Can anyone help me out here? My son just bought a new Flex Deck skateboard for carving and it rips. I however can’t justify the two hundred bucks he shelled out and was interested in making my own deck and using the trucks and wheels from my longboard. Question, does anybody here know how they’re made. I can see that fibreglass mat is used but is it laminated with layers of regular glass cloth too? Is there something in the core, perhaps wood or something I don’t know about? And if it’s just layers of cloth and mat, how many? And what is the process? I’ve made my own surfboards for years so I’m pretty used to working with fiberglass. But is it too much hassle or trouble to try and replicate one of these boards? Help, please.
They have a web page, which I can not remember the address, but they have large sheets of the material that they cut them out of, there are pics. I think it was some kind of military application, and they figured out that it made great skates.
I don’t know about flex decks but to do your own you can use marine plywood. It is expensive but it has more plys than regular plywood and it is pretty durable (comparable to the wood that gravity uses for their longboards). I like to use some stuff called para ply from the depot. It is 7 layers and very flexy (in fact too flexy). Depending on how much you weigh and the length of the board (the further you place the trucks apart the more stress you put on the middle of the deck), will dictate how much glass you want to lay down. I’m 200 lbs. and with a 47" deck I like 3 layers of 6 oz. on the bottom and 2 4 oz. layers on top. Then hot coat that. It all depends on how much flex you want. If you go too light on the cloth, eventually you will get stress cracks in your glass, then breakage. I have done some for friends with real light glass 2 4oz on bottom, which they rode all the time and they lasted about a year before they broke. But they were real flexy and you could generate speed by carving back and forth.
NCDSA.com is an awesome longboard skateboard site and has an entire forum on homemade boards. Check it out. Thousands of posts on all aspects of longboarding.
We have used 5/8ths ply and 3/4 plywood-have seen a few made from discarded snowboards-get out your sabersaw.