A while back I got talking to a guy from Finland that makes carbon composite decks. Have kept in touch with him and he offered to make me a board (any spec/dimensions I like, rather than from the ones available on his shop). Pretty excited about this. Just gave him board specs. It’s like a mashup of Ishod twintail (longer tail, same shape) and a Girl/Crail G023 (slightly thinner, same wheelbase/length/fingers of flat).
Board will be 4 ply, slick. Apparently super light and strong, thinner, obvs and with super pop. This is what I gave him:
Phwoar I love all this nerdy sort of stuff with anything I get into. January is one of my favourite months because it means the release of new golf clubs that will be broken down in hour-long videos about carbotanium alloys and moment of inertia. I’m the same with guitars and cars, and weirdly, football boot technology. Keep us (me, at least) up to date!
All I remember is that one time I had a Shorty’s Smolik and it felt way too long. Managed to find the size and it was 32.5" or something. And the Ishod I got at the moment feels too short (31.5). Not to bore you but there’s like +/- 3mm that I like for board length
Wheelbase sensitive here - I had a Hockey 8" a couple of years ago with a 14" wheelbase and 31.3. Couldn’t deal with it and I swopped it out after 2 or 3 sessions as my feet felt like they had to be more together than normal. I’m on 14.25" wheelbase with 32" length (w 8.125) at the moment which feels good - doesn’t make any difference to my rapidly dwindling ability though haha
I’ve never really given board specs a second thought, but after getting mildly obsessed with Ben de Gros videos that has changed. I’m not sure I like it?
Have you watched those prof schmitt 9club episodes @deegwaad ? That’s when you start getting in trouble. But highly recommended.
After ankle surgery I got a setup specifically to re-learn tre flips after not doing one for 5 years, so got a fairly skinny board, super low trucks, small skinny wheels, basically spec’d it just to get that one trick from what prof schmitt said and it worked.
Yeah I have seen the professor episode. The only thing I really have a hankering to try out is a 14" wheelbase.
For some reason I stopped being able to land tre flips consistently a few years ago, and I became convinced this lined up with me starting to skate aces, which lengthen the wheelbase (and therefore make flip tricks more difficult - supposedly). I thought switching back to indy’s would immediately solve the problem. If anything, it got worse! Turns out I just got old and shit!
Part of me is wondering if that too could ever be textured enough to make grip tape redundant. Just from an ecological standpoint grip tape must be one of the worst products in skating. A significant percentage of it is wasted before it even gets on the board, and to my knowledge it’s completely unrecyclable.
I’m wondering how robust that is going to be, say boardsliding a brick wall? Carbon can start fraying quite easily, depending on the weave used. Would prob be fine if you’re just skating waxed skatepark ledges.
