I’ve been thinking about building a “square” shaped deck for a while, not sure why. Not “sharp right angles” square, but basically square.
I googled “square decks” and couldn’t find much, but did find pictures of this board:
I live in the south pacific (New Zealand) so getting kits/materials for forming my own deck is pricey (freight mostly). The idea of getting some (maybe) marine-ply and some fibre-glass and making something flat like this is appealing. It would be very easy to 3d-print and enclosure for it, and cheap to make another one.
Also: I’m not riding down knarly hills, drifting around corners etc. I don’t need to be “locked into the board” (although knowing where my feet are is useful) so the lack of shape is not important. It’s basically a commuter (2km) 95% of the time.
Convince me that this is a bad idea…
I’m not young anymore so I kind of like the cave-man/back to basics aesthetic.
It will need concave. No concave feels like absolute elephant shit on fire, with soupy human manure mixed in sprinkled with rotten broccoli and beer shits. Then flakes of dried cum, salted, pissed on, with dead ground up rotten rats. It’s bad.
I agree that I might not like the flatness… I would probably have to have some texture under my feet to get a feel from the board… even if it’s some 3d printed “shapes”.
From an engineering/engineer’s perspective (we are all engineers, right?) I like the idea of how fundamental and basic the form factor would be.
Also I’m cheap and I don’t have a proper workshop.
Think it would look way better with 97mm wheels, and front-truck much closer to the front of the board, which would be ~34" long (same as my Truncated Tesseract).
The only way you had a skateboard when I was a kid was to take the metal wheels off those roller skates that latched onto your shoes and nail them to a board. I don’t recall them being all that awesome.
Keep your eyes on TradeMe, for used longboards. You’ll easily find something that will work, instead of wasting time and material in that flat board that will ride like crap. Honestly, concave is mandatory!
There is PLENTY of skate gear available in NZ. for example I found a complete Evo last year for NZ$120
Just stay away from new cheap stuff, and get second hand decks from reputable brands and you’ll have something great in the end