The Beginning

I guess the best place to start is to start at the beginning. In early spring of 2006, my oldest son, Scooter, was between woodshop projects. His teacher told him to go in the back room and see if he could scrounge up a small project to take up some time. He found a partially completed longboard and brought it home for my opinion. It was approximately 50 inches long and only 5/8ths of an inch thick. We found that this was way to long for its thickness and it flexed way too much. We decided to save the project and cut it down to 42 inches and reshaped it. At the time, Scooter weighed about 150 lbs, which was about perfect for that thick of a board. He became a very proficient rider in a short period of time. His first day on a longboard, he came down the Provo Canyon River Trail with his friends who had been riding for several years. The board proved to be an excellent shape, length, and size. It was made out of cabinet grade birch plywood. It has about 11 or 12 equal thickness birch plys, which is much stronger than other plywood like CDX that has plys of wood and then plys of mush (sawdust and glue). When we build our own boards, we want to make sure we use good quality, hardwood, plywood, with all plys the same thickness.
This great first longboard project that got virtually the whole family into boarding, came to an untimely demise because of a girl. Scooter was showing off for Kelly, showing how well the board flexed by bouncing on its middle, when it cracked and broke in half. Scooter liked this design so much that he made several copies of the board. More on that later.
NOTE: If our riders weigh more than 150 lbs, we use 3/4inch baltic birch cabinet grade plywood