Skateboarding Decks

Skateboarding decks are some of the most abused and destroyed sporting instruments in youth activities. The decks are composed of several alternating layers of plywood and glue. The boards are bent in the front and the back to ease the rider’s ability to perform an “Ollie.” The deck is supposed to withstand a beating, since the suspension on the trucks is fairly minimalistic, if existent. There are some rubber seals around the kingpin and some looseness there, but overall the body and the board take the brunt of any landing. The decks are used and abused and some circumstances will be noted in the next paragraph.

Skateboarding decks are repeated maligned in their short careers before they are, most likely, broken. If you do a series of grinds you are either abusing your trucks or your deck. If you Ollie high and don’t land squarely on your trucks, and absorb the impact through your lower body there is a good chance you could snap your board. In the modern skate videos raging pros will sometime bash their own boards into oblivion out of frustration for failing to do a trick. All of these are fairly common occurrences. However, if you do snap your deck, fracture it, or simple grind it into nothingness, you can take the trucks and the wheels off and recycle them onto your next board, saving you money, although not necessarily time.