Weatherlawyer wrote:
Weatherlawyer wrote:

How to build an hover board on The Gadget Show on Five NOW!

Just a piece of 3/4" ply a sheet of pond liner and a leaf blower motor.
You bolt the motor on one side. Plumb it through to the other side of
the board and seal the visquene around the board on the same side with
duct tape.

The plastic forms a cushion on the other side to the motor (so that the
air from the motor will billow out under the board into the cushion.)

Then you need to put a vent down the centre of the cushion. It runs
down the middle -equidistant from all edges.

Job done.

Not yet updated:
http://www.five.tv/programmes/gadgetshow/

The engine used was a 30cc Ryobi petrol driven leaf blower cp £100.oo

The board was an 18mm thick 1500 mm by 600 mm piece of ply costing him
£10. The corners were rounded off using a small plate template and
sandpaper for giving the edges a small radius.

The plumbing made up of downpipe etc., went through the board some 4 or
5 inches from one end and the engine bolted hard by it. This left room
for the owner to sit on the ply. In other words the size of the ply is
only governed by the power of the fan and the need of the user.

No doubt the family sized version would need N-squared incrementation.
But what would be the fun in that?

The "skirt" is 1000 gauge 250 microns thick O/A. (Like I said, any bit
of visquene you'd find in a builder's skip.) Plenty of overlap stapled
and trimmed afterwards with a stanley then duct taped to a neat 2"
margin. (I imagine that leaving too much margin would allow the air
enough room to cause problems to the seal?)

The vent was made with a metre of plastic strip 100 mm wide (he made up
out of a storage box in three pieces.) As with the other stuff it was
all held together by duct tape. But hhe was not so clear describing how
the vent was fixed to the skirt.

He said it was firmly screwed down???? And vents carefully cut in the
plastic????
Let the builder beware.

He would need packers to space it out from the board would he not? And
just taping it to the skirt would be asking for it to be forced off by
the blower? Sadly the clip was clipped too short for further
explanation. (But he did admit it was unstable.)

I have the idea that two small vents at the front -one in each corner,
would help control it a little better.

He very definitely said that there were full plans on The Gadget Show
web site. Anyone know if the show does have a repeat? I can't see it in
the schedule.