Skateboarding
Skateboarding
What to remember when buying your first skateboard
Tool yourself up with all the knowledge you need to begin your skateboarding journey!
Buying your first board can be overwhelming as well as exciting, particularly since your formative interactions with skateboarding are likely to govern how you get along with it going forward (or indeed fakie).
Part of skateboarding’s beauty is the simplicity of the equipment. The skateboard is made up of the wooden deck, upon which the skater stands, and the trucks which operate as steering axles. On those trucks there are a total of four wheels, each with a pair of eight ball bearing races countersunk into the core of the wheel, which allows the skaters to hit those high speeds.
This is not to say that all skateboards are the same, nor that the differences between them may not affect your ability to enjoy- and, by extension, progress in- skateboarding.
What no guide can do, however, is account for taste.
The only way to really know if that board is calling out to you is to step on it and see if you feel that spark.
Which leads us to…
Skate Shops
Ayong Skate Shop
© Mike O'Meally
Something which makes skateboarding unique is the lure of the skate shop, good examples of which act as a cultural hub and crossroads as much as a physical retail space.
The internet may be able to provide a delivery service to skaters without access to a nearby skate shop (as did mail order before it), but really if skateboarding is something you intend to invest your passion into then logic dictates it is best to go and step on your steed before you hand over your money. Skateboard shop staff are knowledgeable, friendly and enthusiastic so take the opportunity to ask as many questions as you can!
Skateboard decks
Skateboard deck
© Divulgação
Today's skateboard decks are almost always made of seven rectangular veneers of Canadian maple, cross-laminated for strength and glued together with epoxy resin before being shaped for weeks under thousands of pounds per square inch of steam pressure and being cut into the requisite shape. Modern skateboards have a duo-directional ‘popsicle’ shape allowing for any trick to be done going either forwards or backwards (‘fakie’) or indeed in the opposite stance from the skater’s natural choice of leading foot (‘switchstance’). Broadly speaking, transition-based skateboarding favours large board shapes (often as much as nine inches in width) with broad, impact-resistant nose and tail shapes, whereas street skaters prefer narrower board shapes (occasionally as small as 7.5 inches in width) which are lighter, spin faster and which have a tapering front and back incline that can be flicked more precisely to govern rotations.
In the absence of preference, 8-inch wide decks offer a perfect compromise between reassuring width and minimising weight. A good skateshop will griptape the topside of your chosen deck on your behalf.
Shaped Boards
Skateboard shapes
© Joe Hammeke / Red Bull Content Pool
Before skateboard deck design stabilised around the current ubiquitous popsicle shape in the early 1990’s, there was an era of experimentation in deck shapes which produced some iconic and more than a few frankly dreadful silhouettes.
Some skaters like the fact that a shaped board rides differently in one direction from the other since they are not symmetrical lengthwise, but it is worth bearing in mind that all shaped boards are almost inevitably heavier than their popsicle counterparts just by dint of being larger to facilitate shaping. Heavy boards make for a sluggish ride so consider your likely terrain first!
Watch these great skate movies for free!
Trucks
A skateboard truck
© Wikipedia
Trucks are forged with a high-strength axle to prevent snapping and the steering responsiveness is governed by the durometer of the cushioned bushings in the offset vertical steering column of each: soft rubbers provide a loose steer and tighter turns, stiff rubbers offer stability and reduce the chance of wheelbite on the deck underside during high-impact landings.
The evolution of the skateboard truck market has seen the emerging dominance of three brands- Independent, famed for their responsive steering geometry, Venture for their lightweightedness, and Thunder which fall somewhere between the two. Your skate shop can advise on width relative to your deck choice.
You can say that vert skaters and bowl skaters tend to use wider boards and street skaters use smaller boards- but this is only a rule of thumb. In the end, it comes down to personal preferences.
Bearings
Skateboard bearings
© Tyrone Bradley/Red Bull Content Pool
If you are starting out in skateboarding, the best advice is to buy the shop’s own standard bearings. There are better bearings on the market, and some wonderful packaging to go with them, but speed at all costs is not actually desirable as you learn to skateboard. All skateshops stock inexpensive, robust, unspectacular bearings for entry- level boards which you can easily upgrade yourself at a later date if you feel the need.
At elite level, the bearings tend to be either Swiss-engineered custom ball bearing races or, more recently, cast ceramic ball bearings, which are finished to such a high polish that they offer only minimal energy loss through friction, despite the G-forces exerted on them.
Wheels
Skateboard wheels
© OJ Wheels
Skateboard wheels today are made of urethane, a polymer developed by DuPont which has a density measured on a durometer scale peaking at 100a. Transition skaters favour large wheels (around the 58-60 millimetre diameter mark) with a broader running surface and a grippy durometer around the 97a mark, whereas street practitioners prefer smaller-diameter wheels in the low 50s (which are more responsive to small balance adjustments) and a higher durometer, which allows for controlled skidding and sliding out of tricks. What makes urethane perfect as a wheel is that the heat generated by skateboarding does not degrade the polymer.
Although it is quite rare to find wheels softer than 98a in most skateshops these days due to the prevalence of smooth skateparks, given the choice it is better for beginners to ride wheels softer than 100a since hard wheels have a habit of catching on pavement debris and pitching you forward as they stop dead which is enough to put anyone off skateboarding for life.
For the same reason, 54 mm diameter wheels represent the golden ratio of being neither too large (and therefore fast and unresponsive) nor too small (and therefore slow and prone to catch on stones). A 54mm, 98a wheel is a first-time skater’s best (4) friend(s).
Graphics
Skate decks
© Always Timeless
Now we come to the final consideration, and an aspect of skateboarding which is purely a matter of taste. Skateboard graphic design is a multi-faceted discipline about which books have been written but which has zero impact on the functionality of the product. Different brands may favour different graphic styles, but remember you can always create your own graphics using stickers, waterproof paint or decals, if you like- it will in no way affect your board’s performance and customising your ride can be a creative outlet in itself!
Check out Margie Didal's private skatepark!
