Szanter Christ

Construction Diary

Read on for Ants's account of the building of the Szanter Christ

Entry's in Blue are added by me (Jules)

Szanter Christ serious construction: Day One. 20-12-01

Today is the first day of serious construction of the Szanter Christ. We're frantically building it in a rush because it's going to snow this weekend, apparently. Not that you even know what the Szanter is yet. I'll explain.

Following the success of the Gingus, Team Grecet (Jules and I) became obsessed with building more vehicles, and put a sledge on the drawing board (not literally(although if we had a sledge we might have)). It was to be called Santa Christ, and would consist of a Gingus-type chassis with two snowmobile-style steerable skis on the front, and a larger, more snowboard-esque thing on the back. We got the chassis for £2 and it was green with mould and covered in rust(it was salvaged from a wreck after we bought it and stole the wheels for the gingus when they broke see here). Eventually I decided that the word "Szanter" looked better and less Christian than "Santa", and thus was thusly the way.

It wasn't until yesterday that we actually bothered to do some real work on the thing. We removed the remaining plastic and sprayed the rusty sections silver.

Today we got most of the work done. We replaced the bolts, removed most of the steering wheel, leaving a flight-yoke style thing, drilled holes in the frame and bolted two cross-pieces of wood to the chassis, upon which (hopefully tomorrow) the rear skis will be mounted. I (Ant) sawed two wooden "blokes" (blocks) from a fence post, and drilled holes in them. They sit where the front wheels would normally go, and the front skis will be glued and screwed to the bottom of them.

We also attempted to make the skis out of a series of pieces of plywood. Using a skateboard press made out of huge blocks of chipboard, we compressed two pieces of ply together, per ski, with the help of the weight of the SPV moped. We left them for 3 and a half hours and gave up: the moped wasn't heavy enough to push the press together to bend the skis to a suitable degree. Plus, it was too damn cold for the glue to dry. Plan B was decided upon: cut skis from some different, thicker wood, sand the front lower edges to a smooth curve, and apply 4 or 5 coats of WOOD VARRRNISCH.

Tomorrow, we finish the Szanter Christ, ready for the forecast snow at the weekend.

Day Two. 21-12-01

Today we finished the first version of the Szanter Christ. Jules made the skids last night and began varnishing them. We rounded them off in the morning and varnished them through the day, we also attached the front skids to the wooden blokes with two screws each and plenty of wood glue. I drilled and bolted the rear ski to the Szanter and Jules came up with a stupid idea (he is convinced it's a good idea) to give it retractable wheels(it already hada lever on it that would have operated em and it didnt have any rear skis so it was an idea lol). I laughed because giving it wheels would defeat the point of it being a cordless power-sledge. The Szanter Christ alpha 1 was finished.

Day Three. 22-12-01

I stayed at home and did nothing all day. Not even homework.

Jules removed the rear skid because it was coated in grass from when I stupidly put it on the lawn when the varnish was wet. He also removed the usless brake lever and added some labelling: two arrows pointing forward and two inverted crosses on the skis, and Team Grecet on the steering wheel mounting.

Day Four. 23-12-01

With Christmas looming, we decided to give the Szanter a test run on the frost, to make sure it worked at all and in order to amke adjustments if necessary before using it on the snow. We got up reasonably early and walked to the Downs in the bitter cold (I'm talking BITTER cold here, none of your rubbishy.... rubbish). It was so... stupidly... cold. To my great surprise, it actually worked on the steepest bit of hill, although the front skids did occasionally flip over. We took it back to Jules's house, then later to my house, taking with us a section of frame taken from the back of the SPV moped.

We cut two equal sized metal runners from the frame, removed my Dad from his bag and he volunteered to use a blowtorch to bend the runners to the desired shape. We took the runners back to Jules's house where we asked his next-door neighbour (who will be referred to as John from this point onwards) to grind away the sharp metal protrusions from where we cut the runners from the frame.

Then, we drilled holes in them and bolted them to the front skids. Jules finished the job by filling the holes with P40 fibreglass filler. Tomorrow, we sand down the filler and think about making the back end slightly less rubbish.

Day Five. 24-12-01

Didn't do much work on the Szanter today, just sanded off the excess P40 and Jules waxed the front skids... smooth as a pooma's vresungoomars. We aren't gonna bother making the back end any better, because it doesn't need to be any better. Now all we need is snow.

Day x. 3-01-02

"D-Day" arrives without any warning: I decided to ride up to Mentmore at about 2PM driven by the thought of the hill being in shadow all day because of the height of the sun in the sky and due to heavy frost being on the ground for the past days. Upon arrival at the gates of the park, I could see people skidding down the great hill on those one-piece moulded plastic sledge things. I zoomed off back to Jules's house and told him about it. The Szanter seat had been removed for its transit to Dorset over New Year, where it was not tested due to lack of snow.

We bolted the seat back onto the frame and walked up to Mentmore with it. The amount of sledgers had increased since I last looked but it was by no means full of them. We walked to the top of the hill as Jules mounted the Szanter Christ and braced himself for the first test run. I gave him a push and he was away!

The Szanter skidded dubiously and heavily down the mostly-frosted hill, spraying snow slightly behind itself, admittedly slower than the other smooth, simple, lightweight plastic sledges with the simple, lightweight children on them, but it reached the bottom. Jules got off the thing as it came to rest and punched the air with both hands. The Szanter Christ was now officially version 1.0.

I had a go: it was noticeably slow, it didn't want to accelerate much after being released. The steering worked to the extent of altering the way the sledge was pointing slightly but it didn't seem to actually alter the direction in which it skidded bumpily down the hill, steering one way or the other just slewed the sledge so it skidded down the hill sideways. I think this had something to do with the back of the sledge only being supported by a small corner of the back of the frame, and this was verified upon having a look at the bottom of the Szanter after one run and finding that an inch of paint on the bottom of the frame at the very back had been scraped to the bare metal on each side, the rest of the paintwork was untouched.

The pressure from the weight of one person through one square inch of metal on the snow at the back must also have been too much to allow the Szanter to glide with any ease along the ground, so Team Grecet decided to alter it later on in the day. Meanwhile we tested the sledge down different parts of the hill, putting the steering to test when Jules wanted to go through the trees, a venture which was abandoned because the sledge wanted to go straight down the hill instead of half-down-half-along it (the desired path). Jules pointed it at the trees using the steering but it just slid sideways in the direction that it was going in. In fear of crashing it into a tree, Jules guided the Szanter out into what was more like "the open". Some decent runners at the back were in order.

More tests, this time with Jules and later me sitting forward of the seat, on the frame, in order to distribute the weight more evenly, closer to halfway between the front and rear. Indeed, the sledge seemed faster. Whether this was due to the different weight placement bending the frame to form better rudimentary skids I don't know, but it was faster. However the pain in the arse was unbearable.

Yet more tests, this time with Jules AND me on the Szanter at once. Indeed, it was even faster. The Grecet team called it a day and walked back to my house to begin modifications.

I got home and realised I'd lost my house key at Mentmore. Leaving Jules to make the new rear skids out of the Gingus steering support (The poor Gingus!!!), I buggered off back to Mentmore to look for a single key on the vast snowy hillside.

Believe it or not, I found the key and returned to find Jules with a pair of rather nice black skis that had come from the Gingus schteering, ready for attachment to the Szanter. My drill was, however, broken, so we took all the stuff to Jules's, where we used his Dad's drill to drill through the skis and the rear frame. We then bolted the skis onto the frame. Version 2.0 complete? Testing tomorrow starts at half past 9 in the morning.

Day x+1. 4-01-02

Got up early today. Jules turned up at half 9, we sawed off the bolts on the rear skids. Took Szanter up to Mentmore at about 10 and tested it while noone else was around, setting up a slalom course as well. It was considerably faster than yesterday and even faster today than my metal cross-frame sledge, which was surprisingly slow against all competitors. The proper skis on the back actually made the steering work, the slalom course was completed properly by Jules, yet I failed to finish, scraping to a halt 6 or so inches from the stopping point. (yeah Ant ent too good at this racing idea;) )

But anyway. It now goes with the speed of a mediocre plastic sledge, and can also steer around them. Version 2.0 complete. Plus if we hit a plastic sledge we would own it.

The sledge was then stripped down in the summer to accomodate the reuse of the gingus.

- Ant

- Jules