Paul Schmitt | The Nine Club With Chris Roberts - Episode 174

well we are back huh we're back at the nine club everybody today oh wow we got a special special another one special guest Paul Schmidt the professor all right well thanks for having me guys in the flesh we got he's got his lab coat on and everything I'm on the woodshop oh my god how often do you wear that when you're going grocery shopping you put that on and just when I'm doing advanced you know like Prakriti scale I'll be just in event mode so y'all be wearing it wherever right thank you I want to get a lab coat this is kind of a lab know Sound Lab Sound Lab down that sound and video lab audio-video Department yeah keep the place clean professor krob right there yeah when did the lab coat come into play I mean it's out of necessity right yeah I mean you when you're working with wood and stuff you you're protecting your clothes essentially yeah means that lab coat for me goes back to actually summer 1986 delmar contest an NSA contest at Delmar skate park mm-hmm and I've been at a thrift store and for some reason I saw a lab coat and I was like I I bought it it was light blue and I wrote a professor Schmidt at 86 on the pocket okay had a bottle of Gatorade in it grabbed it and took a picture and then Lucero had laid out an ad winter spring summer fall uh-huh and it was Monte Lopes Lucero and Grasso and then gossip quit the team okay unless Darrell said you're going in and that sort of set the tone for the professor thing and you you were in the ad with overlap karate with the Gatorade in the pocket but then it was like I was more like the the wacky professor almost like Jerry Lewis who minds the store I mean who else would show up with a skate park of a brand new board dropped in and it breaks what do you mean are you willing to try things oh you mean in your development of boards yeah you're dropping in and boards are breaking I can't remember once having this board in Florida there was foam and fiberglass and I wrote at the and I'm all super excited having a blast on it you know then we go to John Gregg Lee's ramp I do a fakie Ollie two-tailed my tail breaks off ah that idea that worked that well foam in fiberglass yeah what is this are you just messing with different what were year was this this was a that's 43 okay were you just messing with different materials yeah I mean just like hey what could i what could I throw in here well I worked at a boat company building sail boats so it's like I had access and knowledge with fiberglass and resins and stuff like that and they hardened resin hardens pretty solid right yeah it's uh you know sometimes I'll go skate the Kombi I could pump into the corner of the combi and orange sometimes up I've gone there and put my board together skate drop in one ride and I hop out and I leave and I was like what's wrong I was like I broke my board it doesn't look broken to me it's like no I broke her board I go carve that corner and the square part of the bowl and and I can feel that limit like it popped do you have special equipment when you're trying to design or develop something like you know a pressure stuff that day yeah some bends aboard years ago with load cells and that but never really got anywhere with it it's always been like the the best way to judge a board is take a board put it on a curb and jump on it like nothing good nothing to replicate what you're we kinda boards yeah what I never found it like I've tried I've seen stuff that other people have done but it never it doesn't give you that same feedback right that your sense gives you if you did it would kind of be like what's a word for it like a gimmick like oh you kept this board can withstand yeah it's not it's not realistic to skateboarding but I did some stuff with a lab this past year and I was able to finally do some development where I got writer feedback and I was able to correlate it to some lab testing so that was interesting now when you say lab testing what does that entail like what is it like what's one thing that is in this case it was a glue lab a company that makes glue okay I have standards for lamination and glue and huh stuff like that so obviously different glue I mean will get into the whole manufacturing of a board right out cause it's super I mean people need to no rush Adam it how the boards are made surprised to find out like forty people touch their board before its ski at all yeah a little bunch of people in the guy and a guy in a lab coat nobody do you see the future of skateboards going somewhere whether it's like bamboo or some type of different material so it's not really going any further I don't feel really in the world of composites and that kind of thing so if we want to make a five hundred thousand dollar board first of all kids don't want to buy that sure there's no skater that didn't get a new board today that would say no to a new board tomorrow yeah right okay so if you make if all the money goes into making this crazy board and then it doesn't get replaced that's not what skaters want they want the replacement and use of it and it's not sustainable for a company it's not sustainable for a company but the reality is that in the world of composites and aerospace and everything the the big focus in the last 10 15 years has been daño tubes where these little microscopic tubes okay we got mother nature's best material with nanotubes built into it in the first generation that grain is the same grain that was in a tree okay where you take a truck and you take the minerals out of the earth then you melt them into aluminum and steel they don't look anything like that yet right the wheel might have come from some petroleum that came out of the ground doesn't look like anything like it did things get processed into something else where the board has this organic liveliness to it this is true what about him so I've made boards of hamp in them yeah yeah you know in hand BAM bamboo they both have some merits but they're not the same as wood there's not same as wood yeah I mean it's like uh I don't know ten years ago mega rampant Bergquist went on mega ramp contests on the board that was 50% bamboo and hemp 50% maple oh you know yeah guys were fine to that level but the brands didn't want to market it the media didn't want to talk about it we did not last longer show thinner now I had a nice refined level you know but the reality is it the obtain ability of materials yeah and cost you know when you say hey yeah I can make a board for you for double the money with hard to get people to spend a buck more or less double the mantra Wow that's the hard reality and it's a in general and manufacturing anything that cost the dollar at manufacturing is usually four times at at retail yeah and that could be any kind of product sure you know what I mean sure the reality is by the time it goes through marketing and distribution and design and engineering and all those realities of business right oh and moving from a distributor to a retailer a retailers of consumer there's all these levels and tears I don't know what if Elon Musk just came through like I have this revolutionary material but he didn't end up nanotubes in his window the other so the boards have okay interesting so if you look at hard maple in a microscope but it has all these little tubes in it right and these tubes are where we get all the strength I'm picturing like a beehive like be like a so a seven PI skateboard when it came out in the 70s seventy eight ish was for 60% that Graham went end-to-end forty percent went across okay and then in the 80s it was 80 70 30 in the 1989 or 94 find it with with vision board and got it to be 75 85 and then when I made feather light in the late 90s I got to 80/20 so the board's I built 80% the grain is going the length so the tubes are lined up for the ollie okay and supporting that oh you have to have enough tubes going across to hold the concave in the shape of the board mm-hmm and that allowed us then to make a board thinner lighter and and boards now became this thing that had this flex and bounce back right where before then they were thicker and they were more solid it was more about a rigid thing yeah yeah oh and the feather like concave was really the drive of trying to make a lighter board to satisfy Chris mark a [ __ ] you know and the compromises have got to have more concave to it because you're looking at flat boards were before the shirt yeah yeah we went to a board whether they were so flat and they had to become they had to be so thick because they were so flat and so the 80/20 that you're talking about what plies is is it two plies yes where the plies are going across okay the general and five are going long so generally look at a skateboard the two outside ones are going long okay and there's a cross huh then along across and too long never even like thought about yeah no I mean I there's some skaters that are really I mean wheelbase everything super important to them but me I would just grab a board and just go you know as long as the shape was my shape right I'd never even thought about nanotubes nanotubes which way the wood was going yeah how did you even get started I mean you said you you were a bill uh built boats well it goes way back before that I always made stuff right okay yeah you know goes back to his as a little kid I lived in Wisconsin I lived in rural lacrosse out in the country mm-hmm and my dad ran a college theater and he would take me to work with him and it's sort of like I was the kind of kid those like oh the drill press at six bandsaw at seven he's making sets making sets exactly right and then my dad would build these little models in the living room all winter long and then he would take this model to school and there was no blueprint that was just a scale ruler oh he made a little miniature he made a miniature and then the students would have to go build that and I would go help them build it because I watched him build the model okay all winter long huh you know soon and that's how I learned how to make things that was a kind of kid always making tree forts you know oh go karts you know whatever you could make right no I didn't I wasn't part of that that happened in Costa Mesa Volcom I will wrap in between trees on the ground the trees well no is it about trees around the ground but the one I think is one of those up in the air there's a bill to shred one that won't come dead so you're making stuff as a kid and then did you just start skating then in Wisconsin the in 73 the neighbors have brought a board from left in the 60s they bought her to swap meet for two bucks and they you know his clay wheels that they lived in a brand-new house of a smooth asphalt driveway oh yeah I lived in a hunter guild farmhouse with a crusty ass driveway right you're going over their place to go over their place and ride their skateboards you know but then then skateboards became available as a department store with urethane wheels and ball bearings and I was like I spent 20 bucks and got one yeah 20 bucks well I was a fool the neighborhood for doing that you know like this is fabulous you know and the rally is that I'd ride my bike up and down the street the rural route to and just pick up aluminum cans because back then people just throw garbage out the window you know they still do so you would go and recycle and get money so go recycle get money so that's how you bought your first board yeah it was recycling yeah Wow getting like a nickel okay not even a nickel it used to be a lot you see Lonnie bucks you got your first board what was it board it was just a plastic board oh just plaster all bearings actually have a very similar one at my shop but I bought off eBay a couple years ago oh you tried to get the original yeah close steadily I won yeah I have a bunch of old boards bonus game boards you have a few skateboards yeah so when did you start because then you start with rails we're just making my first rails so so in Wisconsin yeah I could skateboard in the rest of neighborhood but the other kids had no interest in skateboarding you were the only one oh there's only one you know and now there was a new subdivision that had new roads I could go ride the skateboard in that it was fabulous yeah and I loved it toboggan in the winter and no got myself a really nice toboggan you know you'd go hike a mile up that cow pasture and go to bogging down but you pick a line I don't remember okay they picked Kansas probably more than probably more from the skateboard yeah yeah and when my parents told me that that we are moving to Florida and you're toboggans got to go there's no tobogganing in Florida like I was heartbroken but I had skateboarding in the summer and tobogganing in the winter and they both had this freeform flow go kind of thing you could do it on your own or you could do it with somebody you know there could be people in the back that toboggan or you can be solo yeah and skateboards like that as well you can skateboard with friends yo you can skateboard solo right yeah no I prefer with friends oh no doubt yeah no yeah as well so you moved to then I moved to Tampa Florida and then I lived in a at a condo complex so that had kids that lived there that had skateboards it was like wow this is great I get to skateboard all the time finally have young people to skateboard got people to skateboard with you know okay made up made up a wouldn't oak board you know like the one of the neighborhood kids had done you know oh you mean up at school yeah oh wow cuz back then when skateboards weren't laminate you could just get a chunk of oak and you know glue on a kick tail and go at it it was attainable is it heavy is it in a heavy wood yeah yeah yeah it's heavy maple still have your nope oh is it but the boards back then with 3/4 of an inch thick because that's what you could buy is 3/4 you know and so use is actually four quarter just so you know if you go to the lumber store you buy some four quarter wood four quarter smooth is 3/4 of an inch thick why why because they sell lumber based on the yield from the tree before it got plane down smooth huh so as always says like a 2x4 is not 2 inches by 4 inches it's one and a half by three and a half because they planed a quarter inch off each side are you serious yeah they've been fooling me all these hold all this time I thought a 2x4 was a 2x4 yeah huh I have to write somebody about that I don't know we might win that one yes you know you hear about some of those funny sounds easier to say than one and a half by so now you're making your own board in wood shop yeah so I made my own board of wood shop in junior high oh and you know skate parks came around so I got my first pro level board at the skate park you know with half-tracks and a oak load and earth ski and O'Jays Wow juices huh thank you just I'm not sure with the model okay but OJ's yeah well see them come back in last couple years right oh yeah so now you know I'm in a big city there's concrete skate parks you know right it was only ten mile bike ride you get to the skate parks I was easy and you said the other kids were building their own boards too so back then everybody was common everybody would build an oak board hmm and school Arash whenever both views very commonly in that era but the minute skateboards became laminated now it was an unobtainable thing because you couldn't go buy maple veneer Oh go do it Yeah right so it became so what was was a basic woodshop thing for five years just instantly disappeared you're talking about a straight piece of wood right and then you own your drill you're screwing on a test like a skid plate essentially yeah right yeah skittle comment back then yeah like a little wedge on the top huh and then sometimes you would use bolts sometimes the board to be just screwed in dowels use wooden dowels maybe if it broke down the middle and you want to put it back together that's a good way to solve that public okay okay now you like having some cost grain and your solid wood boards see right I know a thing or two so what happens then so now you got to go buy your boards right the laminate comes out yeah my words are laminated okay and that comes out and continues to progress along you know we get another skatepark in town that's on my side of town so now it's only a five mile rides the skate park I hope was better and that was like a second generation skate park so it had you know not pure birds or not full verb but not just sort of surf style Florida had a very surf style skate park thing that'd be a big hill and he'd climb up the hill and you just ride down around and climb back up the hill and ride down it around oh yeah that's the way they were well the pro-bowl does that to an extent but it does it differently because you have a hill to go down obviously but you come back the same spot huh so my first my first product was rails that was your first so rails are being made out of Wood or urethane never called grab rails so when you had any we're ready for sliding right that when you had a deep flex grab rail okay any rock-and-roll to grip the lip so there was this really smart guy on one day I went to the store and his nickname was already ollie okay and McTwist it was still gonna be another five years before he was a local at my Park so I know and and Alan goes up rails slid that'd be really cool and he just had an interview in the magazine it's like I don't like it when I rock and roll it grabs a lip I want to slip not grip then I laminated some rails that were wood fiberglass and Formica couldn't break them but it took so much work to make them and then I basically quickly went to UHMW plastic I went to the plastic place uh-huh and I said hey what do you got super tough and durable I don't want to get sharp you know and they taught me about UHMW and and ultra high molecular weight polyethylene okay and that's a plastic sort of like cutting board plastic oh yeah is that really tough durable stuff right because of the particle density is really really high oh and but it machines with woodworking tools okay really friendly to work with you know sawed wood cut it up in strips put a battle on them rout them drill them oh they would give you a big slab of it yeah they're just give me slabs so it's like I kept on buying all the scraps up you know and and then pretty soon after a year and a half of that I bottle the scraps up and then when I went to buy a real sheet they were like oh well that prize this this is the price of that I'm like well that doesn't work it was expensive and I reached out to a plastics company of Miami going hey do you guys sell scrap UHMW like hey kid you're never gonna find enough there's this guy that makes extrusions I'm like what's that it's like I sound like play-doh bump or number nine it just extrudes the plastic out in the shape you want it I'm like I don't have to cut the shape I just got cut it off and drill the holes you got to make like a little template you got to make a die a dynamo so basically I meet this plastics guy I'm 16 now so I'm already selling rails I'm already selling rails to all the skate parks in Florida okay and not really going out of Florida like 7870 9 but by 80 I found this plastics guy designed to die made it and now the rails came made and I just had to put him in bags with screws and you have you ever you already calling these Smith sticks right well that that goes back to 78 yeah let's yeah help me please so I don't it's an important story but that's because the guy that made the wooden rails at the local skate park in Clearwater across the bay his name was Steve Fisher okay he was in a band and he was drummer sure and he worked in a cabinet shop he's a couple years older than me so he take the scrap Baltic birch and he'd make wooden rails and they were called fish sticks okay so I'm at the competing skate park across the bay and I make rails and the local just automatically called them Schmidt sticks Schmidt's is not even a choice but you're already surpassing him by making them plastic he's still over there Fisher sticks still making him with wood yeah well he quickly wasn't anybody you stole I mean he was a pro skater in the magazine wrote for Krypton explore at skater okay and he so the band he was in the lead singer lived in Tampa my side of the band one day at the skate park he his name was Mike Knapp and Mike Knapp gives me a logo here's your logo like a logo what do I need a logo for because your business I'm in a marketing class at USF and and I'm in art department you need a logo so I made you this logo you were just slipping him into bags and just no logos no yeah well the part at point then so at at the the start it wasn't even really that it was just sell him loose you know oh gosh man but then when the skatepark started to sell him now was like put him in a bag or maybe it makes a little bit more right and and then one of the other local skaters older skater that was he was actually from Hollywood Florida where girlfriend lived and his name is Craig Snyder he's guy made this you ever seen that alley book the orange book that's like this thick amazing history scheme there yeah it's a good one huh okay history manual 900 some pages jeez Wow but he lived in my town for a year and went to the same College and he's like hey we're going to surf Expo and to do business you got to go to the trade show so the older skaters were my the commute they were drafting me along right you're you're conditioned by your environment you know they're like here's a name here's a logo we've got to go to show so I went to the show there's 16 yeah so I went to the show with him and McGill and Yale Penn and two other people and which heard of Expo for the first time and I met Tom Sims and stacy peralta Wow no this is like ripping when your plastic rails they they thought it was weird yeah apparently and then it was like but then quickly it's like you know McGill had already taken some to California okay and they were like oh no you're not gonna ride those we're gonna make our own oh yeah and the gills clear that now like you were making the plastic rails before redbones well you know wow I mean a couple years ago back huh early 2000s actually was when the when we had the respawn ayala challenge at the trade show McGill Beantown I fear I got some of your old rails and it brings them to me and they're the wood and fiberglass and Formica once and I'm like oh my gosh and then when I met back up a Craig Snyder a couple years later I got to you by any chance happening my old rails it's like yeah and I got the the plastic with the original plastic ones before the extrusion well I still have them I only have half a set because I made this display case with one of every rail oh that went to the Smithsonian Wow archives and I have the sister case if the other half of each rail in my office come to Costa Mesa I'll show you a little history of rails do you trip out on just I mean you've built this whole career I mean literally started with rails and out of necessity to because all he wanted to slide not he wanted to glide not what was it I just don't want to catch right you know and you got to realize that back then there was no concave in a skateboard fly so the ability to get that board to slide was really hard a lot of friction a lot of friction right exactly so as a rail came along it reduced the surface tension okay and you had a more lubricity riyal you know so that helped that and then his concave came along uh-huh then you know rails were sort of a crutch till eventually they went away because basically there was enough concave that you could rail slide on that and you didn't have the surface tension of a flat board like you had in 78 right and now they're back again everybody loves the rails are cool and Kirby and Roger all day right there is there like a look how long do they usually last is that like a thing the rails that I always made because of the high quality plastic but the last four or five boards okay no problem you know where most of the plastics at rails are made if like the injection molded you can't get the density of that so they almost dark tub you do a big rail slide they almost start to melt right and they fray off and then you get that hard edge right mmm you know where the UHMW will never get that hard so UHMW is the hardest no that's not hard oh it's not tough it's tough and it's [ __ ] so even in the schmidt six era i made them with put silicone in them and we call him silly sticks silly they would put silicone beads in with the plastic would that help it slide to help us lie better yeah what would you tell now yeah isn't happening right now what does it mean them now somebody's got a market it well the rails that I make for welcome the candy bars are made same factory that made my rails back in 1980 oh wow it seems to the uhm uhm WL I want my knees and rails magnesium what do you think about this you're talking about magnesium rails what do you think I don't know you're gonna light him on fire I don't I don't I don't get your your idealism here what is your beef trucks magnesium a willingness to try is the start of anything yeah okay if you're willing to try then try it don't people talk all the time I know do you help him to talk about it well you know the time you're gonna do it gonna make something happen we help him pour the liquid the hot Magnum concern yeah he doesn't have a laugh you you think that because of the truck see right right yeah they need a truck crane amazing I just imagine like sliding on it boy feels good yeah I don't I don't know if that's the case I mean if you could make the rail then around yeah you know yeah and it's little surface touching as possible mMmmm no I mean it depends on where you're at right and because your body weight and your center of gravity in a rail slide situation is a lot more tea tree than a grinding situation yeah watch out for that crack I got this really thin rail that slips right in the crack Roger might be done he's used to have thin rail sliding a new crack but no but it's interesting I mean literally rails I want to try these silly sticks silicone yeah injected and that the end of Schmidt six I figured out how to make a fastener to make the rail where you didn't have any schools because with the school hole you we're out on the hole cuz path of least resistance energy goes that right and you would also almost get stuck to have to slide there because you slide into that groove right and I developed these ones at this T slot that had I mean you look you could look through the tea and you slide it on and fasten it but people were so confused and flustered by it yet they love sex bolts and I'm like sending premature now pretty much the same thing you know but the problem was that board thicknesses were different so the screws were temperamental like you would build this into the board or you would have would be a track I don't understand came with a set of instructions in a template you put the template on there you drill holes to the board you then take this screw and put the fastener on it you line them up and I start putting them on like trucks essentially through the top of the board no yeah plastic I slide over it and then you tighten the screw to suck it in so you go over the head part think of the screw on the bottom of the board pitch like a tea you had you drilled you would you would screw this tea into the board and then you would screw the fasteners into the board and then you'd slide the rail onto it so visual thing yep how that kind of like grips around the wheel yep same thing and would it lock into place well you'd be I tighten the screw to tighten the screw top yeah but it's like an example of a Smith sticks I made lots of products that were amazing products that either your product is only good if somebody copies it mmm if nobody copies it it goes away because if it wasn't good enough to copy it wasn't a good idea well could you like Saunders Omer yeah I would hope I got one I'll never bother with one again iam work but if once you commercially release it it's too late like you know the patent thing has to be all pre-planned in ahead of time and yeah that kind of thing so the best the fantasy of a patent is gonna make you a millionaire is pretty rare because even if you get a patent on a great product now you got to make business work finance work manufacturing distribution sales and that doesn't guarantee you that somebody else isn't still gonna rip you off right then you got a go lawyer lawyers and right it's a whole thing right yeah so so everybody ripped off your rails yeah just to normal which is good I mean you know no no so exactly that mystics were rails everybody knew it and it was it was the the basis of that right you know did other people get to market in some places yes you know were they being sold around the world when I was 16 yeah crazy you know I had colors and you know it's like I had the path ahead of it and you know so in Florida all the guys would come stay at my house and pack rails all night it was peace ray of a nickel a pack so Santa moved on hanging people they would come stay at my house and pack rails six nine years old you're paying and drag down Gant from Gainesville and pack rails all night skate the ramp all weekend it was great Wow and then when the skating skateboards come into the picture so I always sort of made my own boards and I would laminate them and my first press wasn't the heaviest thing in the house that rolls what's the heaviest thing around your house the rolls fridge a car yeah car yeah mom's car mom's car oh that was that's your press so I developed a mold as crude as it was with fiberglass and wood I worked at the boat we still talk we talk about concave now are we talking what was doing so so concave existed already gotcha but it was very triangulated meaning that it was deep in the front shallow in the back that whole spoon nose era happened after that where I was going more about organic curves and flow and structure hmm you know but I worked at the boat company I had access to these materials and knowledge and then so I would glue step up parked my mom's car on it but then when she had to go to work in the morning and the glue wasn't dry because it was cold that night then I would lose my stuff all right you know so that happened enough times where I was like how am I going to do this well temperature doesn't change in the bedroom as much as it does in the driveway so you pull the car in the in the dryer on the bed is build a build a press in the bedroom and literally literally built a frame out of two by sixes okay and a hydraulic car jack in their 20-ton car jack and you'd hear it go creak creak creak creak as you crank it up you know Hank it was like I guess that's enough pressure and this is you talk about two separate things so you're squeezing them together so there's a mold right and you know laid up with glue in the wood and that and then a hydraulic car jack to squeeze because you can't use clamps there's not enough precious not enough pressure right you can't put like 40 clamps around such as how to work well you couldn't yeah you just can't get the pressure I mean okay maybe make one I don't know you know so you built this hydraulic press listen who's a hydraulic car jack okay I go by one right now down the corner for 20 bucks okay I have an example press in my workshop and I I use it rarely but I built it for like a bill to shred you show years ago and I i got scrapped two-by-sixes from skate camp and i brought it home and built it on scrap wood you know it just mimics what I did so ray Roger can make a board press right here in his bedroom I if you wanted to right now it could be part of this table Eva yeah just either learn and control the moisture container next thing you know he's gonna be pouring magnesium I made my skateboards of epoxy glue and moisture content it's lawdness is the veneer wasn't too wet wasn't as much of an issue nowadays I don't use epoxy I use poly vinyl because epoxy has its cost and its handling challenges for production and with it you gotta be quick with it you have to basically use heat to kick it off and if you don't heat it up and kick it off then it's gonna take forever right well can't get any production done making this up as you go along are you looking at what other people are doing the other skateboard manufacturer there was no Google okay hello pages oh yeah because I worked at a boat company so I went to a vocational high school and you spend half a day in traditional class and now today for me was woodchoppers cabinetmaking class so I was trained as a cabinet maker and normally in high school the last six months you go work a job well for me it was the last year and a half because the teachers like I can't teach you anything else here I'm gonna go put you in this job building sell boats go into the real world and years later after I started crate escape when you didn't interview with miss like I knew what's the right job for you you know I trained you how to make a cabinet the square on all corners and now we're gonna go ask you they'll put in a boat there might be one or two square corners and I love the organic curves and the flow and the challenge of fitting that together right you know so to me it was really cool but it was also like you know I'm you know making good money I mean you know five fifteen an hour that's a heavy rate back then a young kid you know oh and it's like you know I've worked myself up in the company and had the the skills and ability and then I I worked in a prototype department I would build like the plug for a mold so I learned a lot about mole like if you had like in a boat you might have like a fiberglass shower and the pedestal for the toilet and the sink it's all one surface right right and you build a wooden plug for that you got to put draft on it his last same holes and then they fiberglass that I didn't really do that oh you didn't do that okay you know oh you were the woodworker yeah I was the one who built the patterns you know so I learned a lot about pattern making built molds to laminate trim that was curved that went around bulkheads and stuff like that and then see I've been there I've been there like probably three years oh that's and then I so I'm now graduated from high school it's not my full-time job you know still selling rails my friends are packing them all weekend long credible yeah how much were you selling them for Becker cetera remember no if you look like an old magazine you can see what they sold and then you can sort of figure it backwards understand oh like we're making good money off those things back thinner I still had a job and everything but I lived at Mom's house yeah and I might paid rent to mom you know like that kind of mode yeah that's unfortunate bedroom do whatever but you eventually move to California well well so also in the boat thing basically I was doing that and then I that pasta was gonna have a contest at ray Underhill's ramp in Tennessee and Railroad for Schmidt six I was like oh I'm gonna go to the contest and I said hey I'm a given month notice I won't have a long weekend coming up luck you can have time off it's our busy season and I'm like I guess this is your 30 day notice 30 days yeah two weeks see anyways but I still kept the commitment to leave so now I had time you know obviously was was strong enough to do that right you know I could still go collect cans in the morning are you talking about I built my business on aluminum cans incredible guys well if you were at the bar at 5:30 in the morning not 6 because 6 of bums are awake at 5:30 in the morning and I think you cash out you would you would literally leave the bar go paddle up the street to Reynolds aluminum they opened up like a thirty or seven o'clock yeah dump your haul dump your haul get your cash you know then go to the screen print shop I worked a screen printing shop for any t-shirts before adult boats oh my god that whole process wait a minute you said that the dude the thing in Tennessee got canceled but somebody you said who was gonna skate there that he skated for Schmidt sticks well ray-ray underhell Blowfish mystic and we're talking we're still talking about Smith sticks rails yeah no boards yet railroad for the boards of the early side of it but the boards weren't to the board of the boards coming in to say yeah the boards were coming and play now I I had um I bought some blanks from Madrid in California and I caught him out and painted him in in Florida well we're talking about the right blend I didn't like the concave of it okay then I had Taylor and Dyckman make me fifty boards finished painted done and I got and I didn't like them and that's part of just leaving the boat company going like I'm gonna solve this problem it's you know did you like about him they were very just inorganic you know they were just sharp lines in the concave they were triangular tails were flat noses weren't upturned hmm so the first boards that I made already had an upturned nose now it was tiny right it was that direction it already had a flip on the end of the tail it already had dog ears in the corner of the tail that's a Madrid and the other companies kicked up in the front so you've got these shapes did you have a vision of what you wanted in the future well it's what I wanted but you gotta realize that you're so conditioned by your environment right right so realize that like I always skateboard it I've always enjoyed it but I've never been a really good skateboarder I've just been a guy having fun right you know I mean it's really hard when you see people like McGill and Gil fen and Rodney that live in your region pretty clear that you're not good and luckily with a throw you a bone and say hey all right sure I can make that happen yeah it's like you know so you know the first half of the 80s was a lot of that for me you know it's like I used to build ramps so skate parks closed and now it became very like you know hmm very closed off you know but but California's will come out once a year to go the Kona Nationals at Kona skatepark and that was super cool so there was that interaction happening every year you know interest and then in 80 summer of 83 they all came with us to Tampa or took to st. Peter we had a ramp at John Gregg Lee's house and we had a pro contest on a Wednesday and this guy mr. Hawk got the $50 first price in relation to Tony Hawk yeah but it literally like you know make it happen right you know and then later that year for New Year's everybody came back and Fausto helped me run a contest was fast have been doing these backyard ramp contests in places so then his his credibility to get everybody like everybody came from Kona but that's because someone already flew him to Florida yeah like they're already in Florida right you know and the McGill live down our way anyways so it's like home you just piggyback off that contest very much we just piggyback you know but but then we had a New Year jam and literally everybody on that coast of the US you know can do it you know and we communicate through zine you know we had a zine called just for fun so the Tampa thing you're you're making boards now right so then by that so by that contest by the in between the sword of the summer one uh-huh and the the big one Monni twittg and asked to ride fish mystics so now I have three models out and mining get second place in the contest and on the cover of Thrasher with his new model you know and it was like you know people were taking my boards and cutting them down cutting them out because of the molds were so much better are you producing these guys's boards by yourself I mean you seem to give a little operation how are you supplying a little operation fenders employment in the bedroom still it was pret well their press in the bedroom and then I moved out to the backyard okay and then it moved down the street so Chuck Hulse was my first employee that wasn't a family member or a contract rail Packer five six right yeah and and he lived there with me he moved from Daytona okay and there was a trundle bed and he would sleep in the trundle bed they would pull out from underneath my bed and the press was at the foot of the bed and then I would have to get up at 3 in the morning to press boards because the epoxy had like a six hour care cycle and it meant you got a couple more boards each day yeah you know he never he wasn't having that you know he was just getting back from the nightclub or something oh yeah and then how are you selling about I mean I started have I was already selling rails right just local so I was selling rails no it's on Rails around the world three years prior how are you doing this I mean when you're selling rails around the world and you're 1617 yeah are you talking to all these shops are you talking to distribute distribute distributors primarily okay it was shop sometimes - so you already had relationships with the distributors so you're like hey I'm making boards now this is here's I already had relationships and I was known for progressive products right so it's like I was just making progressive products you know so it's like it wasn't really Mystics was that you know like if you go visit the skate lab or you know Jack's Moreau Bay Museum and stuff it's hard to go find Schmidt six in those places not because it wasn't a big brand in the 80s but because of the course Gators just skated him a death right because they were so much better than everything else you know so so the mold that I made in 83 I was sort of using that mold probably into 86 87 and so I had a little industrial unit down the street so Chuck worked full-time doing that mm-hmm got more death pressing them I would pretty much just paint and print and and Chuck Holtz would design the shapes you know I never really designed the shapes rush mystics as much as people see really me doing that now I didn't do it in this mystics days you would just make the make the mold I would make the process you would make the process a process how do you pull this off here's how you do this here's how you do this how you do that you realize I was working a boat factory where the boats were 25 feet to 40 feet long right now you're not a couple I'm a roll out the building every day right you know and and you know so assembly line style right yeah so it's like I had that experience of understanding what that was and had my vision of what that needed to be and then other people like Bruce Whiteside would work for me or Michael Daley other skaters the region did you know that your boy at the time did you know your boards were superior oh yeah okay were you still using the carjack at this time yeah we're still car jack I never had a hydraulic press till I moved to California wow that's crazy so will you press how many boards did you press his time so originally it was a wooden frame and then I went back to school and I bought some used I beam I was no longer a student and I got the metal working class to make a project out of welding me a press save opening a press that hold two molds in it I thought the pesos materials but low-cost right yeah obtainable sure you know that's the challenge right because there wasn't a bunch of money yeah so you get pressed to it each time or two in each mold at a time but the press had two molds and then sometimes they were inserts and you could get eight and then that room when I had two two units next to each other had a heater in it to warm it up to yeah you know keep the epoxy kicking and moving in the cycle Jenna fan or would you get high off the epoxy I would say the screen printing is more of that okay then the Epoque so you and your screen printing the boards I put all the boards yeah who was making shapes chocolately on the shape okay he was good at that I was like cool take care of I got enough to do Wow how many nowadays how many are in a power are in a mold depends on the design could be three four or five how many molds do you have we will have eighty press cavities eighteen press cavities and you're talking two to three board two to three boards in those three to five boards three to five times eighty right if you even ran a late you can't fill them at an hour so the boards only are in the press for an hour and in that hour the water evaporates into the air and into the wood and the glue gets held now has to sit and cure for a week and stabilized because it has to get all that moisture out of it you know a big operation sweat oh yeah and how do you combat warping it's process control yeah but you can't you can process control that skate shop in Calgary sure sure sure hi right and they put the board right there underneath the heater vent Sun blowing on it I just think of the hot truck if anything that puts air heat movement past your board mm-hmm has a chance to create warpage it's like having a kitchen door was like your doors perfect and then it starts to get stuck right and then three months later it's good again yeah as the humidity went up in the air in the wood but metal wasa metal to metal expands contracts with temperature but not nearly as much not nearly as much but that's part of that liveliness nanotubes nanotubes radness other nanotubes getting bigger yeah a little bit not much Florida came to the point where like summer of 84 chuckles monning older Steve hilt and I drove to California and and I came out here like in 80 and 82 so guys would come to CONUS like in 82 I stayed with like Lance and Spidey and Nash though and hung around the Whittier skate park when it was closing oh whoa sick and and then we came out summer of 84 and then it was like you know now it's like I'm full in the board business right and didn't you move to California like a year later so yeah so then beginning of 85 I moved to California at the end and end of 85 or 84 Brad Dorfman and I had been talking and he already been sawing my rails for five years right so we had a business relationship with traded money well it's an important thing a business [Laughter] and and then when I tell pasta what is it it's like [ __ ] that why don't you come here you know and it's like cheesy just bought that wheel company Factory knows how to make trucks that might be pretty rad right mm-hmm and then I thought about it and we went over some economics and he was like well what do you owe this and I sort of laid it all out he's like well [ __ ] him you know and then I thought about good you know I've been taking pictures for his magazine writing articles going to events for four years and I've never gotten a buck out of guy right I don't know if I wanted to do business that way no no huh and so I didn't move to bear yeah my Costa Mesa with vision my vision yeah so did vision kind of recruit you or how did that even ride out how did that I've been doing business with him already for five years and they're like hey come out he had already been silence Mystics board so it was clear that the demand I could not make enough product the way I was doing yet with the resources I got in the catcher and know in the little industrial you okay right now a thousand square foot of space or whatever it was it's nothing and our boards right so I joined up a vision I moved out here no real contracts no real like agreement just you know excited put everything in u-haul going doing you know and so chuckles John Gregory and I all moved out here together at the same time so you're not only making boards revision you're making boards for your crew Schmidt sticks as well the first seven months I sort of had like a thousand square foot unit right by vision just a mimic of what I'd done in Florida an exact mimic of it okay and and business is getting stronger it's clearly skateboarding is getting hot right after 84 that was feeling that you know it's getting hot and and then one day Brad blocks me into this building down the street because here's your new shop and it's like a 14,000 square foot building Wow I'm like whoa like I'm 21 like how am I gonna pull this off and you know and he had the resources you know and so we went to some auctions bought some equipment you know got a real glue spreader learned about polyvinyl blues didn't like um but that's because they weren't catalyzed well at that time back then it was like if you left your skateboard outside under in the front yard overnight the sprinkler went off at beadle and the great part right so in in California I couldn't even find epoxy that I liked compared to Florida for some reason regional I don't know and and polyvinyl was the way everybody did it but I didn't like their polyvinyl and Brad bought a lot of stuff from Taylor Dyckman I got to go down there and see that factory and like oh okay down there and they came through my little wood shop and they said well that's all cute yeah yeah I can't really do that in production you know like they refuse to make round rails you know they they weren't gonna make the concave any better like he can't really do that in production that's child's play you know okay and you know if anything they just sealed the deal that because I was I was doing kitten riding it right like yeah my friends were riding it and then within the vision family there was all the vision riders and all the Simms riders right so it's like God was always around yeah Gon's is influence right you had your your your collection of your environment right whoever you have access to you know and you don't even know what you pick up from people it's like this us most is just happening you know it's like you just absorbed totally when you were making the boards back home in Florida like compared to when you move it a new place how many boards are you selling a month you think 100 a week 100 a week maybe good that's it's a lot of work though huh right yeah you're hustling and so when you move into a new place what does that go - you think 14,000 well it took me it took a lot of time to figure out how to scale it up well the screen print shop had to go there too so when I joined up a vision he was like in a 6,000 square feet of shop mm-hmm for warehouse and marketing and t-shirt printing and everything right and I was like employee number 30 you know and when when I walked away from it well talk about one later but sure it was then a quarter million square feet of facilities and thousand employees and I wasn't allowed through the front door and like that type of deal Wow but anyways you know he gave me the ability to make this shop and you know gave me people to help support doing things you know like I didn't have to deal with learning about Southern California Edison and what it took to get the right power Ambridge somebody was wrong all I had to do worried about the machine and someone made sure the power came into the building around the building to the machine yeah yeah so you he gave you full control yeah he gave me control to do what I needed to do get the equipment you need it and he already screen printed boards and had a good job of that so it's like it was that scaled up with it at the same time so he's already making boards vision boards right tailor deck must making them he's screen printing and his his idea was to just have you do it well eventually but it took it took the time for the wood shop to ramp up how long did that take you say well because skateboarding is growing at the same time it's like I don't know and then the reality is I only had that job for two years oh just two years and then I quit the job because he wouldn't be serious abouts mystics mystics goes from being nothing now to the brand is huge because of the economics of manufacturing because of my product designs because all the pretty much most of the vision and Sims riders Roach Mystics boards with vision and Sims graphics right and their shapes you know because it was like I was super your product right you know and that was the case all the way through you know the 80s was a you know my stuff was what was being mimicked right you know but by time we get to set 87-88 and if the s4 concave and now the nose is as steep as the tail still not as long as the tail right so five inches of mold was big enough to do it just we weren't thinking that way I don't if anything for me I just wanted to do a fakie hang-up on a vert ramp without hanging up tails to her you know not even knowing what what what the foundation was gonna be late for skateboard going forward by having a nose like that you know yeah like I can remember meeting Chris Miller at Upland one day was like probably the last year of Upland and you know we've been talking about himself and I found a prototype for it and he looked at it he's a casus weird and then he rode he's like oh my gosh and the reality is that Watson made the gns boards and they were this is now 87 and they're still making the same press that they were making in 79 in 80 so it's like there's no progression at all these come these are just pumping out boards right to meet the demand well the magnet actors aren't skaters right you know right even general now the people that actually manufacture skateboards they're not skaters yeah other than little DIY things and you know there's little pockets of that happening but in general their factories and its business people doing business and right now they're not trying to progress it you know that's a pain in the ass yeah hmm they're just trying to follow sure I have no desire to progress right so where are we now so I'm in California but you said you only worked for them for two years I work I worked in house for two years running the wood shop like 40 hours a week you know okay and then they hired you know an administrator to do administrative stuff and then I was mad like why's he get paid three times when I get paid you know under they gave me they gave me a little better pay you know but still it was like but then on Schmidt's tics he was like oh I'm just gonna treat you like a pro skater and I'm like well I never sold you the trademark I didn't you know and I and I kept the rail business to myself at that time so I'm still got these relationships and I'm doing that and then basically we ended up with a nice thick contract you know spent hundred thousand dollars with lawyers and worked it all out right and then he's and then you know I no longer had that wood shop I wasn't allowed in the front door I'm not an employee anymore so you literally because I remember Andy Howell was on the show and he was saying that when New Deal started you had already had like a secret woodshop going yeah I'm sorry I had like a side so when I quit off when I quit the job yeah I started ps6 and and used that as my development arm to build my manufacturing stuff and I had to have a business entity I they owned your name it was a license right okay and so it was a license so the issue is the problem with the license was that when you can't make enough skateboards anyways and he got Gon's and Gator who didn't make a board for the one you pay a license fee to or the one that that you don't pay a license sure thanks to the guy who built you the factory that made this possible yeah so if you look at back in the in the mid-80s all the skateboards that vision and Sims made that had square edges Taylor and ikema made those hmm and I refuse to make square edges so all the boards that I made had round and rounded edges and it wasn't until until probably 89 I think Taylor Dyke moe yeah but basically Jeff Phillips quit Sims mm-hmm and he said I'll ride for life's a beach if you make this and they came from your mouth off my mold you know knocked off the the process the rail edged round edges and then you know now it was happening you know and they did it really quick and the reality is that people didn't manufacture stuff so like back in the 80s NHS and Powell screamed their own stuff that was very common most skateboard brands actually pre manufactured the boards now now NHS and pal both would cut out their skateboards yeah but they didn't press him they were pressed back then the Powell's were pressed by a bow and arrow company and called art and archery in Michigan and then Anna chess boards were pressed in Wisconsin by warble products they made window arches for like Anderson windows and Stephanie I call them Worple products were full because we knew hot press the skateboard it comes out of the mold yeah it'll warp old yeah his little warping so they couldn't they couldn't react because the tooling to make a mold high frequency for that kind of manufacturing process was very expensive it took time and it's in someone else's factory that doesn't have a desire to change its that manufacturing person thing like they don't want to change it they want to spit it out and get the money exactly that kind of viewpoint you know but pretty much you know bye-bye 89 if you're not doing what I'm doing you're not selling the skateboard anymore let's say end of 89 by 90 absolutely by 90 if you weren't doing what I had been doing for a couple years you couldn't even sell a skateboard and 99 this is when the New Deal came into the picture right yeah 1990 1990 so you would even in the Smith 6r there's still a whole bunch of other stuff going on what do you mean like what well just stop skateboarding right I know like I used to you know build ramps I built lots of ramps in Florida so everybody to know I was a ramp builder right came to California and like Transworld flew me to Canada to build a ramp for a contest and I would go to contests and fix ramps so we could have the contest because ramp building wasn't very good then you're a busy dude yeah and in Florida friend of mine Tim Payne Jim Payne state parks yep so he he helped me build a couple ramps and when I got out to California and people like like all that building and I would set up gigs and he would go build them and sometimes I would get there I went to Alabama and I'm supposed to help finish the ramp and it's done and it's like he worked in pain through the night 18 hours straight and got the wrap built right and you're like what am i doing Tim was a house builder so Tim was 2 or 3 years old with me so he was trained to frame houses right I was trained to make cabinets okay so me building a ramp I was trying to make it like a cabinet I got a really good result people come all the way from California to come all over the East Coast to ride the ramps I built I got a great was a sure but Tim had the bang it out thing and then when I moved to California I remember there was some kind of like demo at a waterpark in Atlanta and they flew me out and like I was McGill Fisk a Bertoni I don't remember Lance Monte and so I always get money tied into the demos he was always a great showman and built a ramp on the edge of a pool you know and and Tim was in town because his dad lived there mm-hmm and he came to help give me that one and then basically I would just set up the jobs and then pretty soon I'm like they don't need me to set it up they know Tim now it was like when he built the chin ramp and he comes to my factory I'm like Jim I heard about this I was I couldn't time sorry like he felt so couldn't talk about you couldn't talk about it you know and then the worst thing to me was I look at his board it's like what are those wheels oh these are new cross bones and I'm like I designed a wheel like that last year and the manufacturer wouldn't make it and it was Rogers urethane which was who made pal wills whoa so he wouldn't make it because he was already making it for pal or maybe I development right he you know we're like the vision blur I designed that will and but I was trying to get the lip dinner and yeah he did that style with or do you funny time to develop and rails and boards and presses used to build like pad printing wheels look like figuring out how to pad print wheels and how does that it's a little competent so we're the graphic goes on a wheel oh just stamp it alright it's like a boob yeah yeah but you got to make the boot to get it right how are you my boobs what's the silicon-silicon mix it up you know that so I I figured out how to print a vision blur by going to the thrift store and buying a bunch of glass vases that look like the right size porn and silicone and all of them like oh this one works pretty good I got a wheel company and go hey can you build a master for this in a mold and they're like okay guy you know like I just figure it out yeah the tenacity to figure something out right you do so much I mean it's crazy man away takes so much to get things done that's it right you know a true professor true there is also in that era 80s I used to help run the NSA and run contests okay you know so it's like I knew all the big five right and like like the reality is I would be an NSA meeting with the big five which was vision pal NHS lost oh right and tracker right and all the brands tied in there we'd be in a meeting they're like hey Paul you gotta go and then afterwards after the meeting all the other big five not Dorfman but the rest of my hey sorry you had to leave the meeting Paul we're totally cool if he'd be in here but Brad didn't want it cuz I was his employee right and he or my license or you know when I wasn't as an employee anymore he didn't have that but but now when the contract was done now he had that right so now you know he still had this control in our relationship you know and I'm I'm they're part of those meetings because I was the only one that was gonna go ride the ramp with their riders I was the only one that had a generational tied to it I never skated with any of those I'm not saying they didn't kick down the street in their sixties or seventies you still talk to him do you are you in touch with them at times I mean who ever you know okay this is weird that's just shows you don't have the same visibility to find to see people anymore that's true right it's really interesting used to bell to cease oh I'll see him and you know see him every six months I think oh yes sorry now you don't know him yeah stop by bazaine get are you busy they're busy whatever you know you know seems like there was some you know bad blood there maybe yeah well no gave me a lot of opportunity so realize that that right but the opportunity but I gave him a lot of opportunity but the problem he had was he's got this big machine business is hard that's true a business is hard once you're established you got to pay for the forklift and the employees and all this stuff right right it's not easy you know so it's like he grew to this huge gigantic thing that the shipping skateboards faster than the other brands meant that he got market share there right uh-huh and then when they caught up with that he just went in division clothes he went into vision shoes winning two sim snowboards and he was like the first market leader in those three categories right so boards you know before really right okay so boards clothes shoes snowboards yeah that wasn't a new category after that and now he had to compete and then the business went down on top of that and then he was dealing with the trouble of you know dealing with that right it's not easy and I've been through those cycles and they're no for hunt you know the tenacity to survive you know so if anything with Dorfman I applauded me still there he's still in business at the time I could imagine though it's you're just you'd be like how what it's kind do you know but yeah was like yeah basically the reality is you know someone that's a different generation yeah you know and I remember when I met him it's like all these old ones like he was in his early thirties I'm only 56 now I'm not even old yet would you get a patent on airframe construction element marketed as helium all right yeah what's that the construction where the board's thicker than a regular board hollow in the middle has air cavities that dissipate energy boards don't lose pop how the hell you think of that I don't remember the helium board actually sounds familiar so they were six ply and two of the plies had a groove in them and then by the way moisture and expansion and contraction happens a thin layer of wood would warp okay in that first half hour once the glue got put it put the press and then get stuck in a warp situation which is a pre-tensioned situation you're purposely warping it put it in tension okay and then when energy comes imagine that every time you land a trick it's like this energy like a spring but there's energies radiating through the board imagine you saw a Rick a rock and water yeah right and the waves are gonna move away from it and the things are gonna change it might be branches in the water or twigs wind things happen right so when you land a trick and you do that and that energy radiates through your board even when you land trucks you know what you broke a couple nanotubes every trick landed some nanotubes every trick landed some nanotubes probably got compromised and that's why the boards start getting a little soft why they start to get a little soft but the problem is if you make a board so rigid you know then it's like the energy transfer isn't right the resonance isn't right you know it's like the whole thing you tap a board on the ground and there's something tells you it's right that's good where it's not right yeah and that's just the tubes you broke enough tubes wait so what about the helium though that's marketing that's what was a pen worth there there is like a point to zero to four percent helium in the air right now was it marketing gas with this what's a patent worth it that could you said never again you never write you would it the energy and do it and then the problem is is I made this construction hmm I tested it I developed it had samples out to retailers around the country and then I went to all my customers that said I got a new construction here it's all developed out and they're like no thank you not interested it's not that imply it's not what our skaters don't anything different it's not what they're used to six months later element says hey uh you still got the healing thing of we could do it in a under our trade name not airframe our trade name helium okay not your trade name airframe right because I'd be like don't tell us what to do you know and and that was across the brands as a whole that I worked with right very prestigious brands yeah yeah and um it said don't tell us what to do things I mean you know hmm and that sort of candid and then because element did it nobody else wanted to do it because element did it right you know and that's the whole thing and no other company was ever gonna manufacture it because it was patent locked but also why would we spend two bucks more making a board right and selling it for four bucks more now a bunch of people in issue we can't sell boards for anyone money I'm like you know whether it was helium or whether it was like fiber light or pop drops 4 pop or and I like you know I'd be talking to someone I'm like you know I've only built a quarter million of those in the last three years they look at me like oh no you can't sell quarter million board smart I built a quarter million dime in last three years I wouldn't believe me oh yeah right all with carjacks ended a yeah that died out the helium yeah so the patent still there and I've done a little bit of stuff in the recent years mm-hmm you know possibly now with New Deal I'll do something with it I think I'm the noodle project I'm gonna try to use it as a development lab mm-hmm because in a sense I mean I've a product doesn't mean anything that somebody doesn't market it sure convincing them how to market it and what to do is a big problem yeah but if anybody says to me hey we got an idea for marketing program and here's what is it okay I'll make you a board match that mmm writing they'll be like and then they're like well it works you know like go back in the in the heyday of giant in the late 90s early 2000s and many black label boards are tough we might gather tougher than one board suppose the same Factory well the cross plans are closer together and there's more longitudinal fibre on the outside but you're more likely to get stress cracks a black label skater ain't [ __ ] caring about stress class a little flippy Tech kid he's worried about stress right now the black label board was 10,000 sticker I mean that is like three human hairs but that's a lot of it comes to the structure of a board especially when you orientate it in the right place so I've always built product where people like they buy this product over and over because it works mm-hmm and they don't necessarily know why you know I know why ya know right it's you know I can make anything that I've made in the past right you know over and over again seems to me that the the development nowadays is in the graphics everybody's doing the they embossed and the raise and a different veneer cuts and it slices deal with the hologram everybody's doing the graphics they need something new and right that's a development I feel like yeah and some things like you know that's actually the hologram it's a lenticular image and that logical image was quite a lot of work to develop the manufacturing process to make that work of a board right to make it stick and work and all that right so everything becomes a process right like like the emboss look that was something we did for dill originally truly embossed nowadays it's graphic emboss people don't do later the boss yeah just layers so people are coming to you being like hey I have this idea for this graphic and now you're facilitating how that's the calibrate the challenges can you put together a process to get that to work with your vendor pool or with your own internal development and still function and still function yeah when people come up to it and they're you're just like oh god not again like guys know we'll try that I like a challenge you did well yeah right so it's like I like a challenge you know it's like sometimes people are in my shop like you get bored doing this and like every board it's like a puzzle okay I'm I'm taking this feedback this interaction you know if they're in the parking lot doing some manuals and somalis like I asked them to and then they bust out five bangers and then their heel flips not working and I look at it and go he just needs a board to spend a little bit more and I'll go change the tail lengths and they're like yeah that's what I want watch it so you're watching them skate the boards and you're figuring out in your head oh I got to change that it's ass but the challenge is whatever you change I made it better here you might take away something over there yeah it's the hardest balance right like you go like Oh big wheels are great for cracks and rough surfaces right but well my ollie is too late now right okay so I don't like that now I could I could make the mold and the drilling and everything worked and counteract that right if someone gives me the opportunity to have that interaction right so with the graphic stuff you're trying to facilitate what the people want in their graphic board you know what the veneers or whatever maybe embossing or but still keeping it in that price point right you're still trying to match that right so it's a challenge well it's very much of a challenge I mean it's like you know yeah the reality is like I'm in a tread water business I've been treading water for years I'm in business and I enjoy what I do yeah but you know a thousand board today has to go through the door to drive water well I heard that in what in 2005 you sold 10 million boards yeah paddles and 10 billions and we're at 10 at 10 million built over 15 million now in my career and I can build it myself by the way I built the factory I built the schools the systems but they're leaving your facility are leaving your facility yeah 15 million skateboards yeah and your facilities that we're down in in Mexico the factories in Tijuana yeah it's been down there for 12 years 12 years you must go down there a bunch then I'm assuming once a week usually once a week I'll go execute stuff like I'll have someone in the shop make a template and it's like they're like oh I'm going on a trip okay well I'll go make a couple bring them back you know drive them to them or whatever get them gentle before they go to the event unfortunately production asked across the border normal a lot of a lot of paperwork and a lot of compliance tossing things across the board customs just about yeah just customs as a skater going through an airport with a bag full of stuff that's Lily happens every week only it's a whole truckload the list is really big right and there's a lot of compliance Oh people want to think oh it's Mexico it's like it's it's low-key it's a lock allowed you better work crazy Dan 15 million skateboards it's a lot over yeah somewhere either I ever had it back up lately how many them were band boards there were a lot of bands I could if I was at my computer right now I could type in BAM and since he's I've got pretty much everything in the computer accurate like 2002 on so his heyday I could go that yeah I mean I can go Eddie skateboard that I've made since 2000 and half a two or into three it has a laser number on it and I can look up that number and I can make that same board yeah no problem how many shapes do you think you've you can you've done since 2002 I made two today what might be you have a scan for it a number yeah you have a number you can scan it and make that board and scan it but yeah it's physical it's a hard physical template so you you you have a storage of our tablets yeah 1661 I think was a number today oh wow so when 2026 61 but 1,600 templates yeah when a girl came out with their their boards the the reissues like a javontae and the Mike Carroll work those were one from back in the day still right so those are made in the same mold they were made him back Wow so you pulled that mold yep so you'll use it for a couple people like Chris Miller still rides that mold anyway still rides that mold 7.5 you can make it so the mold is supply which is square right right and then you're cutting out the shape right so the so it's the shade right interfaced with the surface of the mold okay but what about the shape though your you know whatever you know had everything since I started serial numbers I've had the same manufacturing system since at that time when I took on serial numbers I changed the way i shaped boards and I'm still on the same system so run me through it like if girl says hey we want to make this my curl board this is the shape PS sticks how do you know how do you route the shape how do you do the shape well how do you know what your shape in this case it's like hey just give us the ones you use for the mid-nineties movie because I made boards for the mid-nineties alright right era accurate in the right mold you know the right thing is like we'll just give us that board feel the right molding the other right basically was a big block of wood that you used to yeah cut the shape well the shape is a template right so template cuts the shape yeah right so once I have it you know so in my factory the way we do it is we'll we'll take the stack of boards we'll drill through all of them at once to put them on that template a big clamp comes down from the top two cutters come in and it rotates around the big cutter is going slower and gets just eats it all away and then there's a little cutter that's going faster that just gets the finish cut and it falls away the dust collector sucks the dust up goes in a bin and the forklift driver empties have been a couple times a day who's smoothing it out well that's moving it out by hand yeah so then so now it's shaped yeah then it gets edged routed so we round the edges of the routers and it's very not perfect yet and then it's edge sanding and you have a balloon sander and the sanders like like a balloon it's got an interview than it right and you say I did against it and it's about not sanding too much right but sanding enough that's my nice round rail yeah all I had so the laser numbers you had that's like to me going to hit it or like you put in the number for the laser and so it's it's process control because it's really the laser is used in my factory so they don't mix things up right okay if you made a batch of fifty twenty different shapes today and you mess up that batch you can't mess up the batch it's all about the number the rack has a number the board has a number and this is computers and those are my computers the management is done by computer okay a paperwork right right just paperwork but basically yeah people have paperwork they walk around with an iPad and they go okay this this was now cut it moves from stage three to four oh it's out of sanding and moved to Stage five oh it's done the painting is sick so it's seven okay it's done well heat transfer Oh eight it's packed and ready to ship this customer wants 500 or right huh has a system for it how long does it take from from the press to out the door well you press it and then he secured for at least a week at least a week I'll be securing facility have I got plenty of space it's it's very it's an intensive process it feels like it feels like it's a lot yeah I mean that's a lot that one board that that dudes skating took a week to make yeah especially with the curing I'm pretty much I'm cut cut through packaging Department and shrink wrapped it in a box is usually two to three days what's a minimum if I wanted to come in there and make twenty boards would you do that a pro skater like yourself who can't get what they need and they'll come spend their time with me I'll help you tune it in okay but when it comes to business now it's got to be enough business to do business sure right that that's the hard reality there yeah usually it's like 300 boards okay it's a good minimum you know yeah could be multiple graphics or multiple sizes but I mean you know but in general I try to really focus on big premium brands round I don't do shot boards I don't play the bottom of the market you know I try to stand for that premium and I try to really move the substance into the product you know so the consumer can count on it because they're other there are other wood shops out there that will take a twenty board order yeah yeah what boards are you making now for the most part I mean you can go to a skate shop and see everything with the laser seal yeah changes because some brands will be like I'll build stuff for certain region of the world and to be cost-effective and and comply with Brazil like I don't build that stuff right you know so it's like sometimes it can be regional things like that sometimes a new business person comes in or a new salesman comes in and they're like I really love this brand from this other Factory you know or Ryder be like well I want to ride up my buddies riding yeah you know yeah you're back you know we're right if they'll come and spend some time to to mangle around and ollie around I'll get them to a better place than they'll ever be with their buddies board but gotta got a tour this week gotta film a video so it's like spare time right and now it used to be right now we're in the dead time but with Olympic season going on right now where there is no break right so usually I would work with guys in the six months where we weren't having contests and get them tuned in for contest season all right and then sometimes I'll tune somebody right in the middle of contest season you know like a couple years back I don't know five seven years ago PJ Ladd made a board with me and then won the battle of Erickson F stay on on that board that he painted and sanded with me the day before Wow right I would heard stories that he was in there a lot with you PJ spent a lot of time with me and at the end I never really satisfied PJ oh you still wasn't satisfied no I he found a board from another factory that he liked and that's what he writes yeah I know I always liked Chapman wood yeah that's different factor in that crazy up in Canada what's funny that he's so involved the barracks on your board yeah yeah it may be so wasn't satisfied eaters like that who are doing that's super hyper focused all right every little detail of the board no but there could be things as well like I don't know two to two-and-a-half summers ago Lacey Baker came to my shop for the first time and she spent the time to Manuel and Holly around and I built her boards for many years she used to ride for element before an owner for a long time and she gave me that three hours and she's like well I want this like that's not I don't think that's what you really want let's just modify the board and then she mouths around partly this is yeah that's what I want her head was so stuck on what she thought a mole which is actually the mole of girl used right yeah and it's like but that's but the other things weren't adding up to that but what it was it was really that fingers of flat behind the bowls and getting that leverage point right for and then two weeks later you know she wins Street League in LA with a I don't know it's twenty foot I don't know if it was a flip in or out of a nose manual or whatever but exactly what yeah what we worked on was her manual off her nose and then you go see her do that with it that's so funny I used to have this this guy that we skated with acquaintances right and he'd always be like you guys you guys get special boards like you that you're so good because you get special boards and it was never the case we would just add a girl or chocolate we grabbed our boards right but there are so skaters that come and work with you that to have their own special board tailored for themselves and sometimes that becomes production that the brand sells that's right sometimes it doesn't because that size isn't selling right now and this brand is talking to this customer yeah and so creature talks to a different customers and girl talks totally yeah and the reality is the brand has to sell what the BRIT what's working for the junior they're in there it's not then not gonna be in business right so sometimes what the rider likes to ride isn't what the market wants to buy right right now and that's the closest thing we got was just screening our graphic onto a shape that really liked you know so I would skate a seven seven five but my board out in the market would be at 8.25 whatever so I was riding a different board than what was on the Shelf which is it a confusing story in one way mmm-hmm and I think a part of it times the product is not talked about enough because the salesman just wants to sell yeah I just want to get to acted by talking about what the pro likes to do with it who made any of that stuff to like realize a brand is it eco and what's the ego gonna talk about its brand it's not talking about anything else we don't have time for anything else what's our ego here buddy a lot of hot Air's got to really be blown up to go up right yeah and that's what a brand is you know so there's you know we're all in this room here but then the nine clubs here - that's right it's a brand to brand and it's a living breathing thing it's a living ego that you guys have put your resources into and you've developed this ego yeah you know yeah and the world out there appreciates it and it's fabulous all right so it's like you're you're in the exact same business it's funny I think Rodgers egos bigger than my clothes so so so fascinating fascinating I want to go back though because we're sorry wrapping up but try and get out of Schmidt's Dick's a while well yeah we were on the number of the new deal coming into the picture and Andy Hal and Steve Douglas calling you and being like hey we're out we're gonna you you either stay or come with us it was that kind of the conversation yeah so basically the last couple years at vision it got harder and harder like you said you couldn't build everybody yeah and it's like whether it was Phillips leave him to go do something else money left mystics you know and it's like guys would leave and you know that was part of that and I kept on going to Brad hey can we just do roulette because business-wise it was so hard when a rider left and it wasn't planned oh my gosh it was horrible and I'm like but I was trying to get Ganza Gator on my team like I'll ride my boards anyways quit and go somewhere else okay so but just that interesting thing but I'd had I had the interaction with the riders through running events being part of things I ran like all the NSA amateur contests right that type of stuff so I had the the on the tip you know who and what's happening a matter I mean still I was still generationally close enough right right obviously that those days a long time well you're still helping pj ladd and Lacey Baker so it's amazing yeah yeah having a PJ in a while but well maybe we'll come back yes II don't brush asked one how he could fix that really he's pretty close in age so so is so Smith sticks wound up you know I had the relationships with with the riders within the vision camp even where you know we go to contests and I was the only one that worked for vision that they could relate to in any manner right they couldn't even relate to the other people right because they were older they didn't skate they removed so far those people right you know and doesn't mean it wasn't a cool team manager or whatever you know sure and there was a cool team manager's name is Steve Rocco and then and then when Rocco got a new car so Rocco's office was in front of my woodshop for a while oh yeah and he got an a' team car two-door red sports car he thought it was funny because everything Broncos about having fun yeah I was funny know and Brad Brad was having a hard time with each move of Rocco all the more all the more a little more well I still worked with Brad he's like come on we're going up to Redondo Beach or Manhattan or whatever it was like any fire Rocco that night he took me with his backup oh yeah however there was no fight I'm sure what you watched it happen yeah every fire Broncos how was that out of that conversation and then Rocco when started yes SMA trees crazy you know that whole thing you know so so that sort of segues into New Deal right so because Steve as well he helped me start a new deal so and and the the reality is that Chris Miller was in contract negotiation and Brad would not let me be part of the contract negotiation because he held the license the agent Miller had up was also the agent Gator had which was the only agent skateboarding that time nobody else even had agents yes start of that era and he was trying to get Miller to ride for visions street wear and that kind of thing and Miller just like I'm over it you know so I he called me up said hey we got to get together and I was afraid but it was you know and I told Brad at the trade show wouldn't let me part of the meeting I said you realize that Miller's gone it's over and he just didn't but but I had riders were leaving left and right well you had no control I had no control right you know and all my creative stuff was happening in my own shop separate from that you know and some of it I could get into the Schmidt sticks line some of it I couldn't you know go and then basically Miller Miller said hey we gotta meet tonight I'm going to it's booked tomorrow morning well we're gonna meet tonight then and you know he drove in San Diego and I drove down like San Clemente we met in the middle mm-hmm and he's like I'm done I'm I'm gone I'm not good just a company of eighth Street I was like you know I got it I understood it right but also it was a face-to-face discussion it was like that like we had that which is amazing that enough of a relationship right long enough of a relationship right because he wasn't saying it to a businessman he was saying to a skater yeah you know the businessmen were already talked in the contract people you know yeah out of more respect right yeah so then I got in SPO the next morning this is before cell phones yes but it was no Evo Obispo no ESPO is it is a trade show in Germany oh okay so European trade show so by the time I get back two weeks later you know Douglas is an upheaval of you know well you know and it's like well Santa Cruz will fund us and a Michael I know that it's like what do you mean is like well I pressed him 10,000 boards for him last year mystics are still going on and making boards for them right and go ahead my secret shop right sure yeah I I almost quit I almost I tried to I prepared to take Schmidt takes away from vision and and I just too much of a fight you would are you created your own little widget did you did you see the writing on the wall you're like kind of he wasn't in control right so it's like so I was taking my licensee money I was buying equipment it's uneasy someone was down a factory I bought 40 presses from him 40 cavities with the presses all no side all aside yet two of them are working the rest were stacking story I'm making stuff and so but anyway so as the conversation started to happen like well I know that and I'm like I don't that might do it for somebody else again I already did that once yeah you know I would did that for Brad you know right and I don't want to go do it for someone else again you know because here I met the end of mythix being like I saw this big machine go how much do I got I got my tools that I got in my place I got a little bit of equity in a house I got my right you know but then again he had a big problem a quarter million square feet of facilities a thousand employees losing money as I business ain't easy at that level sure the bigger you get the harder it gets yeah that really does so you were prepared to leave your company behind I was prepared to walk away from my away from your name right prepared it's happening you know and basically so so we decided that we were the name New Deal was gonna be the brand name and all that you know we all lived in my house and worked on it and develop it you know now during the day I'm going the factory because pretty much that that started in February and in March I still starts billboard Sirocco okay so Ronco knows we're leaping vision he's trying to help us sleep vision cuz he wants to beat down the big five the big five and I can't get enough board so I built plot blind boards for six months okay and live in New Year guys and the glue guys would give me veneer and glue are you doing that at night no no oh but in your own little person like facility okay veneer guys would give me would on credit cuz they done business enough years there me and yeah they weren't the shop the vision was doing business with so it's like I just switch vendor pools you know but because I was making boards for NHS last year you know it was already working you know what I mean right and they was never able to get my business in the vision days you know and now they got my business right and the people that had done the wood for vision all the years my original vendor from back when I was in Florida couldn't do business with me because of the vision thing these conflicts ain't and huh and the craziness of that right so be it so basically I'm cash blowing things because I'm building product for Rocco's like I'll give you money the minutes at screaming and I'm like okay so every week deliver stuff go get a check from Rocco ketchup here's what's going on so Rocco knew the whole plan was going on he's like hey we're not using these computers you want these computers oh he's help yeah here's how filemaker works and here's how you can do your invoices you know amazing here give him a copy of that you know it's like so he was super super helpful you know even though i would say when he's fired but he knew the bigger picture he was ready to take the bigger picture was fun yeah it was fun to take them down ever everything about Rocco is just about fun that's all it was in to see if he could do it probably yeah now I remember I first met rocket when I came to California in 1980 and then he's like I'm a who's this Rodney kid and I'm like I Tim Scott Scott so well I'm gonna start LaRocco squad am i like now the squad squad is Tim's clogs and rodney rides for Sprague's no that's like well yeah Rocko didn't get it didn't get his squad that time right right Stacy got Rodney in that era you know he eventually got Rocco got him later so now you so you walk away right so I walk away Brad doesn't know we're walking away I just don't I I could barely get in the building anyways okay I could have an appointment to pick up a check or it would come in the mail or whatever so it's like we're just working on a check-in and checks but right but you're meeting I'm not spending any energy on Smith sticks whatsoever at all right I didn't have a commit I didn't have to be there I still go to a contest and I'd be visible and we're just working on it right so it's like basically worked on it for you know sort of that end of June we started a ship stuff but sort of like in April or May I'm not sure exactly we shipped out the promo video and we made this video that had you know the riders so it was clear now that these were mostly riders written for Schmidt's dicks right Andy Hal said that Steve Douglas was faxing skate with shops from your house about New Deal but it had your since it was a fax machine it had your name and phone number yeah we didn't know that at the time let the cattle and masters in the business people because we were trying to go to the skaters not the established right sure so in general but but eventually one of those facts Hatter's came back to me a whip on the vision lawyer and says is this you yeah it's like you don't have a contract to have had me you know and then basically it ended up being that that they're like well we'll give you a last check if you sign over the brand I'm already deep I'm all yours and done like give me that seven thousand dollar check then I'll sign the rights away that's it yeah crazy they still own it to this day yeah so then it was I so app when New Deal was three months old Transworld business had it is top three brand in the market you know so in that world and New Deal are in the top three okay so Rocco's plans working he's worried he's stoked right but the reality is like SH mystics then quickly shut down he thought he was gonna go forward then I quickly proved that that's not work because I would be at all the trade shows I had the public face of the brand your name right and and then basically he still sells mystics now because when Joe Lopes died I don't know fifteen years ago I went to Brad and said hey I don't care if you build them or I build them or you sell them or I saw them I want to make some boards from commemorate lo some raise money for his family it's amazing and Brad's like oh it sounds like a pretty cool idea and then he wanted to turn my call for six months and he's got ten boards out oh wow like we didn't want just one crazy what you could do whatever you owned it you know I like though how you kind of you still went with that ups sticks you just you're took your initials and just yeah it worked yeah so basically PSX was now it was a contract manufacturer for blank plywood only brand HS cuz they they couldn't get the molds fast enough through the other thing and I could they gave me the master I could be production in next week so a new deal start so I'm already doing production right so so then I build the blind stuff okay yeah no yeah and that went on for about six months but then as we got everything shipping and going I went on vacation and Steve Douglas and Mike the guys around my woodshop for life we could solve and you little what you can and they didn't make any blind boards because I wasn't there to tell him to make blind boards Oh No and then Rocco calls screaming and goes hey there any boards for music now there's none man you know other neuter boats yeah we got double the normal new deal bozo Rocco's like and I come back from vacation and Rocco's like you [ __ ] oh my god you guys [ __ ] they've been putting pressure on me the whole time like [ __ ] you don't build anything buddy else is like that's not the whatever make it work but you don't understand the economics of it yeah but Rocco gave me the cash flow to get it started right so did he pull out of yes so that I lost his manufacturing because Prime in that time then scaled up enough crime wasn't really scaled yet with slick bottoms in the picture yet slick bottoms there no later there little later okay I found slick bottoms at a plastics show in Chicago in 79 I mean 89 on snow skis what right and I and I got samples of the material talked to the people and then basically I got distracted by New Deal oh and I didn't bring it to market and then then the first one to make slicks was actually BBC okay they did horrible graphics he was like a ptex it's only that there was a ptex one but then there was PBT as well it's a peach and and then Santa Cruz took a hold of it and marketed it put the ego Santa Cruz on it yeah we had a Santa Cruz logo that was either right and did it okay okay yeah and then Rocco and I both wanted to do it but it was $10,000 for a print run so we split a paper on $10,000 for a print for paintings the set-up cost was ten thousand Oh at that point to print on the plastic that whatever it is so basically the print one was was was a Mike v1 was it the the first Mike be slick and this the New Deal Siamese oh that's a Douglass first I don't member now which one was first anyways we split up in Iran because in a sense you you couldn't it was still ten thousand dollars it was one graphic right but basically we both took little rest okay because it's ahead we think we can sell this we think this would work it's the copy thing right yeah if santa cruz copying BBC wasn't enough because BBC wasn't relevant it was a brand that had some first caters from the 80s mmm the new deal in world had street skaters from now right right so any chests didn't even have that they just had the marketing horsepower in the ego to make it happier oh so but if the slick thing is a great example of if it's copied it will be successful and right and literally 80% of the boards I made were slick I developed manufacturing process to do it in-house you figured it out I figured it out so I had i image my own film and did my own stuff and literally printed me made two million slick boards in that era were you charging the same recharge in the ten grand also no didn't get that much out of it but it was it was it was business worth doing sure okay and I even did snowboards did like a half a million snowboard plastics great because they didn't know how to do it either because I I had the like you know I mean I had a [ __ ] and a squadra nine hundred in the back of the building it had 256 Meg's around that was fifteen thousand dollars back there Wow but that's how I had to do it so like even with the image setter that we made the film with I became a beta testing it was the first soft ripped before them they're all been like proprietary hardware it was Adobe software and then when we went to do snowboards they were like I'm like well it's not calibration we don't say it is and I'm like I think it is I just want a buffer drive four times the size and the engineers were like it only needs to be double when I'm like it needs to be four times the size and they gave me the drives formatted put it in and planted six foot long film just fine and it was just basically like math of how Photoshop works right so you're saying your machine works like Photoshop right like that's how I looked oh yeah so you're sending them the film the film was with all the scientific adjustment for the sublimation process because when you look at a sublimation paper it's dull and the colors aren't bright the paper has to go with heat and pressure the ink turns into a gas that goes into the pores of the material and and then it becomes bright brightens it up yeah Wow so I had the situation then where even like my printer one day I'm like they're like they didn't understand that they had because ink people sell ink and I found somebody a new vendor for the ink in the region and they were well-connected pretty soon I go to my print shop and they're print real paper is like what's this well we can't get it right for them and I'm like they don't I I have the film I tell you you hold the levels I know you know how to hold levels and here's what you do because it's like printing blind the printer goes like oh look at that for color process image it's beautiful this doesn't look right it's buted it's ugly I might just follow the bar strip it has a code in it yeah I've just systems right hmm like I'm a systems engineer I don't know what's going on right now kid stuff Kelly doesn't know what I know it is very complicated it's it's it's fascinating you know you know so you're we jump around a little bit cuz you know to jumped a couple years ahead we've started talking about why I was I asked about the Select dislikes yeah yeah but but in that first year a new deal it instantly went kaboom he said number three he went to number three yeah in the market yeah so really like you know and literally by the next year I mean we sold like 15,000 boards in one month so mystics only ever sold 7,000 in a month and here you are and we were like surpassing it double because I'm not held back anymore right even though the industry is crashing right now the big five is crashing right like Rocco and I are and that the new generation is just going up right oh can you imagine if you were the one doing all the world in cheese boards back then if you didn't leave you and go to prime yeah well realize it they already had Prime going they just have Prime didn't figure out the duction level so prime did make skateboards in the 70s mmm 7 ply no concave and it was about concave but the Moulton the mold Scott from the vision Factory to prime realized all the molds molds are stolen basically yeah ok and I go to my mold maker in Costa Mesa one day and I'm like what's this like well other people are coming to me for their work it's like they're not coming for your work they're coming from my work ok and because I wasn't working in house anymore I was developing Schmidt sick separately well Chuck Hulse was going forward because his job was still around the work at the vision Factory he was doing product development from his perspective hmm you know we weren't working together ok yeah and he made the first mold that was truly double kick double shape double vision you know in the the the shape wasn't accepted but the principle was right you know but even though if you go to like the the world barn yard for lately the nose is still an inch shorter than the tail still we're still not there yet yeah right so even going through all the stuff with New Deal and this documenting all this stuff this last while on building templates like this original Siamese board wasn't a true Siamese it was really close but it wasn't it wasn't it wasn't right you know and it still was until another year before that happened I remember at the point when Templeton's like I want my nose longer I'm like why do you want it longer that's like you want more room to slide on as I just went longer it's just sense is what I want okay that one started to switch at that point when the nose start to get longer than the tail yeah so that's pretty much 91 so that's one series saying ed tilde basically started that whole thing I don't know if edge started it I can't really say ed made it clear to me what he wanted just say what was happening because even going back and documenting there's all little boards it's like I'm going back I'm taking the boards I'm taking the magazine so I'm gonna let go okay well here's here's the story and the lineage and the time or what happened right I didn't know that the first slicks I made were nine ply slicks well and in ninety all of the boards were double drilled except to the side oh yeah okay and then and then as we get into 91 we weren't double drilled anymore because now we had the moulds to support what was going on right the double drill thing was sort of like it really comes from Gon's at the vision shop always being like more noise more nose and chilling there I just drill it back and it's like just doing what Gon's wanted right and it's like you know the noses weren't is big and tall at that time but then the trucks would come double drilled to right the truck rocks were never double drill but that's the six hole pattern so that's that's that adventure in in 92 basically grinding and you'd have to sell off you have to hacksaw the bolts off yeah so they just you check my Instagram I just did a post on it the other day so they just moved two bolts back on the track so bench removed the holes back up okay and just said we're doing it and then basically in that case there Steve do you want to chill six holes in bars like that doesn't make any sense we just go to the new hole pattern yeah and him and I both agreed and we retooled the factories and which in Christmas and New Year and 92 and in January first it was different now and people were freaking for a while the trucks you had the boards and adventure had the trucks right I could've sworn there were six whole trucks no no yeah the had six whole six when a truck not two patterns it's just two holes on the front yeah yeah - no no - four holes for the original hole pattern and then the new hole pattern right so with six holes but not - you know it's not two different hole patterns I got two old patterns the inside holes were still the same which is the outside holes now just because we're tricks were going with nose grinds and K grinds and all this you know bolts were getting ground yeah yeah you know and then you couldn't get your truck off and then if you tried to twist it you try to hack saw it you can only get in so far twist it break the corner of the base alright yeah there's a mark officinalis expect first what's that Markovic did what did he drill his trucks back first I don't know who did I mean it it camp in the venture camp it might be a point you know and who who did it first you know hmm and they just they just put it in when ad in November 92 27 years ago they didn't even talk about the next issue they're already over it be for victory they were talking about winning over Burt skating at that time right but Burt's like being put to bed like no where where where it's going Wow see it's fascinating where were we with New Deal well then it just started to go along became a big brand you know quickly and I I did the manufacturing and and dealt with sales and distribution Douglas was sort of the coordinator and Andy was the art director and he was in Atlanta Douglas was in San Jose I'd have him with a computer and a modem and they'd Island quick mail system and we had email back then yeah I think Andy said he would have to send graphics overnight yeah a little like they'd be all night to juice all night huh but but we were so I was very technically aware right so I was you know you said it all we had an internet email accessible internet 91 you know and I was a systems guy you know so just do systems all right amazing how do you system eyes that thing to solve that problem you know well you got three people in three different places yeah so you needed to come together exactly but then I sort of ran the whole the operation you know it was all in Costa Mesa you know so it was my R&D shop you know New Deal was in the front and we made boards in the back and then quickly got the PS 6 MIDI in a next door and that got that when they got to the you next door to that you know how and then eventually moved to to from 1281 1351 Logan and kept on going 1281 mmm was a location at my R&D shop yeah had nothing to a new deal oh really now Andy ended up leaving he started underworld element right right so that that was within the same business structure so basically Steve Andy and I became partners yeah we started a new deal skateboard Products Inc all the that side was at four PS Dick's would sell avoid a new deal okay oh and and so it wasn't you know we became partners legal corporation and all the paperwork all the systems right but you were still selling boride okay and then I'm still building boards for other brands sure you know so PS Dix is going like because you can't the the hippest coolest brand at some point is not going to be the hippest coolest brand you can't run a factory on one brand or two or three brands I mean even a couple factories have gone out of Mexico since I was down there you know because they only did two three brands and when those three brands are hot enough to support a factory they're out it doesn't work anymore we're talking prestigious brands and prestigious prestigious times yeah you know it's a hard one try to think about how long a new deal last for how many years it's sort of magical years was its first three first three it was 92 92 and that was and II was so on the tip of our creativity he would trot love traveling we'll go to you know whatever city he went to and always bring a piece of that culture and buy back with him right and he would mix it together and you have his awareness right yeah and then I think part of it too was none of us were Californians okay I need East Coast I'm East Coast yeah I've been in California now for a while Douglas is from England so we weren't trapped in the in title I was just here you know we had to work really hard to get somewhere right you know and so it was super cool you know but then like anything you have success and then you have the problem with success now the team's too big now how do you keep everybody pro keep okay well now we'll start a new brand now we'll do underworld element he's like I got this idea I want to be underground and seedy and I got an opposite idea that too but that's for later right and that kind of context you know hmm so then we did that that was within noodle skateboards you know it was still same business structure and everything and then then we started giant distribution because now we had the diversity of brands going on yeah you needed a umbrella we started one on one you know now we had video thank you for that thank you very much for that yeah it's funny I see that your generation really appreciate it oh yes very much so you created a monster a bunch of them you save enough of those Oh being there online now I think aren't they well you got started what what is shoes like you from the beginning I was like sixteen sixteen seven yeah yeah so we're already two years into it yeah yeah at that point yeah Wow but that that's interesting because of that marker right it definitely became a marker what was your what were you doing with four and one at that point all I did was sort of the books the business hmm and the editing systems and infrastructure so so basically in the New Deal days with the first videos were deck to deck and Douglas attended those and I set up a system where we'd have time could we send VHS timecode tapes to the skaters they would pick out the parts they liked the most stiva manage the process of all the numbers and then get together and edit it right and then you know when it wasn't right then you had to read it and it was taped Asher put in this tape roll it down this was like very tedious right thank you and then in 92 we got this system called video FX and again I was technically aware right so it was it ran on a Mac FX model computer and we had it had a digitizing card in it and it had machine control and I had PostScript to tape so that's why the graphics and the names on for one always look better than the video because it was post group to tape oh yeah the blue little logos I always look way better yeah what was that right under control but basically with the system you would digitize your tape and you would have a low a low res like 240 by 320 video that 33 and you're editing with it in a timeline like you are now but then when it's time to make the master put in tape 12 put in tape 27 and then it would fast-forward go to the timecode Oh fabulous compared to what was compared what you would still you would you would have to have everything in order or I'll see whatever it was a system for that you could for the for the first five years of form 1 you could type in Olly Tony Hawk and find every ally of Tony Hawk and then at some point when when 401 got successful enough it's like you just move your office to the back of the building go in the woodshop leave us alone I just became the guy that did the books because Josh Freiberg had gotten technically adapt enough and then media 100 came out and got to be much better where the system's we were dealing with like you know like that editing system we had a 2gig disk array it was pretty badass five and a quarter disc $10,000 for 2gig disco ten grand yeah whatever look that but but compared to a Hollywood style edit oh yeah yeah sure you know with quarter million dollars with equipment here we got 25 and we're doing it but you're still yeah you're putting our good [ __ ] no yeah I never got a dump it up I always wanted a dump it up yeah did you ever like choice in or see you weren't choosing any or when openers really I didn't choose anything I just made the things happen right I was a tech support system my office so we got giant over to the other building then I was right there before him was downstairs first and when giant moved to another building then I was still there in the office you know yeah same hallway yeah and so I was always just tech support and set up you know so whether it's like you know Kirk Dion Eric or Colin yeah you know and then sort of those two guys always knew well and then there came all the other filmers like you know Ricky or whoever they like I never really knew as well okay because they weren't the first I wasn't dealing with those guys by the time they were around sure new deal you said the first three years were the glory years they were the magical network that the the generational relevance right and so it will also a time where for me it was hard because it was like go whale man your opinion doesn't matter oh well it didn't yeah I was the old guy now I was a person Yeah right you know my opinion matter giving the business done and making things happen behind the same - the branding though side of it or the public face of it even in this new deal thing I've had people be like I never knew you were part of New Deal oh yeah well those guys had a form 1 transferrable business article I open up the magazine one day I'm like there's all the the founders of 401 in my building I'm not in United because this generation doesn't care about that generation yeah but now Michael a business that's just the reality like generational relevance I know what it was because in the 80s I was it right I was it yeah you know it was absolutely clear you know in a Big Five meeting it was absolutely clear you know as much as they had their perspectives and and they all contributed to skateboarding a lot into anything that was something that didn't happen in the 90s which was disappointing was people would support making things happen as a collective right you know so the big five was positive because it made events happen and it made things happen sure I mean you know I bought a lot of pencils I was like it's a negative cuz well they're successful business people and that's bad you know oh they're bad it's a weird thing I mean I had a hard time it's like I just I'm an enthusiast dealing what I like to do right and that's what I've done my whole life and and if money doesn't work then that doesn't work right so it's really challenging um but it's almost like you know never been my focus to work for money do you rely product do you ever wake up with an idea you ever go to bed and in the morning BIC ah no rhenium skateboard like this something just went out you do you ever wake up which is the crazy ideas and you're like me when I was younger I did you did but honestly I've done so much and know so much that there's just not much to do you're like that's when my board come the board is so refined right it's just so so refined don't you feel like it needs something though like don't you feel like I know you said it's like it's like POW makes those flight boards and Santa Cruz is doing their version of that right super thin durable crazy yeah cost more money you know got to pay my money for it right none of my customers at PS 6 are saying hey we want you to build a board to cost $10 more to make they're not happy with what they got you happy with the got that I want it you know but you're an innovator I feel like you'd wake up with some early ideas fiberglass and foaming urethane bumpers right on all of it it's already happened and and the generation didn't accept it right the helium thing there were people who loved that construction element kept on trying to can it and people kept a little we want that we want that and then finally someone can do know that was around for eight or ten years yeah we want to make nine Club boards but we're gonna make we want the we want revolutionary okay construction oh we got Chris I don't know some type of beehive weird glue but honey - yeah paper mache just sent the best the best engineering comes from biomimicry biomimicry yeah what's that just copy and what Mother Nature does okay you know it's biological item and a nice mimic yet how do you think we got these little tiny drone cameras that you love so much right they were mimicking what it's like a living birds do right like that's the reality that's what biomimicry is you know what do you think of the cyber truck do you like this yeah the cyber truck yeah well it's a pickup truck but I didn't even get to see how it hauls it went talking about that they make me aware they just made me aware that that the sledgehammer doesn't dent it and the window needs some nanotubes yeah a steel ball throughout the window may or may not break it yeah yeah well you got to look at the potential you take a ball that diameter it look like a probably two inches diameter right little single ball yeah oh yeah it's like you know four or five pounds and and you take inertia and energy you know it's like that's a lot of power right right right crazy well he said that hitting the door with the sledgehammer cracked the bottom of the windows and that's why I didn't hear that but I could believe that yeah because what happens with surface energy is energy always takes the path of least resistance guaranteed right and so what happened if that was the case and the bottom of the window is chipped the ball hit it and the energy took that path of least resistance right because the way that glass is designed then spider out right if Elon called you tomorrow and offered you a job you had to leave your warehouse and he's like do I like your style I like you I like your brain come work for me like rocketed me yeah what would you want what would you do I don't know I know some people that work there already you and Ilan share in an office bouncing ideas back I just know a machinist that works there that I went to college with I'm talking about in the odd you and Ilan I don't know Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David sharing a desk a lawn just bouncing ideas I don't know okay yeah you're happy with a woodshop yeah I like to him what I do I like to make things I like to make new things yeah you know have a lot of fun with that so you think the skateboards now we'll stick to the seven ply I really feel so I hope that what Powell and Santa Cruz have done and also uh what's those other guys make the boards of the green urethane tips on them now tips anyways they're doing some high-end boards that are even better than what those guys do you know but selling direct to consumer $200 you know and you know I wish them the best with it different but people I like to them it's a $200 deck yeah and it lasts for a long time yes sometimes really hard urethane bumpers really hard very much like I made him like 70 D on my bumper board years ago and mine was just me mimicking what krypton extend the seventies in my revision okay I you know and they've done their version of it and it's really cool but they're using like I don't even know how hard it is like ridiculously hard stuff and it's got high abrasion resistance so it doesn't razortail easy was it how is trip island like they sound different it must sound different it sound different because I guess it's a skateboarder it's the out someone either day like me I'd snap my board like dude that's what I want to hear and you don't hear that sound it kind of [ __ ] up your whole thing in skating I feel like yeah you know caters hammering daily like it's like they have to have that VX 1007 yeah or something like that I know like when you hear that good wood he's you know everybody knows what they like everyone yeah you know what you like you don't necessarily know why I mean I have guys coming to me all the time I'm like Oh always do that truck up and it's like yeah why I don't know cuz it works I don't even think about it right like it's just an organic thing and then then to me I'm like well you want to counteract that and make the tail work that way like why would I ride switch am i riding the board off the nose why not just write it right write the whole thing about that switch there's a whole misnomer of thinking switches opposite I remember watching Battle of barracks last year hmm and it was Joslin and luan - amazing - amazing guy back rail luan Raisa bored of like three fingers of flat yeah yeah it was very flat deck mm-hmm he's got really long legs you know okay Joslin rides a board in a different mold just regular like production style mold yep you know had a little bit of a different shape I could hear their boards clicking on the floor in the video I kept that place is amazing when when events going on is a silence in there oh yeah intensity you can hear it yeah I remember like five years ago was PJ against P rod same thing yeah I made both the boards the down to the end I'm listening to what's going on you know the pop like how different they are if you were blindfolded would you know which board was popping the sound probably not P rod yeah I don't I don't think I would have that unless I listen to it first because so much it was just a dramatic nests of that environment right it's like on a wind-up pin drop yeah it's just amazing so the Lewin Chris Joslin board where we owe the boards are very drastically different yeah I could hear it Luanne's got this amazing pop Laurens also got really long legs so he can counteract that fingers a flat that flat concave him with his own energy okay yeah do you guys know what what inseam pant you wear what yeah 32 33 okay yeah so talk to your friends so in general tall guys ollie high right that's always been pretty known right okay yeah you know I'm tall yeah I don't all over a channel the Burt rap like you know coping bonk or something back in the day right but I wear 32 inseam and I'm 63 ok PUD well has a 32 inch inseam too he's nowhere near my Heights right he's tall in the bottom he's got that long leg been going right hmm you know so it's interesting how you know people are built right and how their board needs to then counteract that or work with that do you think funny oh so when they figure it out they just don't know why yeah so if you think that LuAnn had a steeper board he think he'd pop higher he has the control to use his energy when he needs it so in general a young skater needs a board if a really tall nose and tail takes a long time to hit okay so imagine just like Little League like they're pitching like this right in college and the big leagues the guy's gonna fall off the front of the mound yeah you're right okay and he's winding up right and now he's got to deliver this thing with with accuracy and precision right so the same thing of an ollie if we go back to ollie in the 80s okay it was 60 65 millimeter wheels half inch risers the angle on this thing when it hit the board's like rocket yeah yeah and then there's no no ease to level it out so you look at the Ollie's from the 80s and they're not what we consider a proper ollie because you can't level that right those wrongs no lever there you know we made the nose the same angle and made it longer it's like I would push the lever and I can get it up right right and then that led to you know tricks and everything else right yeah like that now that that finesse and control was there so it's always a challenge do you want power do you want finesse you know and what are you looking for and you want power on the nose or power on the tail because people want to thinks which is exactly opposite but what I was getting to before was at the Battle of barracks one is doing the trick in front of them and the others do and the trick behind them yeah but they're both doing it switch their peer group knows they're not riding the normal steps right and it's totally okay I don't know how that's gonna work in the Olympics yeah yeah okay yeah very interesting thing but it's like that whole like he's riding this abnormal and he's doing it but he does it off the tail behind him versus off the nose in front of him yeah because your energy but on your tail your body weight in general is if you look at the center of the board you're not really staying in center your sounded but when you go to nollie you're setting up you're getting close to Center and then it's like yeah your body weight never goes all the way there sure cuz it's in front of you yeah not behind you you're a conversation with rodney mullen not really I've known him since he is 10 I never stand in his house he was local of sensation based on skate park was like two hours north of Tampa it's fascinating the way that you look at skateboarding and just skateboards in general is just it's beyond my comprehension sometimes you know you're talking about this and that and this is just like it's a result of my environment no I know it's a result of the people I've interacted with my whole life if I was in a room with not like I would not come up with anything if I didn't have a solution a need a process right you know it's like it's a puzzle yeah yeah you know and then those that are willing to play the puzzle with me and interact and spend that time it's amazing oh yeah there's plenty of them out there like you said I'm not the guy to think about right stuff you know I'm just more of the guy of like hey I like this this is a good looking shape I put the trucks on and put the grip tape on yeah some people will be locked for years now I just been unlocked for years it's crazy hold it shape he'd been a lock for years Lacey I just sent her five new boards yeah I did up a mock-up last week of the factory without making a template I did some stuff and she's like I think I want my nose shorter now that's like she's keep on and general the tie but pro skaters is getting more compact that's the tide that's been going on for about two and a half years I hadn't I hadn't seen it usually takes four or five years before its market yeah what I see happening about the pros cuz it was for so long was the longer longer more shorter more compact and also people people that are short going like I don't need a 14 inch wheelbase she rides what am I gonna yeah 13 and 3/4 now yeah you know but then you know I made some boards for Vanessa and she's like I wrote the NESTA's board I'm like well she's riding thunders and you're riding in DS not geometry the wheelbase we judge our wheelbase by the truck holes the real wheelbase is center of axle to center of axle when a lawn MUSC sells a car it has a stated wheelbase Ilan made the whole car right but when you get a skateboard and you mix up that board these trucks and wheels you got your own combination right so it changes it but but then by her saying that I'm like okay well then and she's like I feel like I need more power now you know where before she needed more finesse to I need more power okay you know she gives me you know tells me what she wants I gave her a prescription and she's like oh that's great or or she'll be like I didn't do what I thought why do truck companies have different measurements this drives me nuts I wish they would just use one measurement you got Indy's that are like oh yeah the 147th one so there's thunder with the ones it's the same size truck ok well let's check what they really are take a pair of calipers right there's a lot of times it's marketing right so there's a pair of undies right 1:39 it's not the same thing you know in a thunder would be like a one 49ers I got thunder cable this is a 130 7.05 Oh what is it but every millimeter is two-thirds up apply the thick ply and a board or the ply of the thickness of cross ban what we're at Roger that that's a one where would you say that was so it's two millimeters off okay market is at 139 139 but now down if we take the washers oh we might be old is this what I'm talking about there's a 1:39 with the washers well with four washers it's a 140 I just wish that the truck companies would just get together and say okay you know what we're gonna just it's got the right four holes in it you gotta be happy with that right we talked to him and just I want to check your wheels chances are you will if you rotate your wheels no rotate the wheels when they see that it's coned right yeah yeah okay but usually when people are in my shop and I checked their wheels I'll go like oh that this wheels two millimeters smaller if quads your seat check wheel oh yeah it's none of your backed oh yeah it's okay you know yeah your wheels people everything in balance funny cuz that two millimeters is it's huge ya know though it is like look if you look at it and say hey it's a 50 millimeter wheel for easy math yeah and two millimeters right that's four percent forty eight were you good at math and school I'm an applications engineer though I'm not a book engineer like if you have me sit down and talk with someone that has a science book or a math but like I'm horrible that application how many so your numbers you see numbers I see numbers yeah all together what's your thoughts on the twin knows entail so here's my take on twin would you rather have a pocket knife of one knife or two - okay so if your nose and tail are the same length and your board is drilled Center in the mold and everything's symmetrical yeah you don't have to worry about which is which right hopefully you figured out how to get your trucks balanced you don't get thrown off by that right yeah you know what's in front of you what's behind you the loose truck the stiff truck mm-hmm but when you know it's it's longer it now reacts different so why does he do that trick off the nose because it's hitting sooner mm-hmm and it's half a degree or two degrees hitting sooner mm-hmm and so you know in general when you have the average board has a longer nose than tail mm-hmm and you want to hit sooner or you're you're bombing a hill in San Francisco and you want to get across that driveway gap and you want to go more forward than up just ride your board backwards chance desirable give you that 2% thing you need Wow it's crazy I mean I had a situation this is quite a few years ago Darrell Stanton where he this is like 12 or 15 years ago he had two boards in his truck and and that era that was very like rare that rare that all right you wrote it and he's like this one's the bomb and I'm like what's so great about this one he's like well I had this spot there's like a parking garage over stairs railing grass sidewalk curb Street and I look at the two setups and he doesn't know he had low on one board and hides on the other boy 3/8 of a different wheelbase 1/4 inch different in tail length and I look at it and I go well from looking at these combination I project that this one's gonna go ten percent further forward he starts jumping up and down I was missing it by two feet for two years so as long as he was jumping down 12 feet yeah under 18 he didn't need any help but when it came to 20 feet he needed to set up to be just a little bit more right huh but they don't eat like it's they don't teach you that skaters are just scared they don't yeah like like yeah I tried to I tried to do something a few years back with I asked and try to start this skate Tech thing with the trade shows my used to go to creative skate there and new education stuff right and I tried to build a foundation for that but I just couldn't get the industry to agree like I have to work on our ego I feel and maybe I'm completely wrong but I feel like maybe 70% of the skaters really don't care they just grab a board and go I think I think a lot I think there's a small percent that actually no there's really percent that care focus on and my whole career that's who I've satisfied I've through the laser Steele's been there for 15 years but before that be like oh that prick or that round edge this is how you tell that it's from that magical rush thank God for you man you helped out a skateboarding as a whole like that's pretty amazing thank you I wish I'd met you I wanted to I could have had a whole different career if you were in my corner yeah well by the time you've gotten that corner they weren't using my factory anymore yeah part of that sponsorship business thing like you got to pay for the forklift and stuff and it's like oh well I can get something cheaper here now and you know it's either stay of business with that or go out of business what gotta stay in business right like it's hard it's the compromise of business is not easy what do you think the price of boards price of boards they've been about the same for ya ever we've had people on the show that have come and said yes the price of boards they should go up and say it's inflation and it's been the same and everything else this drink here and everything else is going up right what is your take on that do you I wish it would go up because I've been treading water for ten years so even the mouth but even the manufacturer so if you raised your prices right the brands have to raise their prices the retail price with the government and it's been starting to happen but a lot of times it's happening where the brands raising the prices but the suggested retail doesn't change and therefore the retailer gets now they could hit not a lunatic because they don't get the marginal right yeah so there's a little bit of a it's hard you know it's like you know in the world of businesses collusion you can't go do that you know but at the same time people have raised prices in the last year or two you know it's gone up a little bit you know you know General boards are cheap a skateboard is cheap you know entertainment for a kid compared to anything else right like you know the reality of skate parks are free and public the streets free like what do you need you know let me ask you a question though okay see see the typical skate shop board Yeah right you get it for what does that go for in this shop 35 bucks 40 bucks depends on I don't know depends on how competitive that market is okay because if there's a new shop that opened up that selling them ten bucks less then the established shop has to it apt until they get a lot of business or whatever right your boards are superior to those boards your boards are gonna last longer so you're kind of getting what you're paying for right I mean so me that buys a $35 shop board they may not be getting that quality right right they don't know what they're getting because in a sense there's not a even a brand standing behind it you know what I mean it's basically a woodshop doing an import manager from somewhere in the world is selling this to the shop and you know on eBay there this price and it's like that that kind of scenario right it's blind you don't know who you don't know that there's any integrity behind it right right you know with me it's like I know my integrity is my time I'm the one of the few factories in the world that make it be known now you still got to know that PS means PS sticks right hmm some brands say I wanted to say PS sticks some like Plan B boards have my signature on a professor Schmidt right it's it's the branding choice how they want to play that right hey but then the consumer reads into that and in general I've always sold stuff to the top of the market my whole career right because if you haven't physically worn out ten boards you can't tell the difference in between that chop board and this board yet you know maybe that's how you're not calibrated yet that's we got it physically we're out enough boards to be calibrated enough to sense it because it's that little right there it's not a huge gap it's not like like in 87 you went to the shop and you bought of Schmidt sticks board with a 15 degree nose or a pal border for three degree nose well the great team and all buzz yeah yeah yeah right drastic difference that sure right and the kids on the note I call this is what I'm taking up yeah you know but that's not the case anymore yeah now it's just a minut my new details the whole thing's fascinating building the boy now you would mention like you know Lacey Baker coming in PJ Ladd and you you just you use you said that you were working with Mike Vee today yeah and developing like a new shape so there were two new shapes we made two new Shen they were both based on shapes that had been in the past mm-hmm but one had someone he has you know enthusiasts for street plan in the street plant battalion so a battalion member John up I'd like to see that board with the nose like this so we'd print out the half template for the board and then we print that out and I scale it in Photoshop and then so we lay it down the table and just start to draw it out you know here's the wheelbase here's a nose and tail length how does this fit wider skinnier and then there comes a point where we end up with a 1/2 1/2 template that's 3/4 and think of particleboard I make it out of particleboard cuz it's easy to sand and shape and form you bend it easily no no no you're just looking for out the shape just to shame you to 2d axis like XY no no Z right like the mold is when there's a Z that's okay blank yeah you know and so then we do that and then I'll make a template with that so I'll drill out a a big thick piece of inch and 1/8 maple plywood that I make for templates sort of would the head cracks or knots or whatever works fine for templates okay yeah so I do that and then um pin it up and whole procedure and route one side flip it route the other side get it perfectly symmetrical you know up to this point how long is this how long does that take is that a half a day wears on two boards today and get him in four hours completed the process completed the process they're ready to run production I could he was well I could take the template to the factory tomorrow and make those two boards he was happy with it yeah now when Mike V comes in now he is he he are Mike V probably already has a blueprint in his mind is that true or are you guys working together he's showing me hey emails me something here's what the street plant battalion member made for this shape okay you know I asked him last week a what templates did wouldn't work from because if we work from an existing template then we might be using that tail and we might be using the wheel base we might be using the nose or tail or the nose shape right so by having that I have like these pieces right it might be I want the nose of this the tail of that but I want to change the wheel base to this well now I can be a lot more accurate when I have the template today i we did it of paper printouts because I didn't go to the factory last week didn't bring back the templates oh and then he gave me what he wanted and the factory sent me a picture of the template and I scaled it and Photoshop printed it out you know was something we made a while ago that didn't become production because someone had been stuck on and was a street Pampa John never wanted their short-nosed they they were trying to get back to the 80s but some they wrote in its like that right so good so so it's part of that revolved you can't let this reason why things evolved exactly so a lot of times I see it where they're sort of like are you trying to be historically accurate okay that's what I made for the mid 90's movie perfectly historically after sure okay okay was it the best rider for the riders now no all right okay and some brands out there do their history stuff that's historically accurate right and then you know square rails soft core you know all right no concave sucks you know it doesn't ollie good you know I'm great for a poser shot or a mall grab or some never know but I could take any board when someone comes to me if though I'll take usually take the board they're riding and modify it first so what don't you like about having a hard time in my tray flips to a couple trips when I go in the shop take the back truck off we drill it and modify and they try to look like yeah that's what I want so so what I'm saying is even an old board like that yeah if the holes were drilled right and things were positioned right mmm you can still pull it off so Mike becomes in very particular once is once a certain thing got it in mind works with you got the shape going and everything person like me comes in right just no knowledge of wheelbase this that or the other right how would we work together how would you start so the best way is let's look at your board might look at the current board that I'm writing or board you're riding okay you know you mind doing some manuals and Somalis in the parking lot it's crusty but okay yeah well what's not working for you right now is it too hard to pick up the nose or too easy to pick up the nose mmm okay and just some people be like they they they don't even know that but when they feel it like I'll have someone be like I'm like your nose manual isn't working right and like I don't count really nose manual anyways and an hour later they're still nose mangling around the parking lot am i fix that for you you're doing this song you nose mangling your tail manually just locked right yeah then it's like a down the parking lot around the corner of the building they come back so yeah I like it that way but they can't see it because it's just the way they skateboard every day right hmm you know and but the problem is too that if I make it more hyper you might have lost some finesse if I make it with more finesse you might have lost some hyper so what how do you describe finesse and hyper what would exactly this finesse mean you're a great example of the finesse generation right the map at generation a yeah okay is it more concave or steeper for power it's really more about the leverage from the chuckles to the bend and how easy it is to pick up okay okay yeah and then what truck brand you ride because where your axle sins within it okay it becomes part of it oh so I was saying with lacier there you know she's like why road manassas board on my capitis got these she's got different truck but can I take the math of the trucks put it in the wheel best she's like yeah that's great you know the math of the trucks already I missing general yeah okay Oh periodically I'll go in a shop measure a bunch of trucks and we just found out today that these are no it's not a 149 yeah well 137 I don't even remember what it was I can become a low if you tighten it enough the crazy thing about skateboarding there's adaptability everywhere right you know so for instance if you come to my shop when we modify your board yeah I want to watch you do the first trick or two warming up no no the first trick or two after the change Oh after the change just five tricks in you've already adapted to that change hmm okay cuz you adapt to a spot yeah there's a crack sure if pebbles there's sunlight giving me glare skateboarding is all about adapting you're adapting everywhere right every day yeah every day every time you ride your adaptive right you know so when your product then gets tuned to the right place yeah then your adaption is set right like that yeah I need to worry about that piece usually I mean myself I find the shape that I like the width everything and I've been riding that board for you know 70 years and I have guys that have been on lock for many years on the same thing and then some like every six months or a year earlier today I switch it up hey rub my buddy's board and I there was something I liked about it I know which board is it okay yeah okay well what trucks does he ride okay okay you know that bulls more hyper that he's in a different mold than your the molds would make a world of difference because that's the curves and the surfaces right so if Raj if I if he rides he writes tensors and magnesium's you know answer still lean out like ventures and thunders yeah so and I ride independence right so my goal your axles lean in now if I think when I say lean in if you look at the axle right here to the truck hole right okay so that's what really matters so so if you look at a thunder or venture is you look this way you'll see that the axles over here it's like above the bowl you can't get the wrench around the nut I hate that because it's that way right but it might not hang up where in any of you got this hangs on here right okay so you know depending on what your style of skating is and just so does your hanger click or hang when you feeble or k grind or whatever you're doing wherever you're at might be might be that your favorite spot right it just doesn't work good before a favorite spot it's great everywhere else but that hanger keeps on getting me in that you're like trying to curse the spot this is your truck why always blame it on your bolt I always blame it on my board it's never me well that I've heard that it never once or twice you know might be the color of veneer and a board might be red or yellow everybody's good thing but he's got this thing if Roger if I step on Rogers Bora I like this board I like it something about it you know and then but he rides tensors I ride Indies if I go to you and be like hey I like Rogers board there's something about it you good take translator yeah and translate it into Indies and you would dull the minutes yeah so sometimes I'll have priors writers kind of be like oh well something's changed I'm like yeah your trucks I didn't even tell me yeah I could come in here like they didn't say like hey I gotta come in I changed my trucks even though we've been through it and out for they know it well enough right you know it's like okay well you know now that I know that you changed right are you staying here well I'm not sure or maybe what about wheels went from fifty millimeters to fifty threes wheels are never gonna give you that drastic of effect yeah so first of all the difference for me in 50 millimeters and 53 millimeters is three right still a lot though for a wheel okay big different it's only half of that from the center of the axle to the ground okay okay so there's how much wheel your center of gravity raised cuz that's one and a half millimeters not three millimeters right that's one and a half right so that's like one ply and a board it's like a sixteenth really what plan a board is about is about one and a half million a half millimeters yeah sixteen to the Navy and those are round numbers that you know is this the true number or you giving me the 2x4 now it's really close but a sixteenth would be point zero six two five okay and the millimeter so if we go back to one millimeter it is change this thing over to metric so hard to get it to go like the tiny little small guy got it okay so it is point zero three nine five point zero three nine five it's such under point O for a millimeter caliber and decimal oh and okay yeah yeah that's right okay and for easy understanding that's about thirteen human hairs that's minuscule thirteen human hair stacked on top of each other thirteen yeah all right back color I don't know what yeah math gives me headache you know sometimes people wear up a millimeter or two out of the wheel but I don't even know it because it's their speed check oh yeah yeah means you're like words ridin crooked they're like this boards wacky or someone will come in and like other sports not working right I go put a ruler against the base place and I go yeah look at your truck sir no we're straight there's nothing working like frustrating for a skateboarder like when there's this board crisis I feel like I'm kind of in awe right now again and I don't but I went through a long time ago and I've solved it and now I feel like I'm in it again I could solve it yeah I was bored that made you last year solved it for that batch oh that was actually amazing he made me some exports like put some uh graphics on it and it was amazing I need to get more of those yeah well done Don just said hey can you make this I want to do this graphic and make it for Kelly to ride for an ad or something or whatever and I'm like yeah I'll make it happen it's like whoa what width it's like a seven and seven eight so I go okay Kelly some mr. generation I'm gonna put them in that mold and then when I see a temple you're like how are those boards so perfect for me well you're a skater from that generation the rides at wheel base in that mold simple as that you're telling me you could take whatever generation I'm from and design the perfect board for me without even seeing yeah well I can I can I can design what you were conditioned to grow up within right because you're conditioned right you're conditioned by who you hang out with you're conditioned by what's available in the shop this year you are conditioned by the tricks that are in the video that came out this year so if I wanted to get could you make more I got a number on ya the last 15 years I just type in the number ago that's what he likes about this board it's it's not the shape it's the mold because it's got a half-inch more wheelbase in his wheelbase or whatever it is right it's just math you know I'm just looking at the map and then trying to to put it in the right zone right and the more feedback I have so if someone Ollie's and mangles around all the more right what about a slappy guy like Roz fine to be an ollie guy it used to be he hasn't clipped his tail but it I mean even a slappy mat the everything everything matters manners he doesn't even know that he wants to short her tails and get to really doesn't even know it might not even know a rhyme for it backwards professor yeah you started to I have been for a while really and that but we gotta get you down this is the mold symmetrical there's a shape symmetrical okay so you liking the tail so what's happening is your nose is hitting sooner that's why I write in the backwards and that's a characteristic that you like and if you shortened it up and obviously with hit later at the higher in there right so like that angle you said on your board and like oh that looks weird cuz you looking at 80s born you're like that's weird it looks like rocket powers going straight up yeah that's funny um Lee screws gave me the mold that day one was Ryan because I he like I special move when he was I think almost whatever yeah and it feels like super flat yeah and for some reason I just [ __ ] loved skiing on board yeah but lately like the boards Marin Ryan I have huge tails and everything else and you can't find a good one oh yeah right well you can counteract it any which way so it can be counteracted by the mold by the tail length the wheelbase within the mold has a sweet spot for whoever you're trying to satisfy are you guaranteeing Roger a longer feeble grind on this I can probably guarantee a stable or get into it and then if your stable are into it you'll probably get more out of it right that's the reality you know but trying to understand where that stability issue is right that's right right you know and people don't want to hear when you tell them to change your wheels so I told you that that story about Darrell Stan right yeah for a couple years whenever I see Darrell he he'd been on lock on fifty threes for like I've been on 50 threes for years and I'd see him as a con 9:50 cheese today or I'm riding fifty fours the easiest way to change the way your setup works is change your wheel diameter that's crazy and it's the thing that people won't change like I'm stuck on this size and it's like you want to get on that hi hubba you think those small lightweight wheels are gonna help you right but you can't get high enough you need to put big diameter wheels on your board so it takes longer for the tail to hit your boards heavier you're gonna go higher up now you could also say I'm gonna put some eyes are pads on my board I want a ride risers I don't know I mean yeah yeah Cody Mack and Matt Berger ride riser pads and they're Street League level yeah part of that math of getting that zone in place right yeah so you can do it different ways but the easiest thing to do is change your wheels at the same time it's the hardest thing to do because change skater Yeti well your center of gravity changes and that's a very interesting thing and how you sense the ground and around you right so being an older skater I used to always ride riser pads my whole life and probably eight or ten years I put some big wheel wells on my board and started riding a riser pads with 60s I love it my low center of gravity is lower I feel the vibration through my board that when you have riser pads you get that dampening right you know and that dampening can be good or bad right for me I found out I liked it you know and that's what I ride you know now now I also took and had four identical setups with sixties 5856 fifty fours and rode am I used to have a ball in my backyard and in that bowl because it wasn't bird or anything I couldn't go any faster or better on none of the wheels would max it didn't matter you know so it's like I do tests like that all the time I'll set up multiple setups the thing that sucks is trying to switch up the last thing a skater wants to do is have a bad day right right and trying do new things can lead to a bad day of skating you know and it's a total mind but if you go in the mindset of like hey I wanna I want to achieve this today I want to do something new today you got to be in the experiment you have to be in the experimental failure and as a pro that's like I don't have to film a video this month I'm not going to a contest next week let's figure this out right I was just in the van for a month I'm worn out right now like you know it's like it's different for different people you know mm-hmm and that perspective I know I'd love to just come down there and just I bring my board and I just want you to watch me and just see what you see you know you could change my whole career you know I'd be out a night free the back you bring it back yeah there's no relevance here you guys I don't want to jump down some rails I just want to have there not settling for Manny land only you know we gotta get Chris back up on that stage dude that's where we gotta get ya West stage at the courthouse yeah can't get up on stage anymore he will I can't let's get some riser pads at least with yeah so no I'll try anything check out a thing if you google I did something my ride channel a couple years ago about how to ollie higher okay and riser pads this kid Spencer newsy hey Spencer he would do these YouTube videos you know with that great yeah okay and he was willing to be my guinea pig I'm like I can make you ollie higher you know and you know stacked up boards and this Matt yeah basically got him another board in height by giving him rides or pets but hip and Cole was never gonna let him have riser pads yeah and then he goes through the adoption of it but Google that anybody that wants to understand this leverage and wheel size or riser pads and how that fits there's a really good piece and I was super stoked when we did it but it was sort of like the kind of thing that they were like that took too much time to create for the revenue stream sure creates right that was that was a challenge so we actually filmed two episodes not only edited one and got one out oh well but it's online right now yeah I'll put the link in the description yeah check it out yeah Jack now I send pro skaters to all the time because I like now you've been through some of this go go watch this because then it will mean something can't I just ride bigger millimeter wheels without the riser pad yeah you could but your boards could be heavier okay see this is what I need the professor my ideas suck just keep my and then even part part of the diameter a wheel as well is that centre of gravity but it's also that feeling of vibration right the smaller wheel has a different residency to it get because that Energy's got a lesser distance to travel right right you know even the size of wheel how wide it is right oh yeah do you like to see your wheels stick out from your board or not see them a little bit okay little bit so the less you can see your wheel the easier boy flip oh the less you yeah because of the the leverage leverage basically the edge of the board is a lever and if you can't see the wheel then the leverage is better if you could see the wheel the leverage is less right so go back to the 80s you can see all the wheels hanging out all over the place and our progression wasn't happening they're not lipping their boards right right oh I used to have trucks that would stick out like Frankenstein because I thought it was a cert grinding surface yeah easier to get on a crooked grind or straight for that thing but then the compromise it's not as later this right so even the shape of your wheel if you ride a wheel it's got a big round radius your flip is gonna be slower if you make a ride one that has a sharp radius when it you're gonna put more energy in when it goes then it's gonna go more oh it's just math people like man I love this shape of this wheel they stick with the same shape just like a diameter right they don't know why nobody explained it to him because the people that explain things are too busy talking about egos to talk about substance what it's not like really thin wheels though what about I mean like a truck with a thin wheel yeah can see the edge of your board you could yeah you can get what Chris is asking for you can flip it or a grind I don't know yeah yeah no but I see some wheels that are like way more critical over there in the corner or some my board yeah the trunk of my know it's it's at home I got one over there but it's the size eight what do you mean the edge of the board so grabbed by you Kelly what's that one in the corner there okay take that stick right you know what I'm just gonna use it just as an example right just to talk to my fans and I said it was Coe would be right here the the energy to flip this board this board you can't see the wheels the trucks are narrow yeah see how easy oh yeah that's right right that's right yeah so it's gonna be easier to flip sure okay but if I put a wider truck on that so the riding surface of the wheel compared to the edge right yeah so the further the edges away from the riding surface the bigger Brij you have to flip it sure right okay now you still obviously gotta have your body in the right position and everything else has to be set up but you're framed right and someone with the skills can overcome any of that right you know that's really what being Prem is right you have to skill you gotta deal with that right you know so this you seriously so this is the easier board to flip now put some longer trucks on there's a whole thing more square wheel or a square wheels gonna have the riding surface out on the edge now right right it's gonna be harder to flip now whether it's enough to matter for you and your skill that's the situation right what about the board's flat like the concave is it easier to flip if it's I feel in my perspective I look at board width as a preference and I really find that concave across is really a preference and in general it's going up people who want more concave no no really and more concave makes a board be stronger okay but it also gives it a residency flex and come back flex and come back type of thing mmm let me see that board I'll explain I think maybe even seek but they're alien boards back in the day yeah calling Kate they were super steep yeah I love that yeah I love the steep I put chocolate get alien board put chocolate stickers on them no don't tell Rick or Mike okay so here's a little game so this is a gauge let me see I can't see it but ever says air I know there goes okay point six okay so which one's the home line let me just do it from life what is this this is a tool that I created a couple years ago trying to solve that puzzle called PJ lat wait a minute you invented this tool now that this is a little tool that I put on a table saw blade to tell the angle of the blade oh I just put some bigger magnets on us to tell the angle of the board right oh you're putting them on the bolts guys okay so so the magnets hold the bolts oh yeah so this particular board has a thirty two point eight degree angle this is very Manny Manny space construction because in general most pros now riding 35 to 37 now mind you that our fans sent us this board and claims that it was mark Johnson's board so at one time this is mark Johnson's but here's this little gauge so does it read proper right now 3.0 33.8 right so then if we go this way this was the nose you were doing right you're gonna do the tail right okay so here let me guess thirty two point seven thirty three point one because the tail is probably a little longer right a little shorter excuse shorter right no no and nose a little longer you don't live life of tape my cell phone keys wallet murder six and seven-eighths so nose is longer right this mold looks like it also could be steeper on this end yep but it also depends well here's where your steeper comes to look at the fingers of flat it could be shifted forward a hair where are your fingers all right now I can't really since so I'm sensing bolts so I'm sensing that the truck holes right and the fingers are land board so I got one finger absolutely in the flat right and this comes from pro skaters tell me I want more fingers a flat in the 90s oh yeah and they look at me now and go huh and then I Instagram I go can you pull the tape measure out and I'm like I always have my fingers with me everywhere okay but but here you can see I'm pretty much like one and a half one and five-eighths fingers to the center of the band okay but it's hard to even get that from a tape measure right to know what that is it's actually easier to use of the finger hmm have you measured your fingers do you know that well I know you know an inch the average width of a man's thumb is an inch and like some king somebody back five hundred or thousand years ago set that rule that was inches average width of a man stump let me see your caliper layer let me see this say say I wanna see if this is true right measure my thumb there I got big knuckles by the way okay we're going to eight nine that's the only thing I'm another Rock that's the only thing I'm going to allow you to measure human allow you to measure my thumb is nine four six okay Rogers Rogers nine nine - oh so it's a world thank God we're all safe I'm sorry I was focused on us no but the gap the gap in between that is very little right right a gap is very little so it's like it's you know it's calibrated within 5% you know I can't get the the lines in a tape measure to be accurate enough to get the five percent there's my fingers and you know as a I mean you let me see two fingers I don't even know what this means right that hole to the center of the bed right and you're about one in five eighths fingers the same as I was yeah my fingers are smaller than yours though not much I don't get it I need a I think I need to come down there and really get a professor Schmidt yeah well maybe we need to go to the stage in Santa Monica and I'll bring a drill and a couple tools and we'll just fix it online Wow live in sight because I don't have but it's my body that can't be long as I'm not there to help solve the puppets real easy to go well that's not solvable right I don't have the muscles in my legs glad you admit that be funny though I'd be a good I mean I would be down to try it right don't get all yet baby I think I could all yep it yeah you know how tall is open 24 inches I think if it 27 27 maybe yeah yeah it's like 27 I think hmm around there interesting right but it's still not a picnic table what is higher it's higher than a picnic table I think it's a little bit higher yeah a little bit higher yeah bye-bye of two fingers three fingers so if you want to understand the finger it's a flat thing on my Instagram look for hashtag fingers of flat and there's lots of stories but your hashtag in that okay and fingers of flat fingers of flat pretty sure if you check my Instagram you'll find it somewhere and then I always tagged it like the things that I I talked about triangle leverage is in there a bunch of times three napping fingers three a have fingers of flat that's a lot that's more than the one I'm telling you he's the Raj you should rush is the one who should get it no problem he's a picky mo'fucker man then I'll make it seem have you seen what you've been writing lately he wrote a toy machine board that was crazy shape what like super flat and always running to FA its board steepest [ __ ] he doesn't really care I think he cares a little bit because I working I'm Way more pickier than he is yeah way more yeah but that willingness to try and adapt right y'all yeah the learning is always the gap in between two things it's never the far end it's the space in between right so it's like you know when something doesn't work you know I always look at it and go like well 180 go the other direction right and then they'll sort of find the gap in between somewhere you'll close into figuring that out whatever it is we're glad you could help people or skaters find the stuff out you must out you I don't know what people would do it might have been different without me or it might have taken longer to get where we got I think I think it would take a lot longer I think we wouldn't be where we are right now without you the reality is having been from the East Coast and that the struggle to get to California or how hard you had to work to do it right and it gave you this certain awareness right I've seen it with many pros over the years you know that sort of we're willing to work hard enough to break that barrier it's not much of a barrier anymore it used to be a huge one right you know and that lets you look at things different you know I think we're just I think you know we're just given people the innovate and change and we went skateboarding was given you I lucky I found skateboard you know to tell you that you had a lot to do with where we're at right now a hundred thousand percent that's been fun amazing all thank you for that yeah but it still is gonna change the base effect the best part about skateboarding is you know what it is you're rolling rule you're rolling there's vibration through your feet maybe a little air on your face you're bellowing right like you decided what you ride long short wide fat plastic whatever right as long as you're moving and flowing right you decide where you're at all the freedom freedom of choice right you decide who you're at you decide where you're at who you're with where you're going where you're going what you're gonna do the ultimate freedom yeah that's the best part about skateboarding it's almost like that push in-between the trick that that like the trick is the pinnacle right but but the joy is that just fluidity you know that movement just getting there so that's that maybe that's been there ever since people took rollerskates on two by fours you know back you know many years ago you know forties and fifties that started you know but they had this you know the scooters that they sort of break the handle off the future right yeah like that kind of thing morality is that started you look how its taught how long it took the roller skate the four wheel quad skate was was patented I think it was 1856 by a furniture guy in New York City the what was patented the roller skate oh the rules got broken down to make the skateboard and then it took a roller skate company roller sports which is still in business in Illinois Wow not in California to make the world's first commercial skateboard Wow because people were taken apart their roller skates right so skateboarding started from innovation from the start brake a roller skate make a crate out of it the crate falls off I made a reproduction board last year and I've been searching when I'm locked in central California go to skate camp like barn sales and stuff I always had a hard time finding the right crate in this one day I was at a place and I've found a tall crate can I swap this crepe for that one she's like yeah sure no problem to go back to my shop took it apart nailed it glued it you know straighten out the nails fix they had to look err accurate right took some old pallet wood from behind my shop had been in the Sun for five years and made the board and the t-handle for it are you yeah and then I was riding it it's a band skatepark with the handles with the hands of presentation with some like I've got a turn for the first time oh no and I got crate bite great bite so before wheel buy it was crate bite yeah and the crate so the skateboard got created the story is that the crate got busted up but I didn't know it was because a crate bite until I experienced scrape by for yourself yes if you come down the shop you can ride this board metal wheels so you can get some crate bite in oh I'd love to get crate bite Wow crab bite it's incredible where do you think skating is gonna be in ten years here ain't going anywhere I mean when I was a kid they're like oh it's a fad it's like the hula-hoop it's going away right and right and so he realized that skateboarding in the 60s went through that phase okay and had a high and then a low and it did in the 70s again right it's a name and it's always you know why innovation Bordeaux a little bit but but what it really is is the first half of the last century people were born based on Wars and recessions so you'd have these huge generation swings and then a family would have three to six kids and they would have them in their 20s okay and they changed you know we're you know in the modern world now it's like they'll have one two three kids and they'll have them in their mid to late 30s right you know when they're prepared to be a parent and I got income for toys and but is that is that cycle keep on even itself out right we when we came out of the 80s we felt a slight bit of it in the start of the 90s but not much and then it's just evened out all the more ever since right it's been very constant from the 90s on yeah and that's because the generation cycles the boom and bust that people being born and economics and wars and all that type of stuff they stopped affecting what's happening that's really what got skateboarding to be established now as we go in this Olympic mode it's gonna be a whole new thing ya know it's gonna be those that weren't paying attention you got to realize in the 60s a skateboard was a surfing related thing generally coastal right on a roller skate Illinois company in Illinois I made it and other people made it as well right and Chicago trucks were out there and it's like you know that happened in Mid America got the bites of it in the 60s you know but in the 70s when it really got around everywhere right you know and then in the 80s it really became you know the everywhere was right you know up up into the 80s you could live and not even know a skateboard existed true right we're now now a kid you can't that's not the case I can remember years ago we were working on our Costa Mesa skatepark I'm talking like 20 years ago and City Council meeting and the the viewpoint of the council in the age and this one little reporter girl this was like 28 or something new and newspaper reporting and she just could not understand the perspective of these older people because the first time she ever went out in the neighborhood someone came by and skateboard whether she chose to Rose it or not right but that old person on the City Council at that time didn't choose to ride it didn't choose to accept it didn't choose to acknowledge it so the acknowledgment that's gonna happen with the Olympics is gonna be interesting just as what's happening with the public skate parks right right and then the male-female dynamic in the sixties skate female was a big thing in skateboarding in the in the 70s 80s 90s it was there but very very miniscule sure and as we got into 2000 was it's like I can't go to the skate park you're not scalable girls oh yeah it's a whole different thing a free Olympics happens that's gonna happen more think I see you know countries out there having their their Olympic team and traveling around the world and go into events and you know you see that like you see like Eric Kirkwood's taking those kids from Taiwan all around the world skate camp buddy and he's like him he's he teaching kids how to skateboard and now he's the Olympic coach for that country and they're everywhere house like oh my gosh how do you think that since the Olympics are happening how is it gonna affect the skateboard industry like where you work where you make skateboards well I think in the activity I don't think it matters okay if you want to jump a fence drain a pool skate an alley it's not gonna change any of that okay if you decide you don't want to go to skate parks and all you want is a mani Pat that's all you want right so you still get individual you still get to make your own choice right okay but do you think it'll hell or how do think it will affect your business I hope it could be positive but the reality is that ever since 2000 the skateboard industry has been a commodity yeah okay so it's part of that establishment thing I remember very much like mm - like y2k and all that excitement of like what what's gonna happen you know and it's like I remember watching X Games that year and seeing that it's now five years in and it's in control of the media of our industry it's it's in control of our public perception our industry didn't want to acknowledge it probably still doesn't want to but they are right it's true now and that that viewpoint but then also then that changed it now public companies got in the industry and you know sure that the the commoditization of things you know right business was easy till 2000 in Mike's perspective yeah ever since it's been really hard oh okay I don't know what you know yeah the reality is as a consumer you know you buy things and you vote with your dollars right so what are you gonna vote for you know something that that that you appreciate mm-hmm and that might be a branded Pro a graphic it might be a board from this factory it might be whatever piece it is you know you have to have an emotional buy or not spending that money right man decide we could talk for four more hours about all it's crazy but nobody else mately nobody knows right yes skateboarding is just on this path sadie's is going as an activity is very healthy sure okay as the business is very challenging you know you see retailers you know retail as a business place is challenging just like trying to make web and sales and that interface and that customer service vehicles challenging right everybody's kind of scrambling yeah right without knowing and you would think that with all the technology would just get easier and easier it's harder and harder you know I mean what the barrier to entry is so low right yeah I mean it's interesting because I you know we can we can make a skateboard company right now yeah put it on Instagram get a logo do all that we got boards we're good I mean it's happening everyday right happens everyday and there's nothing better to you than local pride sure so a shop board is local pride in that skate shop right yeah a little brand is local pride that regional brand that he's gonna just try they're only gonna sell it within the distance of what they can drive to contests and stuff oh yeah because they'll go to that town way more than the girl team's gonna visit all right order leaves it once every couple of years you know it's like they're they're up to every contest you know it's like that's really cool and healthy but it's healthy for him but really it's just his hobby right because most skateboard business it's a hobby yeah not really a business the public company side well that has to be business sure no sure but so many little brands is really a hobby you know and it's Lena and there's hard to graduate from a hobby to a business and then be careful for what you look watches right right you know it's like Mike B works out of his garage he doesn't want to have a forklift or a warehouse yeah you know when he came to me five years ago and said I want to start this brand and I'm like okay well you know mike has just got to make it flow you know like you know he's like give me 500 bucks like I'm gonna give you credit for five minutes you know give you hundreds and 100 more next week in a hundred next weekend okay pay the bill and turn it around right all right but it was a case of but still what he does is a hustle yeah you look at how he has to run his social media and be on it and you know it's a personalized skateboard with his signature that you're getting totally you know - man that perspective right and you can't buy that somewhere else nobody else is giving what he's giving right so true yeah great guy yeah he taught me Street plants alright yeah I tell them the crop walk should check it out I saw this isn't registering for surpri to make it through the whole video okay so now we got New Deal 30 years you guys just went you just guys just came out with product what like a month ago yeah right you've been promoting the whole 30 year thing my new deal story yeah amazing we sort of started working on it a little over a year ago and putting the pieces together you know to do the third year relaunch you know Steve sort of been pushing on me for years hey let's do it I'm like ah I kinda need a distraction for my real job eventually we got a distraction for the real job but it's been a lot of fun it looks like you guys are really having fun we're having fun with it but the consumer has to vote with their dollars to make the business is true you know and there's multiple stages to that business right so you know a shocker to a lot of people the Heritage stuff I'm not building it or selling it what do you mean Wendell's Alton VSM oh you're not making the board's not the heritage line oh okay well I got you okay but we didn't want to go try to develop a system to deliver to every country around the world so all the people that appreciate it that brand and people were like I'm gonna miss it I'm gonna miss it I need know there's a whole distribution system we'll get it out there you know yeah you had to pre-plan it don't you have a distribution system no I just make board oh you just oh you watch it I don't I don't I have I've been out of the branding distribution thing for many years right we didn't really get into that but so like when a giant wind down the 90s you turned you know that you're just manufacturing focused on Magnatech makes sense yeah you know so so you had to go with somebody else for the social you should we did that to get it every crook and cranny around the world but also making a business deal that works with licensing and payments and and pre payments and deposits and so we could build the system right so we basically got someone else's system to let us build a system okay okay that's what it comes down to now we have another product line called WTF that's just been shipping here as well in the last month that's boards that I build mm-hmm and it's a line of nine boards that are all all very different yep from 12 inch wheelbase to 16 inch wheelbase from seven and a half wide nine and a half wide like some of it being very like norm eight and a quarter popsicle too - not norm right like all of it you know but this is one of them over here right at 30 years that's my founders model founders model okay yeah Wow it's amazing era hast gonna come out with a partner I'm not sure yet but they've had a great meeting with Armando Oh Amanda loves what's going on he's just busy in life yeah and can't get into anything right now yeah I know I interacted with him a couple years ago and that was sort of surprised me starts I couldn't get him to respond but then when he finally just like like I just I love what's going on there I'm totally cool with it all it's amazing I just can't get in the middle of it right now yeah because we're doing 30 years it's 30 years for three years in a row okay so people like well I want that just and dryable well that's not we're doing 30 years ago now yeah okay so it's part of the the the excitement of it is it's gonna continue to roll out right so you're gonna see these series continue to roll and then some will be like this heritage series that just shipped yeah there's another heritage series same shapes was a different twist right so like I made all the shapes for everything and I had to interface with the other factory too to get it right with their systems you know and change the shifts and the drilling and the double holes okay all the pieces to get everything right so you're saying it was the three exciting years at the beginning that right it's another three exciting year it's a brand basically went into I don't know 2000 or 2001 but but honestly after Andy left it was a me to brand and it was in business to be in business it wasn't generationally relevant it wasn't exciting the market you know right now I could say that but then when when things came out Instagram someone was like I can't wait to get my New Deal lobster board and me and Douglas like oh that was the worst but everything means something to everybody ever swords your firstborn so right now we're focused on that first three years awesome and you'll see you know every six months will be some more stuff coming out a WTF line will will continue to come out as well and build and that's only available like in 30 shops around the world and and online how's the reception so far good they're getting paid lots of fun but you know people gotta vote with the dollars - this is true I get work yeah I want to vote with the dollars as a consumer like you wanted to make wise choices right and you you hopefully voted with your dollars to get the car you got or whatever you have in life right you know ed phones whatever those microphones yeah right I mean when we went to the Art Show yeah crazy turnout this is pat crazy I didn't get in I waited like four hours outside oh is crazy it blew me away yeah I almost turned around and went home I gone out of the lines were two lines down the side of the block it was insane like you know that was all Andy's vision for it and the collectors that are out there that loan doesn't people right right but but the whole the the culmination of all that right you know and and Shepherds influence and Andy's relationship with Shepherd in the art world right and Andy's sort of like this mysterious guy right he's the pros don't walk out at the top and yet he didn't wait for it to dwindle he was just busy doing yeah yeah life life like I'm engaged with this I'm gonna go do this right you know and so his art was sort of the same way you know and then he would do these commercial projects and you know it was part of like leading a lot of that skate art movement in the 90s and then he got into being business guy up for ten years he's been doing business stuff nobody even saw his art successful but it yeah yeah yeah yeah so he wasn't playing that game right so it's like so now and he's playing the game of like celebrate the past and enjoy it you know right and still it's like for all of us which is the part-time project yeah well I'll tell you something it's it's it's incredible because it you know what sometimes companies oh yeah we're doing some reira leases and just kind of put it out there you guys are like you guys are going in you know you guys are really doing like art shows and just rad stuff you know you're not just like hey here's a couple boards hope you guys buy it you know you really you're drilling the story re-releasing videos - right yeah yeah so there's a DVD now that just came out it had a little bit of a false start with some problems but now it's out and it's got the promo video 1281 useless wooden toys okay and then a bunch of extras so there's some edits where Andy's doing a voiceover of his part of you know sale or Chris hauls doing a voiceover of his part well was this place this thing I did a couple things in there there's one about the history of video formats because I had to dig out the masters and go deal with all that right and you know my my encyclopedia of knowledge from up to new deal and building new deal and all that right on there's another interview that actually talks about the noodle videos and how we sort of got there you know because when Rocco's office moved when the team manager moved out of my woodshop unreal productions moved in they were in the front office honestly woodshop and I knew Don Hoffman well already and Dom was always like what do you think Paul what do you think Paul cuz I was the generation and oh yeah his older right oh you know so it was always had that awareness but also like oh we can't go there that's way too expensive yeah Roger I think that's a your shape right there bro I think you'd like that get up yeah we get Roger board oh yeah real people say vote with your cash rush no it's incredible like I said you know skateboarding would not be where it's at if it wasn't for you you know and your innovation and your hustle and your drive it submit it's incredible you know yeah thank you I'm lucky I pulled it off it's an keep I'm wondering like when are they gonna call me a phony and oh yeah I'm not gonna get to play this game anymore I remember it was business is hard when I moved my factories Tijuana I throw like I'm gonna pull it off or not yeah am I gonna become a FileMaker programmer oh yeah big time yeah people are mad about it it's like well do you want me to be gone just survive yeah that's what people don't understand about it they don't realize yeah that part of it I remember I did an interview with Olson produce so just go like is that any of you gonna come out been a year and a half and she's like what were mad at you because we're moving to Mexico Oh God reality is was like okay well I'm just adapting because that's what I've done my whole life daddy died right that's like and then they ran the interview that's amazing yeah it was interesting because in that era so much of the industry was manufactured overseas with a total lie nobody nobody said hey this is made here right and we're just gonna sell you lesser product and you're not gonna know any better or you know that's just the reality of it like this the consumer got duped the skateboards in the the 90s we're way better than the skateboards no mm right but the purists knew because they're the purist no yeah but it's sort of like that that hot pressing so in the in the 80s 70s and 80s skateboards were hot pressed and the other big brands were still hot pressed in the 80s I was cold pressed because you know it's like if they board the trunk right like you know the desert out there where there's no trees there's a reason why there's no trees in the desert right Wood doesn't like it when it's that warm right so when you HOT press the skateboard it's like hey you got this great filet mignon you wanna do it in the bar who you 20 minutes and make it really great put in the microwave for two minutes yeah okay so that's what it's like right and the the board's that are hot pressed in general they have a glue that's very crystalline in nature because that's how they make the process work okay so they closed the press they give it a bunch of heat they get the glue to turn to glass take it out of the press doesn't warp it's good it's got enough glass and it's not warp right yeah then when you ride it you pick it up yet while this thing's stiff well it's pretty nice good see you ride it and it's like it breaks down so quick mmm right and the pop goes away so fast oh you know because basically the each time you land a trick that energy it's dissipating to that and how do you coal press so cold press is basically the mold is it's just called refrigerated no no just real temperature press would be the right way oh okay it's not hot press but room temperature oh I thought you were feeding in like and you know some type of coolant no okay you could do that in a hot mold if you heat it at first and I cool that second but you'd still have to have that crystal you tried dry ice mold no I have a side that you got some people just thought of that could be something good it tried to be urethane molds back from the 80s yeah hard to control those shrink-ray it was really really happy block a year think about shrinkage is the worst this is - this is fun I had such a great time like I said I I think I have to watch this I have to watch this episode like three times there's so much information it's incredible Thanks I like to share I always like to share you know it's part of my my mode you know it's like you know sort of when the lab coat came back on for me was you know sort of in the Schmidt stick Sarah's right it was like I was in the background doing business and then yeah I would give tours of the factory in the late 90s and people would go you know it was business people so it'd be like hey you know mystics this and that and it's like you know I put a lab coat and people like yeah you know they they related it right then I literally wrote this essay of my factory tour and how we make a skateboard how trees grow and how all this happens and then at the end I turned that into an educational program called create escape that's right this takes place at schools cost North America there's a power tools version for woodshop industrial arts some non power tools version for our class math science yeah sort of fifth grade and up and they make skateboards and they learn about the relevance of map science ecology biology physics engineering artistry cuz a skateboard doesn't exist if all that doesn't collide together and do you physically travel to these schools and teach them or do you know get help now I have a video on a curriculum and the teacher runs it they get a 40-page Maggie oh well twenty pages of skateboard homework because it'd be expensive highway this is true now do you supply like is it making skateboard supply kitt use a deck only deck oh yeah of course it's our program they're cut out they have to sand the edges round and smooth yeah if it's if it's a woodshop program they get to design the template the same template I use a pros in my workshop well same system and design their own shape there might be a mini schmidt coming up baby I'm trying to develop that in a sense because back when I started it after doing a factory in China and seeing the the how well the copiers copied oh yeah they didn't know what they were doing and I wanted to try to give something back like it was it was like there's nothing left to hide anymore Yeah right there's nothing left to hide but before then it was sort of like a high to keep it secret the trade secret yeah and it sort of just went to the point who cares it's it will pass that now you know it's really about how to share and educate yeah open source yes get kids involved in a sense yeah so anybody wants to get crazy skate going in your community just go to the website crit escaped org schools Boy Scout troops after school things anywhere where kids are learning it's amazing and that's the cheapest deck will ever get yeah only 15 bucks attack and the kids at school got a raise 20 bucks sandpaper art supply shipping right but they got to work for it you know can we order what was three they can go with me you and Kelly maybe just come to shop make it was okay that's a better they like some cans outside and go make it happen you know what was it Rogers recycling what was it you're talking about magnesium rails this has been incredible I like I said we could probably we should probably do a part two all the time told you now bring you back think about stuff yeah come visitors should come to a on location episode for your other show awesome whole crew yeah if you're ready to get a factory tour yeah well if you want to go in Tijuana go all that way we can do that let's do that you'd blow Justin's mind he would know what to do on there yeah that'd be so funny to watch yeah when people come down they get blown away for sure ya know just how it happens right it just keeps on moving it's a machine you know it takes a lot of people as I said by everybody I've ever had the opportunity to interact with right thank you guys appreciate it you know and same thing with my factory operates with those people that are conditioned by that environment but ice I'm a result of them because I couldn't do what I do if they didn't do the part they do right takes an army it takes the team yeah that's what's been interesting about the New Deal thing is that that Steve's progressed so much in business and Andy's progressed so much in business like we're all all have this experience now like if you had that experience thirty years ago it's like that that's been the funnest part about that told him listen yeah you know where Steve and I had work together like you know 15 years ago but Andy I hadn't been you know we've gotten a skate camp a couple times and stuff like that he was off doing is he was off yeah businesses building businesses makeup apps and stuff like that crazy yeah we need to come down we need to come down there do a little segment maybe like I said you got it you got to come back in the future and just rap out with us some more because yeah I think I feel like three four hours isn't even cutting it you know I feel like we need more time well I got a lot to share yeah I'd like to share I always have you know I used to do a column and Transworld back in the 80s called technically speaking yeah oh really hard before you skateboarded might be a lot I don't know 81 I ran I ran like 88 in 290 and then as we start a new deal I was so busy with that but then they went to chew it and I think it was 89 they went to monthly and before it was bimonthly it was like I could sort of handle it right like the stories and I did stuff about like ramps wheels trucks wheel bases races you know all kinds of stuff you were like I've always had a teaching thing as a whole other lives kind of in your system it's in your DNA it's in my DNA yeah you know it's like I get to do this really cool thing with the Smithsonian called in escape oh yeah an escape and that's been a fun program that started I don't know seven eight years ago and it was interesting going to Washington DC this Missoni and it was almost like it's just weird and like they're like our job here's the American history machine museum is to document American culture in skateboarding's part of American culture and I know right so it's a very interesting thing how they look at that you know and how they look at innovation because skateboarding is just innovating every day all the way through you know you you don't you donated one of your boards to this yes I had this yardstick I wrote your disease and we're not when they went to do the events are like will ship everything out like well I want to skate it both you turn it in you can't skate it I'm like you can't take I'm bringing this there and I brought it and it was go skateboarding day skate down the hill from Palace to Pulaski yeah and then basically no cuz it had a mini ramp outside so skating in a lab coat you know I had ceremonies Tony Hawk donated his first state board in that ceremony and and donated stuff in right so that was cool but we've done I don't know probably seven or eight events over the years you know and I've had this whole collection of old skateboards and I sort of teach the history of how we went from no griptape you know to rubber grip tape with silicon carbide to aluminum oxide excuse me one of oxide then silicon carbide how that affects your whole body yeah right the whole sport the whole progression right you know and that's just that part right and then there's you know boards I've got these error accurate boards that Neal blender did the art on the set that I have now cuz when I did the first set we donated in the Smithsonian then they would let me use them at the next time right right like nah I can't skate I'm that's in their collection now yeah so Lance did the art on the first set and then Neil did the second set and I keep on taking these around to events I ask them just to give me what's your impression of the era right you know so they did different art for 60s 70s 80s 90s and then really since the 90s you know we haven't really had progression the naked eye can see sure there is progression blues have gotten better cross been orientation like their stuff always going on but to the naked eye it's the same skater kid right huh no wonder haven't seen anything change in 10 years yeah it's so refined I mean as much as you want to say hey let's let it change it's so refined I mean you know things that are better it's like oh yeah someone sets their down on his when I posted something I liked so great the kingpins don't break all the time anymore you know and it's like when we got holo kingpins and axles and lighter trucks yeah you know that have improved that side of it tire urethane formulas have gotten better better and better so it's it's constantly changing but like you said for the naked eye you don't really notice right unless you're purist those purists out there they know yeah yeah Roger that they're using better urethane now oh yeah everything he's better or better processing right it can be that and I kid me not even raw materials could be processing for instance it's so incredible no thank you so much for coming by yes has been benefi mazing yes experience very informative yeah thank you I think the whole stuff about the board the dynamic of that whole thing a lot of skateboards weirdly enough don't know about that they don't know and they weren't the again because of the marketing is about brandy and it's not talking about it yeah you figure out what you like you go through a bunch of stuff and a bunch of time to get there you know and that kind of thing you know usually trying to educate the popular the the public is for a brand new product right that nobody's really seen and then that company has to go in and educate the public why you should buy this skateboards have already been established there's no reason why a company should be like this is why you should buy my product it's almost a waste of time for that company yeah well it's it's a shame to say you know sure brands don't build product their branding companies you know in my era I built the Schmidt six boards I was the company that made the product that you bought right right and it's just a different era and I'm not saying that's right or wrong it's just the way the world changed right like like their manufacturing moving to Asia and stuff and all the frustration over that right well our government didn't have any protection airy walls someone's trying to make some walls now you know can I even have more expensive skateboards because of that wall yeah right but the rowdy is that if you go back 200 years ago you know and the Industrial Revolution in the United States was stealing all the manufacturing from Europe right like like things move things change right mm-hmm no as much as I like manufacturing I love doing it I love making things yeah yeah yeah that's your heart and soul man yeah right then your DNA yeah Poland build totally lies there crazy stuff happening from going to Mexico back to the US now no no no I mean that you know the the political landscape obviously has had its highs and lows in the last two years with that right the reality is that Mexico is one of our largest trading partners mmm Mexico and Canada are and they're in the middle of that new deal to work it on there and we have fair business relationships with Mexico and Canada hmm but the number two trading partner being China it's unfair relationship right it's not like hey you buy this I'll buy that right I like I know it's just like hey let's just take it all you know you know when I went to build skateboards in China when I found out that the United States and Canada did not restrict the movement of hard maple logs I'm like how do I win they got my raw material the raw material comes from my continent in the whole world hard maple only grows in the Great Lakes region of North America oh okay yeah and our governments aren't you know they're like sure you can have our stuff go for it all the jobs with it right right but lumbers moved around the world for when they were massed on the ships lumber moved around how to get teak to Europe how'd you get you know mahogany there mmm you know like it's been it's been a traded commodity right for a very long time so how do you reverse it right and obviously the current political landscape is is trying to reverse it but in a very rough way yeah a little cheese it's it yeah it's it's very interesting you know our politics can affect skateboarding yeah well I think it will be the piece that raises the price of skateboard is going to be politics oh that's great tried to try the hemp dry ice I think that could be a yeah emphasis are we clear it's a grand yeah it's a great fiber strongly try it I consider it nature's fiberglass it's not abrasive to tooling it's fabulous to work with the dry ice I think there's some component there you should try I don't know dry ice kind of like not not cool use it's kind of sketchy it's just dry nice thank you yeah and it will make your drink all scary oh yeah yeah Halloween and it will disappear hey let's make a disappearing mold a great idea to be listen this has been incorrect we gave you some 9 club stuff to take home only if I give you what I got my back will make a fur trade weird fair trade yes however however I found out I left something at the shop oh well that's ok just having you here I'm I have to come back it's our present part Oh perfect I still have parts Kelly will you grab Paul some 9 club stuff of course exhale double X double XL we have double X Oh Raj I might need to check orders ok you guys saw some stuff this weekend yeah but I love the enthusiasm people had for your show and what it's about and they want to back it like I'll see people for sure attacking it right like that's the whole thing boat with your dollars right yeah so vote for what you want you know make sure that you're you know getting what you want out of life in this world when you spend your dollars I've totally he probably worked hard for him right yeah in supporting what you love you know supporting the people yeah it's a like I just say Baker just came out with their full-length video an hour and 20 minutes yeah it's like they just gave you a free video you know why don't you go support them go buy their boards go buy their clothes like they just handed you this this like like a $40 VHS tape right exactly vote with your dollars in exactly I love it yeah we were considered like moving your manufacturing you like the Great Lakes region no even though I lived in Wisconsin as a kid why would you do that be close to the tree closer the trustor trees yeah there's a there's a hard thing in sorting so like I paid a bit of truckload of wood here every week every truckload you're getting wrong what you're getting big I'm getting veneer in sheets oh yeah okay and then I cut it down and it will all be dyed colors when I get it oh do all that oh it's already died though yeah can you order different colors or get yeah yeah but you gotta buy truckload quantities okay so that's part of that hard to make you skateboard you can't go buy I want to buy ten boards worth right right right and it's hard because I always I'd be able to crazy oh well tell me that's it I don't have a system for that mmm took me a lot of time and money to build that creative skate system yeah juice isn't worth the squeeze right yeah it's one of those yeah yep that's a good analogy for sure yeah so we're gonna do that right Thank You Kelly look at this huh all right first of all first of all the professor thank you and look at this alright thank you so much [ __ ] what you guys this is incredible I love your expression of skateboarding enthusiasm right who relish here is our alright krob mug I likes was a a Muska graphic there are fans goddess graphics turn that into a great graphic first manufacturer in China a reality of the business world right don't tell them they might have sublimation printed it here sometimes I have it came from yeah the mug is from China I printed here there's a nine club double all right good deal it's the site long sleeve you think our sidebar print Oh long sleep - I like it um oh oh it's wet this is our it's gotta get a little chilly yes sir I don't take it thank you so much Wow course the 9 Club hoodie there we go so double act good deal the other day I was going like I need some more hoodies this poster notes because right now it it except that wearing goodie not only that I have another special oh do you have some let me give you this first glasses say yeah I think I know what that is pair of shoes yeah it'll pop up what size are you 10 million no 13 whoa way off this is a Nixon watch that the good people over there had Nixon thanks Chad they have their you know Chad yeah vaguely he they have their own design design your own watch we got online we designed her own sentry watch that's cool the whole colors did the thing and we engraved your name on the back there in episode number Wow cool look at that we could have fit one Saturday for who couldn't put 174 I hope you don't mind his job I'm great I wanted to put the professor in there but I guess it's crazy you go online and you just do the second hand the basil there's an office and procedure behind that that's our websites were 74 I'm gonna order one for myself and can someone make that same one if they wanted to like that one there make the same [ __ ] I don't think I can be able to find the orange with an orange is special man oh wow my Santa bag along I think we got it okay so we just easy you put on a Santa hat Santa sack right Santa sack I don't know words here go ahead okay I liked it I will it's good luck it's a good look for it thank you thank you know there you got who's the kid in estimate six and seven is that a relative it was my girlfriend son at that time okay it was Todd I had to go find a Christmas tree and in September and all the decorations and everything to make it happen kids little II got this skateboard for Christmas that year one of the best-selling boards no way Wow this arrow board that board didn't yeah it did really really well put a mildly been playing the Christmas thing for a while you know anyways I got a couple boards so you guys can decide which ones you want a ride look at this which one's maybe one of your fans or two want us put this weekend or something I don't maybe a question contest or something if you know that right look at that so this is okay what is this oh look at the rocker okay so we're gonna explain skateboards here right so all the Smith sticks boards were rocker okay the first year New Deal was rocker and Rocco said rockers yet really cuz end up in the goal of finesse it didn't pause well at that point okay okay because of progression rails are needed for a reason things are needed for a reason right like necessity so so Rocco set the tone that it's got to be flat and a year in a new deal like made new molds and made it flat across here still in general my boards do have a ever slight about a rocker because you can take that rocker and just put your body weight on it and it it flattens out so then but then the minute you jump off your board your board wants to jump at you because it's tension right so we're managing the tension like you know so this board has a lot of rocker so by rocker you're talking about I can go from the nose and tail and rock it right yeah right so a surfboard has rocker right some some normal boards you go with you rock the rights you're walking rocking the length so this so this is my dimensions that I like to ride mixed with the the New Deal spray can shape which was a hybrid board back then a foam fiberglass bumper board so it was like the the legacy of Schmidt sticks going on a new deal in that case right got wheel wells in it cuz you know will bite sucks that's true okay why they're the wider the board the morning they will all right bye great bite yeah it's a good board so there's that one yeah now you're only five rush here's aunty house founder board this one's eight and five AIDS okay that's every boards in a different mold but here here you could sort of see the normal we just barely got any rocker to it right barely well can rock it left to right right you'll rock it left to right you know but that that's more like a modern rider board this is a eight and five-eighths I think it was fourteen and a half inch wheelbase it's a blend of Andy's old shape with a popsicle so it's got hints but it's still like a modern rider super function love it okay here's the super flat yes it's 1993 this is 7.5 I saw the other day you mentioned oh they had a custom press or a custom mold right well when that brand started it was pretty cool when they spiked came to my office and he's like yeah we're starting this panel I knew the crew either hung with but he couldn't he like he can't reveal very much yes and I gave him some samples so here's a new mold I made I've been making molds trying stuff in and I couldn't satisfy anybody in the giant crew so I made a mold from my perspective but what I think skateboard he needed at that time those goes there like oh this is great this is right on ya you know look at this board lousing well what sizes day seven and a half yeah awesome so we have a mold exclusive for them for you now that a lot of other people use it oh but it wasn't really known of that yeah pretty much the first I bet girl the first ten years of girl yeah so in that era oh okay alright what else you got so this one's they're so useless wooden toy shape again this is like a modern rider popsicle eight-and-a-half board you know oh look at that but here you can see I've set this down okay so this is probably that that it's a rocker right yep I can press this out oh yes he would just say it doesn't much body weight but the minute I come up it comes so it's about energy returns so when I got the skateboards thinner when element feather-light started in 98 it now became this this action-reaction thing you know because now the board gives back right and that's that liveliness that you sense and deal with pop you sense when when it's gone right you know I see a quick question real quick yeah so I noticed I got a lot of like yellow stain board remember there's always be like a little bit of green like droplets and ice show the veneer so this could have been pressed against a green bottom that was next to it okay and the whole because it's breathing and paint it's just doing a little bit of that all right looks like the side a little the dye is not locked you notice if a board like if you grind your tail down and you get it wet you'll see the dye run yeah it's like boot color yeah toy I see it's not green right there I just remember always my yellow board and always like a little green gene sometimes I'm like well yellow yellow was picked as a color for New Deal when we started it and is Gormley some boards out they had a yellow top was like guys we just got do yellow tops for down because it just says the brand yeah my fail that dollar anyway of the board not just another popsicle now yeah Kelly you might want to come check this out cuz this shape I look a little familiar not a graphic so here's three other different graphics ways but it's that board used really yeah I'm an employer you are so now whether those guys you go let you keep three years they're gonna have one let me see see Mikey Chris - Chris see look at the fingers a flat on that thing that's got a good two things right let me see the thumb doesn't cradle in there the fingers just really crazy right they'll change right No thank you that's really really cool - please 0.875 Chris hey seriously you should try one I think yeah - chocolate sticker on the bus oh yeah all right Santa Schmidt is not done Oh what is this Mike B was the first one to get one today yes he'd been here and with the second in my shop supposed to get this on I the second okay now these are custom-made one-of-a-kind coaster protect this table with pork here look at cuz it came all the way across the ocean focus the focus guys made this right yeah yeah so I see the interaction amount on Instagram with all the makers that are remaking skateboard stuff is just amazing yeah now notice there is a coffee cup version yep oh that fits me Wow and then there's the beer version right or what you drinking over there now you're drinking both so they're not perfect you see some air bubble I'm trying to develop a process for this but you know easy I just didn't have enough time to work it all out that's the whole thing like even that the finish on the outside is a hand rub water-based polyurethane and then the insides epoxy so that it can sweat and not damage it right and then the cork obviously is to protect your table MIT made the yeah look at that I might even made the book board the senior table I don't know true actually yeah it's so some of some of the makers will send me pictures of the lasers you know when they're making stuff is made with that so cool I know this is kind of maybe this weird sounding but like you can you tell what board George by looking at the side of it like the not necessarily because it's the the making of lambs can be different right yeah yeah like a Brandel aside the more colors that died but near the more money it cost to make okay so the brand will decide how much dive in ears are gonna put in the board you know and sort of three is the standard good but to is acceptable some people do one some people do for okay and in general the long grains are died not the cross grains because the cross currents are thinners are more fragile well the dying process is so easy we've done it but you just don't get the same yields out of it is there you we've talked about this before about I was just saying earlier the yellows like oh I feel like I get more pop with yellow for some reason is there any truth behind any of that like is there a new veneer xan different colors that being like is the color active like that could affect it anyway even even with like the nanotubes as effective managers or like or like the weather or something like that could a certain color let's stay on the the color veneers is there any truth to them being I have never signed typically justify that in any way or form I've had it asked wondered curious I mean red sucks right for a couple years I made read-only boards for scheckler and he was out winning contests with it right so it's like it's really your own thing it does go back to nanotubes so that's how we got that dye into that wood right so the veneer is dyed in an autoclave so this process started for skateboards in 1986 it was a veneer mill in Rutland Vermont called Rutland plywood and they started developing this process and they sent it to us and tailored ikema got it oh so NHS and Powell didn't get it for years because there wasn't the capacity to do it but also because they didn't press their own boards it couldn't affect it right you know and sort of like the Lucero and Grasso boards those were the breakout boards for dyed veneer those are the ones that showed look at this new look and then the wheel wells a time pop because that was different yeah I you know was functional huh you could put any trucker wheel on there and it would work when most wheel wells don't you know it's hard you know that's why the wheels on that board are big because it's got to fit the range of truck brands wheel diameters riser pads not riser pads a lot of variables a lot of variables yeah I went to DSM and I was actually amazed on how will walls are actually cut the way they do it yeah it's like sliding a like yeah yeah Oh like kind of into like a bladder sander or whatever it is huh interesting I grind II wheels I'm an ER probably listen so okay what got something else on my trick bag here hoots so I got so I made something extra special for you guys and I left the box in my shop this made it okay what do you got there Santa Schmidt keeps going back I know I love it just love it great Christmas really 9 Club coasters what is this I got some milk over here here's your straw maple syrup Sarah straw okay just have a sip of your drink and see if it's satisfying here we go see I don't have that much left in here but uh not working this is a trick straw it's up why what's what's holding it the tube is broken yeah yeah that's why I was kind of so you drink a soda out of a straw it doesn't have a solid straw you might get 40% of the so does it but it but you feel like you got 10% right yeah sammlung your pops dead right you're like it's only 20% gone whatever it is who knows but you feel like oh my gosh it's over right like it's over you know so realize that there's all these microscopic straws in there uh-huh and that's what pop is pop is a bunch of microscopic straws we're like the helium thing i inj neared 20 extra straws in that constructional gotcha they're bigger straws so they can flex more hole and do more what does the maple syrup have to do with it well first of all everybody needs maple syrup but pop pop is from maple syrup what yeah it's um so next time you have maple syrup in the morning so each you guys get a little bottle here this is Trader Joe's or a papal syrup thank you I just got an egg Oh Southern Cali omens over here hey Glen what Syrah past to do with pop okay so a hard maple tree where does it grow in the Great Lakes Great Lakes region in North America what happens in the Great Lakes region winter cold is cold and it freezes right yeah what happens to water when you freeze it it freezes dies but what happens it crystallizes it expands yeah yeah okay so in the spring a tree starts to grow and in the summer is going really quick right it's like you know these leaves are growing it's it's firing right you know then it gets to the fall it's red sheds its leaves it's getting cold out and the fluids in the tree freeze they're inside a tube they densify the walls of the fiber of the wood and make a better tube oh okay okay then as spring comes along so all winter long the sugars in the tree are commingling with this right and then when the spring thaw happens it's usually like a two-week period but it could be like 2 to 6 weeks depending on the weather that year that's when the maples Vanneman then what happens it's a farmer goes puts in a tap right 3/8 diameter hole in this huge big tree path of least resistance all the syrup goes out that okay an average big tree will get 20 25 gallons of sap out of it Wow okay it takes 40 to 50 gallons of sap to get one gallon of maple syrup so that's why I wouldn't go buy the pure Vermont maple syrup mm-hmm that's why it's expensive right but but it's got a high sugar content it's got antioxidants like off like the health benefits of Mother Nature stuff right mm-hmm you know it's amazing so as much as my veneer comes out of mills in Wisconsin but sometimes we get logs from Vermont oh yeah because it's raining in Wisconsin and they can't get the tractor in the forest but it's frozen in Vermont and they can get trees out of the forest the tractors won't sink in the mud because it's frozen right right right it's like the track the the logs travel around on rain train cars in the region right based on what's going on right sometimes logs will go from Canada to Wisconsin to be veneer oh yeah so most of the veneer for skateboards is coming from mills out of Wisconsin hmm the two main mills that support the industry and do the dyed veneer are there okay but then logs will just go straight to China as well right yeah right you know who not even get turned in the veneer so maple syrup is pop if Roger pounds that whole thing a lot more pop belly a so we can have maple syrup just think about your pop right that is interesting it's pretty good I just literally bought two mega watt make some old fashions with some whiskey without it be good last night that's where the fourth follow it take a little sip get ready for tonight there it is actually tasty you take a little sip of it a blended syrup of multiple farms and that kind of a man you go to that region I was actually up in Vermont a couple summers a couple Springs ago right after the thaw the ropes are still put the tubes are all hooked up to the trees and you know they'd already done the boil off but they were selling the syrup and tricks strong you know yeah the sort of is boil it down till it gets to the right color and consistency and this this like could be like alcohol to sit for years and years if it's closed and preserved and we good now that it's open you want to refrigerate it yeah of course but it literally will just hold for South 10 20 50 years like we could have another conversation of maple syrup for another hour yeah possibly absolutely Santa thank you for the gifts I know first of all I wish everybody having the skateboard you want for Christmas this year right yeah this is incredible did you give Mike V the 9 club ones or did you make special night club one that's awesome Mike V he's a big fan of the show yeah now a big fan he loves it he told me we're gonna do a post next week this is amazing thank you so much for the coasters and show you a picture what he's got [ __ ] there was some discussion earlier not least show you a picture all right what do you guys since I forgot this box I like Kevin marks today workout on my look back library oh there you go he spent a couple hours in there filling in some holes for me and said nice update and sheets and stuff and I gave him my box of surplus mags when I buy lots on eBay for that you want one nagging to get 12 oh yes the rest what are you guys gonna show us the photo of what you forgot yeah I'm gonna show you the photo of what I forgot okay so I don't have a picture finished there's got a rig kirb kirb yeah was it a mani pad oh my gosh and what'd you guys talk about so I'm at the courthouse the other day let me zoom in so these are intended their mics dance oh no way but the piece isn't screwed in it so there's this 27 count five-eighths thread yeah really fine one that could get to tap the wood very good so you came here in give you pedestals that represent what you like to stay no recon mic stands though I just loved it how he's like I forgot him and he's gonna perfect them there was some other stuff in there too yeas measure he's got his calipers out they're gonna microphones actually Santa's over man thank you so much for the maple syrup yeah the coasters a 9 Club coasters education education you know thank you for being the follow the hashtag skate science Saturday I try to share scientific facts that tied to a skateboard I've sort of been doing that for a couple years just having fun with it so great you should have like a million followers how many followers do you have 50 something that's pretty good or something yeah you should have a million okay get me there I'm just I'm just both we'll try get about okay I've got a couple of couple followers seriously thank you so much this has been incredible you have to come back yes and hang out with us again come back so you say let me know what you ready bring some more sir yeah bring some more stuff I love being a present yeah it's real I'm telling it whether you believe it or not it's like like oh I don't believe in science or the power of triangles these things work on triangles I think GPS happens there's three spots when you lay exactly what's going on right it's math sternness just like all right triangulation [Music] [Laughter] [Music]

Channel: The Nine Club

Views: 361,681

Keywords: chris roberts, roger bagley, kelly hart, crob, the nine club, nine club, the 9 club, 9 club, skateboarding, skate, skating, podcast, history, interview, news, motivation, entertainment, funny, comedy, braille, thrasher, berrics, transworld, nike sb, street skating, switch tre flip, boardslide, skateboarding 2019, firing line, rider profile, chris chann

Id: 18MRZq0bhpE

Length: 235min 34sec (14134 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 09 2019