Rockit FlexRuler Oldschool Flex ruler
Now that I am about to begin pressing my first decks, I started scratching my head on what the most accurate way to measure and mark out all the spots I’d be drilling. I looked at hardware stores for a ruler or tape measure that would be able to flow with the curvature of the board but also hold true when marking out my drilling points.
Cue the stage for Roarockit. Their main product, the one that started it all, the Thin air press (T.A.P.) is an easy to use vacuum bag used to make skateboard decks with the power of vacuum and positive molds. You can get the full kit with foam, vacuum bag, hand pump, breather netting, and 2 sets of 9 ply longboard venners or less than $200! They offer a ton of different veneer for building your own decks, different shapes and sizes of veneer, different wood types, and different colors options as well. They even offered to create a custom combination for me as well. (11 ply behemoth of a deck.)
They just recently started selling more in the range of tools that a deck builder would love to have. This ranges from an awesome edge profile scraper (I picked one of these up too!) to the rulers I had been looking for all along.
I had a great customer service interaction with the fine folks over at Roarockit and I wanted share my opinions and findings!
They have a few of these rulers now, an old school (47 inch) and a new school, both of which come in plastic or stainless steel. The plastic is extremely flexible and pretty strong, but they do say that it will break after a certain bend radius, so don’t be dumb! The way this ruler bends and flexes, it is a perfect addition to anyone’s tool box who does any sort of modification to their decks.
I chose the old school bolt pattern, as you can see in the picture below, it lines up perfectly.
There is a nice “center finder” on the ruler with diamonds spaced out equally over the entire length off the ruler.
There are plenty of bolt hole guides as well. If you are building your own decks or doing any sort of modification to your decks, this ruler is going to save you so much time and headaches.
The ruler is great ($35), don’t get me wrong….but the shipping is what will make a lot of people shy away from this (Almost $20 for one, only adding $0.20 per additional ruler). I called them and talked to them about this, its that damn northern border that jacks the shipping price up!
I bought 4 of these at once, to help cut down on the shipping for some other members here. Unfortunately, UPS decided to not take very good care of the rulers during shipment. As seen in the picture, part of the box was completely ripped and held together with tape. I had a bad feeling about this before I even opened it…
I was right! 4 out of 4 of the rulers had broken on the end where the box was smashed. I immediately had this pit open in my stomach….customer service time.
I shot them a quick message on Facebook with some pictures and they said they would review and contact me in the morning. I got a fairly long message back from the guy I had talked to on the phone. TLDR; they are sending me 4 brand new rulers and re-evaluating how they package and ship these so it doesn’t ever happen again! They are also interested in the Esk8 community so I told them to come on over to the forum and introduce themselves…hopefully they will!
Seriously check these guys out. They offer a lot of different products, including preshaped foam molds and a bunch of tutorials to help get you started on your journey of deck building.
Quick visual guide on how to use the ruler
