First rail.

[Rootar]

Gonna put in my first rail this week. 16 feet long with just 3 4x4 legs spaced out with the steel stake adapters on the end from home depot. Since no where stocks trex or any sort of composite deck board here in Arkansas I'm gonna go with a treated 2x8 layed flat with a treated 2x4 layed flat down the center leaving 2 nice edges to screw some 1.75- 2" schedule 40 PVC down. I haven't seen many PVC rails but hey it's gotta slide much better than just wood.

Question is how high should I put it out of the water. I don't want it to be painfully boring small yet I think knee high would be so tall no one but me would hit it. So is it gonna be much fun for me if its only 12" tall or should I put it at 18" and tell the punks to man up. I also thought I might do an incline rail for the first go around but we would only be able to hit it from one direction andhagar would make it heel or toe side specific since it has to be near the shore line where its shallow enough.

Any thoughts

[GnarShredd]

PVC is fine, it's what everyone use to use before Trex. I'm surprised they don't have trex in Home Depot or Lowes in your area (if you have a Lowes). Just went in to lowes today and saw some off-brand composite boards for a pretty good price compared to trex.


I've also used plain wood and it's been fine, but won't last near as long (gotta make sure the wood is wet though).


I'm always a fan of a flatbar. Like you said, can hit it from multiple directions and it's always fun. You can work on presses or throwing in an extra 180 for a while before you get bored. 12" height is ok but obviously not much of a challenge. Unless you're shooting a video or really want to push yourself, the height isn't a huge deal, so long as it's high-enough for you not to drag the nose/tail of your board while you're on it. Realistically though, if you can't do a small ollie on to a rail (18in. or so like you said should be fine), you should maybe not be hitting rails

[Rootar]

ive got alot of guys who come ride and all skateboard with me (all skate really well actaully) keeping them off the rail will be impossible. They are not the most controlled on the wake skate to say the least but ive been taking inflatables and tie them up out there so they can practice ollies over stuff. It always seemed to help my ollies when i had something to go over.

im curious to see if anyone will mess with my rail so I may throw a 12' incline rail with just a waxed up 2x8 on top to see if any one jacks with it before i go all out with pvc and 16-20feet for a flat bar. if no one messes with the little incline rail ill throw some pvc on it and then put in the flat bar. maybe 100 feet further down the creek.

[GnarShredd]

Cool. Yeah, a low rail can be fun too, don't get me wrong. Better to skate with bros than to have to leave some out!

[POPTART]

[b]rootar[/r] ,you should start them lower and work your way up
an incline in the water can still be ollied onto
if you have a long enough rail you will still have plenty of time to learn on it even if your olling onto it halfway up the rail.

and if you have a low flatbar for a season then next season everyone is comfy hitting it all directions and you can make it higher

[Rootar]

Yea good points. Anyone have experience leaving their rails in public waters? Our creek we ride in is pretty well unused except by fisherman and thats only maybe 2-3 boats a week, (no bank fishing ) where we ride all they do is pass through to get to another fishing spot. So I don't think anyone would mess with it or say anything and because it'll be so close to one side they prolly won't even notice it. However I had a someone mention to me that I might even camouflage the rail when not in use with some brush or big limbs.

Thoughts?

[POPTART]

Rootar, I dont think leaving the rail is going to work out in the long run, you might get away with it but then again you might not. I would remove it every time. Thats why I built a NickT rail with the metal legs. I throw the legs in a canoe and pull it and the rail out with a ski (rope from ski to canoe, rope from canoe to rail). 30 mins later the rail is either an Incline or flat bar, depending on how far I put the poles in and their length.

I made this rail http://www.wakeskating.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14031


and I made 4 of the poles 7ft and made a 5 ft pole and a 10 ft pole

so i can grab one 5ft 2 7ft and the 10ft and have an incline or just run all 7ft for the flatbar

it was about 300 with the extra poles and im making another section this summer
so i can remove about a 1.5ft section of the trex and connect a second rail with a 3ft piece of trex that has no support, and replace the 1.5 section if i only want to use one rail

that way you can make your 16ft rail into

2 16ft flatbars into a 32ft flat

2 16ft inclines make a rooftop/aframe

1 16ft incline to a 16ft flat

or any weird variation you can link up

[Rootar]

Yes but hauling a heavy metal rail out to ride and spending the time to set it up seems like a real buzz kill because my boat is already overloaded when we head out from the ramp, plus there is not room for a rail in my boat with every one in there anyways. If I can't get away leaving the rail out I'm gonna have to put one in a private lake across town which would double my trip length to ride but would be worth it on say the weekend but we ride a lot on week nights and time is short between 530 and dark30.

Guess I'll just have to see what happens. If it comes down to it I could build the metal rail, it was my original plan, but the thought of daily setup kinda bummed me out.

[POPTART]

my rail floats (because its wood and trex) the poles are the only heavy metal part and I put them in a canoe. so someone can chill at the rail out of the boat

i guess id rather spend the extra time to put it in than loose the rail all together

[Rootar]

True I'm prolly just being lazy. A portable rail for the weekends when we have the extra time would be nice plus it'd be easy to take elsewhere.

[POPTART]

yeah dude buy a cheap tube from walmart so you can tow film and haul your rail around anywhere (if a canoe wont fit into your boat for hauling) it can still be pvc and wooden legs too. just think about how you would store and haul it.

[Rootar]

Well yesterday was interesting!

everything was pretty good. took it out kocked in the first post pulled it back up because it was too deep where we put it. got it all setup and by the time we had it setup i got on top and jumped on it alittle and one end kept going deeper so we ended up with a very mellow incline rail.

then we rode it and realized i shouldnt have waxed much it because it was slick as hell. some storms rolled in and decided to pull it up because i wasnt happy with the height and wanted to try and set it up better next time out.

thats when the fun began, the post were a nightmare to pull out and all 3 of the stakes on the ends broke waste of damn money. so lesson learned im grabbing metal poles for next time and and im gonna go ahead and put pvc on it so it doesnt need any sort of wax so we can get some consistency with rail

[11RANDOMNESS]

I have two rails on a public lake here and nobody has ridden them or even attempted to but thats manly because they are so far in that a boat would hit my dock before a rider could hit the rail (we only ride them on winch). The police don't seem to care either they stopped by and me and my buddies thought we where screwed but the cop just sat there in his boat and told us he was watching

[Rootar]

Ok time to bring this back. last year we learned a good bit about what not to do so this year i am going to put in the low rail as discussed. This time 24-32' long, that 12' crap was way too short. Going to leave it out there this time so not going to dick with stakes or anything removable just a cheap wood rail. i may put pvc on it or may end up grabbing a couple pieces of trex to top it with but definitely no wax