How to Customize Skateboard Decks

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Shawn Connelly. I live in San Francisco, California. I skate for Circle-A Skateboards and I'm co-founder of the SF Skate Club, a skateboarding program for youth. Today I'm going to show you how to customize your skateboard. What this means is you get to pick out all the parts of the skateboard yourself and what's best about this is there's a different kind of truck, there's a different kind of deck, different kind of wheel, different kind of bearing, different kind of mounting hardware and different kind of grip tape. Now all these things combined will make the complete skateboard. You're going to need all of these things. So when it comes to grip tape, taking out your grip tape and this is in no specific order of importance. The grip tape you'll want to pick out something that for me I want to pick out something that's made by a skateboard company, first and foremost, one that I recognize. So I like to skate Jessup grip tape. It's a pretty general good grip tape. There's a lot of companies. There is mob grip tape. Grip tape is really good to get a fine grit but one that doesn't wear out too fast and you're going to want to make sure when you're picking it out that you make sure that it is enough to cover a board. Some sheets come as one single piece that's already the size of a board maybe with a quarter of an inch extra on each side but some come on a roll at the skate shop so you want to make sure that you can cover that entire top of your board. So the next thing that you choose, pick out yourself is your trucks, probably trucks are the single most important part of the board to be able to feel and turn. Usually when people pick a certain kind of truck that they're into this is the one thing that they don't change very much. They usually stick to a certain type of truck because if you change your trucks a lot from different brands, you're going to be turning different, they're going to weigh different weights, things like that. They may just have problems. They may break if you end up buying a truck brand that you don't really like. So these are Ventures. Ventures are pretty much middle of the line, good truck, generally. It's light. They don't break. They last quite a while. They come in a lot of colors. I have just the traditional color here and on the topic of color that's another thing that you might want to pick out things that match. I don't know if that's something you want to do but something you can make them complimentary colors. So trucks are definitely one thing now that come in a wide range of colors. The next thing you'll need to pick out is your wheels. Skateboard wheels vary in size from the high 40s probably the smallest wheel I've seen lately is a 48 millimeter and then they range all the way up to about 60 millimeters which is a pretty large wheel. They also vary in thickness like how wide the wheel is and then they vary in the hardness or the durometer of the wheel. For street skating you probably want a harder smaller wheel and for just cruising, for an easy ride, not doing too many tricks, you'll want a larger softer wheel. It's a little easier on your legs and you can just sort of cruise. It takes less energy. The next thing you'll want to choose to customize your board is your bearings. I have found that if you buy quality bearings they're going to last longer. There is not a lot of brands of bearings it seems like, I don't know there is probably like seven or so that are worth using so make sure you get a good brand of bearings. They'll last longer. They'll be good. The next thing you're going to need is mounting hardware to mount your board to, your trucks to the board. Now with mounting hardware you'll want to go with something good too. I've been noticing a lot of bolts breaking. If your bolts break, it's not a good brand, try to buy something better. There is two different kinds of bolts that you can get, one is Phillips Head and the other is Allen Key and whichever one you're into. I like Allen Key it seems easier to turn than it is to put a screwdriver in so then it ends up working for me. The last thing that you need to pick out is your skateboard. Picking out a deck that's good. I would suggest picking out a pro model of a skateboard. One thing that you can do to help skateboarding in general is to support professional skateboarders as opposed to just buying a team board and also it's a board that someone's endorsing in skating so it's probably pretty good and with the computer these days you can kind of look somebody up, see if you haven't heard of them, you can look them up and see their skating and see if that's the type of skating that you're into and you know that they are riding the same board so you can back that up. One thing I want to add is make sure that the skateboard products that you buy are made from actual companies that do support professional athletes, professional skateboarders. I've been noticing over the past few years a lot of sub par material out there, a lot of boards that look like they're real and they end up not being really that good, they're actually like a little too thick or made of bad material. I've been noticing a lot of grip tape that's like, wears out really quick. So try to talk to your skate shop, do as much research as you need to to find out the details about what you're picking out and make sure you get good stuff and that's how you customize a skateboard. My name is Shawn Connelly and I live in San Francisco, California and I skate for Circle-A Skateboards and SF Skate Club, I co-founded and if you want to learn more about the organization you an look up SFSkateClub.com."