The longboards I’ve made

From left to right:

1) Maly’s 46″ spoon – I bought her a Tony Hawk “regular” skateboard at Walmart a month ago. One day she rode my 46″ Dregs pintail and really liked it (longboards are quite a bit stable compared to short boards). So I asked her if she wanted her own longboard. She said, “Yes, I want the shape of the Birdie board, with the color of your really long board and the wings like the Finklehopper board. And I want a purple stripe down the middle and pink stripes next to it.” Okay… so I built her a board to her specifications (with a 1.5″ wing depth). I’ll do the pin striping this week, and I talked her into doing some glitter design and glitter pin striping as well. And she picked out hot pink wheels and chrome trucks.

2) Buster’s Rigid (not yet stained) – I built a standard (1/2″ thick) 46″ long spoon nose for Buster. He cracked it within a couple days of owning it. So I made him a new, custom, 4-ply 3/4″ spoon nose. This one is a solid tank. I’m be curious to see how it rides (flexes) after it’s all put together.

3) The 6-foot Pine Cabron – Why the hell not?! I wanted a 6-foot surfboard on wheels. I bought a 1″ solid piece of pine and stole the nose design from my Dregs board and curved and tapered the sides and end using a 1×2 bent by a come-along tie down. I wanted a subtle stain, so went with a “Natural” stain. I also wanted classic pin stripes and chose Bohemian Blue and Purple Wave. Wheels are 76mm blue Bigfoots. It was really bendy, and I thought I was going to crack it in half, so I built some tapered ribs with some spare plywood and pin striped those with the matching Purple Wave. It still has some flex and rides like a yacht. I need to put taller risers on it because the wheels bite the board on hard turns (even though the board doesn’t do much more than straight).

4) The Finklehopper (aka The Deuce) – This was my second board. I made my regular spoon nose, but cut out a 1″ triangle on the tail to make “wings.” I stained this one with Ipswitch Pine and made custom iron-on transfers of Finklehopper Frog (one of Maly’s and my favorite books). I mounted trucks that I custom painted with brown fireplace paint and put some black 76″ Luv Ya Mutha soy wheels on it. It has one of my better grip tape designs on the top, but the Finklehopper transfers on the bottom weren’t doing it for me. I sanded and scraped the bottom to try to get the transfers off, but I kind of messed up the surface of the wood. To try to cover it up, I masked the sides and the top of the board and just painted the bottom black. That didn’t really cover up the scratches, and there’s some remnant Finklehopper Frog designs on the bottom. I’m thinking about doing a cool rhinestone hibiscus design next to cover up and distract from the previous design “flaws.”

5) The Dropthrough (not yet stained) – “Dropthrough” boards, from what I’ve gathered, are designed for a low center of gravity and for “bombing” hills. The trucks are disassembled before mounted and are literally dropped through and mounted to the top of the board. I haven’t quite figured out how to shape and saw the openings at the front and tail to mount the trucks. Really I just wanted to design a dropthrough deck. I’ll finish it at some point. I’m a bit nervous that the nose and tail sections could easily break.

6) The Bird Board – This was the first skateboard I built. It’s a 46″ spoon nose. After owning a longboard for a couple days, I decided I wanted to build my own. I did quite a bit of research and built a longboard press out of 2×4’s. I drafted my design from aluminum mixing bowls and bending a long 1×2 piece of scrap lumber. The only stain I had was Red Mahogony and Maly convinced me to just use what I had available. Maly designed the 3 little birds sitting on a branch. It has green 70mm Luv Ya Mutha soy wheels and is my absolute favorite. It rides like a Cadillac.

Not pictured are Buster’s original spoon nose that broke, my 10-year-old neighbor’s custom designed deck that we’re working on together, and Buster’s son’s spoon nose that’s drying in the press right now. That’s 9 boards in 5 weeks!

I think I have an addiction. At least it’s a healthy one.

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