The tailbone is connected to the skateboard

My daughters found my old skateboard and were playing around with it the other day. I noticed that the plate that protects the back of it for breaking was worn through.

I decided this was an excellent chance to try 1/4' acetal. I scanned in the existing part and traced the outline in Illustrator and placed 3 1/8' holes in the same locations as the old one. I was able to cut through the 1/4' acetal with no issues, it worked great.

It was a bit of a tight fit for the screws, but not too bad. However, the thickness and length of the screws wasn’t quite right.



I decided to modify the piece a bit to make it fit better. I measured the screw heads and then created a new cut/etch file that would give me 0.13' holes and 0.3' etched recesses around those holes. It was a simple shape of two circles and one filled.



I was able to copy and paste it 3 times and zoomed into the piece on the bed to align them which worked well.



I used 3 passes in the end which gave me a nice deep recess that the screw heads could countersink into and reach further through the board to the t-nuts on the other side to actually fasten it.



After that I was able to attach it in place of the old one and the kids are ready to go out and shred again

(I still need a replacement for one of the screws from the original set that was sheared off)