowl" in Ranson, West Virginia is an example of how far some skaters will go when it
comes to raising ramps. Any skaters who decided to build a ramp of this type had better have a pretty good knowledge
of carpentry skills, extra cash and a lot of time on their hands.