Hello from Lancaster MA

[DDT]

Hi,

My name is David and I am from Lancaster MA. This will be my first attempt at building a backyard rink. My kids took up skating this summer and I figured this would be a good project to keep them excited about skating and me working outdoors.

I have already layed out the size and slope of my yard. I am planning on building 26X46 with these dimensions my low to high point differ by 2.5" inches so fairly flat. I could shorten the lengthen to fit an available liner size.

I was wondering about board and bracket material. I was thinking of using 3/4 inch plywood 12' high or 2x12? I am leaning towards plywood due to cost and ability to store. I am also an considering a braket kit, I believe on the simple design you used 2x2 stakes, but would these need to be braced?

David

[kevmac]

Welcome to the site and that's a great starter size rink for sure.

Plywood is good but 3/4" might be a bit of overkill unless you are constantly hammering slapshots at those 12" boards.

I've never built a rink with 12" boards so I can't speak from my own personal experience but I would think that if you had enough stakes along the length of the board and said stakes were driven down into the earth far enough, you should be good. Hopefully someone else out there can speak from their own experiences.

Keep us posted on your progress!

Regards
-kevmac

[wilsondmw]

Hi,

Last year was my first year and I used treated 2" x 12" x 12' boards and it worked out great. Puck makes a great sound as they bounce off and it stores really nicely in my garage. I have them stacked on topof each other and it takes up very little room--yes, they are long, but that makes set-up and cleanup pretty easy because you are now only having to line up 16 (2x12s) pieces instead of double or triple that in plywood.

We pounded wooden stakes to the outside of the 2 x 12s and screwed them in to keep them upright. Added some extra bracing on the deep-end just to be safe....I would recommend.

This year though, am working to make some curved boards for the ends, and still planning to use the 2 x 12s for the sides....I am not sure I would recommend that though because they are taking awhile to build and storing these ends is going to be much more of a pain....hopefully though it will be a lot of fun and look nice...here are a few pics of the rink from last year--as well as one of the early prototype corners....

-M

Rink_12-12-12small.jpg (137.26 KiB) Viewed 12454 times

[DDT]

Hi M,

Thanks for the pictures this is very similar to what I had in my head for our first rink. Could I ask what you used for stakes and how deep you set them. I see some people use the standard stakes sold at home stores but I was thinking of using 2x4 cut to a point with bracing, might be a pain to hammering into the ground. I did find some brackets on Craigslist fairly cheap that I am investigating. I figures ripping down a 4x8 sheet would give me four 12" boards 8' feet long, and the savings on boards I could invest in brackets, but I totally agree on the logic of 12' with less seems . The weather has turned cold already in Central MA, so I needto get a move on.

David

[wilsondmw]

I actually had some of those wooden stakes (like 1" square with pointed end) that I bought from HD and then I also cut some 2x4s (so that they had a pointed end) and drove them into the ground as heavier duty stakes. I threw them out after the season because I didn't pre-drill holes and many of them split from my screws...

Those 2x4s were about 24" long, so maybe 12" was in the ground. The 1" stakes were fine for the middle of the boards (just to keep the boards from bowing out) but the 2x4s were better for joining two of the 2x12 boards together. For the deep end, my 2x4 stakes were closer to 36" and then I did also add some bracing (I have about 10" slope, so I did everything I could to make sure it didn't "give way".)

Hammering either type was pretty easy--used a heavy mallet and neighor used his sledge. If ground frozen, you can always soak with hose to soften (would guess).

If you are getting a break on the craigs list brackets, I wouldn't hesitate to go that way, but me personally, I just liked the more solid look, feel and sound of those 2x12s.

-Mike

[Joe]

Welcome to the site David!

I think I've used nearly every combination of bracket and board material available at this point. My own personal rink uses 2x12's with home-made wooden triangular bracing. I've built rinks using Nicerink brackets and Nicerink boards, Nicerink brackets and plywood boards (either 3/4" or 23/32"). I've built rinks using Iron Sleek brackets and plywood, as well as Iron Sleek brackets with 2x12's. I've also cut 2x3's so that they had a point and pounded those in as bracing (it was a pain and many of them split). And my very first rink, the one I wrote about in our "build a rink for $250" post, was flimsy OSB with 24" tall wooden stakes. And you know what? Each combination has worked and allowed people to skate outdoors in the winter.

There are plusses and minuses to each combination, and at some point I want to do a blog post about all the different options. (Maybe I'll do it soon). For the all-wood rinks, the plus is that the parts are readily available at your hardware store, and the price tends to be cheaper than the rink-specific parts. Plywood is nice because you can buy one sheet and get 4 1' tall boards out of it, but then it tends to warp over the years and can get moldy during the summer. 2x12 is nice and sturdy, but can be heavy and hard to store. Nicerink stuff is great, but it's more expensive. See where I'm going?

I think if money were a factor (and it usually is), I'd go with 2x12's. You'll get many years out of them because they won't warp like plywood will, and once braced properly, they're nice and solid. For the bracing, if you wanted to go cheap, those 24" wooden stakes will allow you to pound them one foot into the ground, leaving 1' above the ground that you can screw into your boards. If you wanted to spend some money on rink-specific parts, Iron Sleeks were made to work with 2x lumber, and Nicerink brackets can be adapted to work with 2x lumber by shaving the front lip off with a sawzall.

I'm not sure this information helps...as there are dozens of combinations you can use. Find one that works within your slope, budget, and technical aptitude, and roll with it. Others may use different parts, but that doesn't necessarily mean that yours is inferior. Half the fun is building a rink unlike anyone else's. Good luck!

[DDT]

Thanks Joe,

All good information and very helpful. At this point I think I have settled on the use of 2x12'. I would like to ask how are your triangular brackets secured to the ground? I was thinking I would need bracing every 5" so with my layout I would need 32 braces.

David

[Joe]

I build my rink on an old tennis court, so they're not secured to the ground. We use sandbags and cinder blocks to hold them in place. I have almost no slope so my boards don't have a lot of pressure on them. The brackets are basically to keep the boards upright before the water's in.

Rule of thumb is no greater than 4' between braces, with 2' when water gets up over about 10". You don't have much slope but best to be conservative in your first year. And please, brace the corners like crazy. I love the Iron Sleek corner brackets out of everything I've used.

[DDT]

Joe,

Thanks for the advice. I am going to make my own brackets. I tried out a couple of prototypes over the weekend and I think I am going to go with a 2 x 4 stake approach, I cut one to a point and then tried to hammer it into the ground in a couple a different places in the yard and was easily able to sink it in about 10". The bonus is I have a lot of old lumber in the shed I can use up.

[pnltbox20]

I also use triangle braces to support my boards. I drill a hole in them and drive 2' rebar into the ground.