I've been making fingerboard ramps for a while now (many years) and I would like to share with you how you can make pretty much any fingerboard ramp (minus the rails) for almost free.

When I first started making ramps I just used the random pieces of wood that I had in my garage from other projects. Later I started going to Lowes or Home Depot and buying long pieces of particle board and cutting it up an order to make ramps.  

Now I don't go and buy lots of wood from Home Depot like before, but instead just recycle wood from people who are throwing it away.

There are certain pieces of wood that I do buy however from the store like nice looking plywood for the tops of my ramps, but I probably won't ever buy particle board ever again and that's because by recycling perfectly good wood that people are throwing away you can pretty much have an unlimited supply of particle board at virtually no cost to you.

Here is a section in my garage where I've stock piled my findings. All of the wood you see here was FREE.




See this huge stack........... FREE!




You could make ramps so cheap you'd swear their from China!   

So how do you get this free wood again? All I do is keep a look out for people throwing away book shelves, dressers, desks, entertainment centers and anything really that you can recycle.

The best times to look is the night before a big trash day and especially those HEAVY trash days where people throw away all kinds of big stuff.

How can wood be good to use when it's in the trash? People throw out all kinds of things. Sometimes people throw out perfectly good quality wood that you can reuse.

Here is a dresser drawer that someone was throwing away and its perfectly good wood to use and to make things out of. I used a rubber mallet to break it apart from the inside out and then I harvested the goods!




Here is some more stuff that I picked up on my last treasure hunt. You can see that some of the black pieces of wood have chips in them. It was probably once a drawer of some type and even though they have some chips in them all you have to do is not use that part. The rest of it is just fine.

I also picked up four dresser drawers too. The best part about getting dresser drawers is that the bottom part of it is made out of a thin particle board material, which is PERFECT for making the curves on quarter pipes!

So yeah, you could recycle someones curb side dresser drawer and turn it into a quarter pipe for very little cost.




All long as you have and know how to use wood tools you could take all of this free wood and turn it into awesome ramps.

There are some costs though. Power tools cost money and there are other small costs like sandpaper, saw blades, wood glue and other things, but if you have the time and have some creativity you could make ramps on the cheap by just recycling thrown out wood. And technically the wood that I picked up wasn't 100% free since I had to use my gas to drive around and look for it and get it, but its about as free as it gets.

Now, when I build ramps I don't always build them completely out of this particle board. I sometimes buy nice looking plywood and use it for the tops of my ramps because that's the part that you skate on, however the sides of the ramps don't have to be used with expensive plywood. By using free particle board for the sides of your ramps you can do more with the wood that you actually paid for and if you don't like the appearance of using recycled particle board you can always just paint that part black.

Here is another pic of a pile of free wood that I got.




Here is a door that I picked up for free and I plan on making it my base frame for my next fingerboard park. That means that I could make almost the whole park for free.




Not only could you build ramps for cheap, but also you are going GREEN and being eco-friendly by recycling too.

Now, if you will excuse me I have to get started on my dresser quarter pipe pronto!!!

I think thats an awesome idea, but not everyone has a workshop and a looot of wood to make ramps :c

This is rad dude, recycling is awesome.  And you might get some handle rails on the dressers and shit too.

And here is my 100% recycled quarter pipe that I said I was going to make from a dresser drawer.

Here is the frame.




Here is the thinner piece that makes the top of the ramp. This is actually the thin piece of cardboard like wood that comes from the bottom of the dresser drawer.




Here is the thin piece again. Those marks on the back of it are from me cutting it with a razor blade. This relaxes the wood so that you can actually bend it and it lowers the tension in the wood when its attached onto the ramp.







And finally I filled in some cracks with some wood putty and put a clear coat on it and painted the sides black.




Now, here is the thing. So I made with quarter pipe without buying any of the wood and just recycled wood, but there are costs involved such as: wood glue, tools, paint, clear coat, sandpaper and probably the biggest cost is time.

It takes me forever to make these by the way.

I found staks and stacks of marble one time before a trash day. people throw shit like this out in my neighbourhood all the time.

huggiemanbearpig wrote:

I found staks and stacks of marble one time before a trash day. people throw shit like this out in my neighbourhood all the time.

thats luck dude

Remember to wear mask and gloves and glasses when sanding... particle board is the nastiest shit in the world.. formaldehyde soaked shit with god knows what kind of glues and fillers.. I recommend sealing up all the particle board with paint after the ramp is built to keep moisture OUT and china particle shit IN.

Yeah also people just throw shit away.. Shit I got a perfectly good Avenger skateboard from the 80's out of the trash.... All kinds of stuff people just waste.

i just got a huge stack of wood, granite, marble tiles from someone thats renovating a house!

I find old blocks of wood all the time, theyre perfect for a curb and i love em

jesse4583 wrote:

i just got a huge stack of wood, granite, marble tiles from someone thats renovating a house!

AWESOME!!!