United States
Video Transcript:
[Jazz music playing in background]
Are you looking to buy a skateboard online? Or did you just ordered all of the parts? Sometimes skateboards come preassembled, but it will come to your door in parts and you will have to put it together yourself. No experience building a board? No problem. In this video we will show you how to put a skateboard together just like a pro.
Let's start by going over all the tools you will need to put together your new complete. First, you will need a razor blade or X-acto knife. Second you will need a skate tool, but a wrench could probably work as well. Lastly, you will need a power drill or a screwdriver.
First thing you will want to do is grip your deck. Start by removing the back part of the griptape just like you would with a sticker. Be careful this stuff is pretty sticky. Remove the back part of the grip tape sticker and hover your piece of grip over the deck. Slowly let the griptape lay down onto the deck. Starting in the very middle of he board pat the grip down with your fingers, slowly moving outward from where you started. If you get an air bubble - it's all good it happens to the best of us. Take your razor blade and poke that hole to diffuse that bubble. Don't like the feeling of the sandpapery grip? You can use the back of the grip tape sticker on the top and really smooth it down with your hands. Now that the grip is on we want to use something like a screwdriver to scrape down the edges. You don't need to go super hard. Just enough to see the outline of the deck.
Once you have made your outline it's time to cut around the edges with your razor blade. Cutting around the curvy parts of the board can be kind of tricky. So to make it easier you can make little slits with the razor blade around those areas so the grip is a little easier to work with. You will want to make sure that you are holding the razor blade super securely. Like this. Also, make sure you have plenty of space on the table that you are working on. Holding the deck with your non-dominant hand, use your dominant hand with the razor blade facing up, cutting towards yourself and parallel with the deck to get a nice clean trim of the grip. You will use hand holding the board to slowly turn it to keep the razor in the right spot. Now that the grip is all trimmed up we will want to do a little sanding down of the edges to ensure that the grip tape stays down. You can fold a little bit of the excess grip to make a little sanding tool for yourself. Just like this. The last thing you will want to do is poke the holes from the bottom of the deck and then make sure the holes are ready for the hardware.
Speaking of hardware, let's get that going so that we can attach the trucks to this deck. Turning your decks sideways. Poke the bolts through the holes.
Then apply the trucks ensuring the bushings and kingpins are facing to towards the center of the board; at each other. Then tighten the nuts onto the bolts by hand. Using a screwdriver or a powered screw gun tighten the hardware so that the trucks are tightly fastened to the board. Your goal is for the hardware to be set in flush into the griptape. Make sure they are not popping up. If you are using a screw gun there is a chance that you can over-tighten. So be sure to drill in spurts to make sure you aren't sinking your bolts in super deep.
Now that your trucks are on it's time to get the wheels and bearings going. Take off the axel nut of your truck and one spacer. Pop the bearing onto the axle. Add the wheel on top the bearing on the axle and firmly push down to push the bearing into the wheel. Rotate the wheel and push a few times to ensure it's in nice. Don't go too hard or you may damage your bearing. Pull the wheel off the axle and add another bearing onto the trucks axle. Flip the wheel around and pop in the second bearing into the wheel. Add back the spacer you removed earlier and then add the axle nut. Tighten the axle nut down as tight as it can go, while still allowing the wheel to roll. Repeat this process three more times until all your wheels and bearings are pressed and they are fastened onto the axles of your trucks. And there you have it folks. Your skateboard is all put together. Next step rip it up.
