Building a full-size Wooden Whale in my Backyard Bike Park! // Subscriber Trail pt. 10

This week we're back on the

subscriber

trail

creating our biggest feature yet. If you're new to this series, we've been

building

a mountain

bike

trail

in my

backyard

where I let my

subscriber

s vote on every feature set I build like last time. One time we did this big step that came from the outside deck and I asked them to vote between a

whale

tail feature or a stream jump and with over 20,000 votes cast it turned out that 63 were for the

whale

tail, so in this video I'll show you how I built my version of the whale tail feature before we get into it, though let me quickly thank u-haul for sponsoring this episode, so we're here at the beginning of this build. where the whale tail is going to go, actually you guys are literally sitting right where it's going to go, that's the landing for the step, so you're going to take down and hope

full

y go around these little trees here and then come down.

Here to run into the whale tail we needed a hard berm on the left followed by a good kicker to get on it so to make quick work of roughing this out I grabbed the skid steer and started digging okay before that I also arrive. I got carried away with the jump here, I want to mark and actually probably do the whale tail because the whale tail will not be able to move or change after making the jump, it can move a lot, so let's mark some publications to find out where. All my posts would go.

I created an exact sketch of the feature in Affinity Designer. Now there are countless types of whale tail variations, but I knew I wanted mine to look like a sine wave like this, so I sketched one out and marked all the measurements each. At six inches from its highest point, we'll explain why I did this in a moment, but while I was designing I also wanted to think of a way to make our features stand out a little, so what I came up with was to tilt the platform. boards on the sides like this that way it could have a more rounded shape like a real whale and besides this idea while I was looking at the landscape I thought of something that could definitely differentiate it like I said in the last one It wanted to split like a real whale tail where it comes out in two directions, but we have these trees right here.

I'm going to make him go straight to this. We've got a nice drop off to the left, so we're. I'm going to use that with a jump and then to the right there's not much of a drop, but I'm going to use those trees to create a wall walk type scenario and we'll move in that direction, which is what it's going to do. Be cool, I'm really excited for this to work, so yeah, now you know what I'm doing, that's the whole plan, now we just have to execute it, which is always the fun part, eh, I don't know, okay. do it here.

I'm setting a center line so everything is in a straight line. It's smart to place your post at certain points on wavy features like this so you don't need two-foot wide boards to cut your curve, for example. you could take out this center post here and put a board along it, but in that scenario you need a 13 inch wide board which your average home improvement store doesn't sell and tends to be very expensive, but if you add a post across In the middle of the curve you can use half that width and probably double the strength by the end of the second day.

I had all the holes dug so that the next morning I could start packing up our poles and this is where IMO. the fun begins, remember how I said we took measurements every six inches from the highest point of the feature because I knew I would have that line to measure once my posts were set up and to carry that line throughout the entire feature. We use something called a water level, someone mentioned this a while ago when I'm doing this stuff, how to get everything level and yeah, it's pretty nifty, it's super, super simple, it's the cheapest level you can get and it's all what do you need.

It's a tube and water, of course, so I'm going to show you what it does and why it's so effective and why it's actually more effective than a laser or something like that. So they'll get a tube, any vinyl tube, the bigger it is. faster will work, but I'll fill it with water anyway and show you how it works. Okay, now we have some water there, so you'll choose where you are and where you want to start. um whatever you want to level for your project and you're going to take one end and you're going to stick it there and you're going to level the water with that you see let me get close to the water here actually you're going to see that now if we bring this other one on top it wants to stay level here and here they will stay in exactly the same plane of the area, so if no matter how you tilt this or no matter where you put this end, it wants to stay level, everything wants to stay level. in the exact same spot, pretty cool, so with this new tool all I had to do was determine how high I wanted my landing to be, aka the highest point of the feature, then I could use the water level to mark that exact point in all my publications.

The same measurement from there I can measure down and know exactly where to place my stirrups and then after running a rope on that same measurement I can measure down and mark the exact curve that was on my computer so using the rope to measure it worked. great for getting the curve in the wood but I think next time I'll use a long straight board because with the rope I had to make sure I didn't drag it down with the tape measure when marking things but other than that it worked amazing and with our curve marked I was able to easily cut the boards exactly to my design.

Greetings, it's like shining and piercing this place. I wasn't done with the whale feature yet, but rain was forecast for the next day. so I decided to prioritize the race manageably and I still had no landings for either side so we had to scramble to get land for those too. I'll be the first to admit that both landings looked terrible, but they were definitely rideable, so I got up early the next morning and started giving the whale its finishing touches. That's going to take a lot of work on all of this, but I'm doing it, let's do it now, I'm a little biased, but I think this feature turned out absolutely awesome and a fun fact.

Orcas are between 20 and 26 feet long, so this feature is a true representation of how big it is, but how well our orca rides to find out. Please take 15 seconds to thank u-haul for sponsoring this build. U-haul has been a big supporter of the subscriber route and I just want to give you 15 off any of their great selection of

bike

racks. All you have to do is enter the code btb in the gift certificate section and you will get 15 off now with the help of jay from root mtb let's find out how this thing works yeah that was perfect wow I'll just say it , this is hands down my favorite feature so far but I messed up a couple things first the jump towards the whale has to be closer I want it to launch you straight towards it so the first half can work more like a roller the second thing What I need to change is the landing for the jump even though it has some slope, you still feel like you're landing on a flat level, but other than that this thing is a blast to ride on sadly, once you make the jump, you're at the bottom of the hill, so I'm We'll just burn that to the left and call it a day, but we have the option to build one last feature from the side of the wall, so here are your options.

The first option will be a hip hop, essentially this is a table jump with a side landing instead of straight on. I've never mounted one of these before so it would definitely be interesting, but option two is a vertical wall. This is a quarter pipe that extends up so you can turn back as you go up. It's also something I haven't ridden before, so it could be just as interesting again. Option one is the hip hop and option 2 will be the vertical wall either way. Click the link here to cast your vote on my website or just go to

backyard

. com vote and if you don't mind after voting check out the new t-shirts I have available anyway thanks for looking a huge thank you to my sponsors for supporting me you guys are great next time you see me we will be doing the first

full

tours of this path and we are going to illuminate this.

Leave your idea of ​​what that means in the comments and I'll see you later.