For everyone, there are many ways to "raise" money to buy their first skateboard after becoming interested in skateboarding. It may be a reward given by parents after getting good results, it may be a living expense saved by saving money, or it may be a salary saved by summer part-time work.
And the pressure money during the Spring Festival must be one of the ways to get this fund. Today coincides with the third day of the first month of the first month, presumably everyone red envelopes are almost received, if you just have a plan to buy a skateboard, then you had better read the full text, do some homework on each component, and try to do "buy right or not expensive" according to your own needs, which will help you to integrate into the wonderful world of skateboarding faster and better.
First of all, you have to choose a skate shop near you. Because "Support Your Local" has always been one of the more important cultures in skateboarding. The guarantee of the quality of the skate shop's products, the irregular holding of events, events, and prizes for activities, the provision of a stronghold for skaters, and the sponsorship of local potential skaters are all things that you cannot provide in the board shop you shop online. So, if you have skateboard shops in your city, they're worth supporting.
After you know where to go with the hot money, you also have to know the different models, sizes, performance, etc. of each component in the skateboard and what choices to make in the face of these. So we'll disassemble them one by one and take you to a closer look.
Plate surface
Listening to the name, you can probably know that the board surface is one of the most important components of the skateboard. Most of the panels are pressed from 7 layers of maple wood and special glue, and patterns are printed on the board surfaces by Heat Transfer or Screen Print technology. In the process of purchasing, the most important thing is the size.
Do It All Deck: If you're already a teenager with a normal range of height, weight, and shoe size, before you can feel the nuances of different sizes of the movements or find your favorite style, basically the 8.0 to 8.38 range of the board can meet most of your needs, without too much trouble.
Transition/Pool Deck: Maybe you've seen some park games and become interested in arcs and bowls, so you can choose a size of 8.5 and above. This width has the innate advantage of better cornering stability because it does not cause your toes or heels to rub against the ground. But at the same time, the larger size requires more power to do Ollie and Flip movements, so you don't care if you become a technical skater who is good at flapboarding, just want to enjoy the arc or just brush the street every day, then this is your best choice.
sandpaper
Many skaters will debate different brands of sandpaper, as if the difference is really big. Take the two most common sandpaper brands, Mob and Jessup, jessup has a relatively moderate friction, and the price is sometimes given away with the board, while the Mob sandpaper made of high-strength silicon carbide sandstone is more sticky but at the same time accelerates the loss of shoes, which is one of the places to consider. In addition, whether it is stomata yarn is actually not so important, the clerk will tell you that even if there are bubbles, you can't see any traces after cutting the air with a knife.
Nowadays, there are more and more brands of sandpaper, and it is very simple to have a unique pattern, in addition to the patterns that come with different brands of sandpaper, you can also highlight your personality through DIY methods such as stitching.
bracket
When you've pasted your favorite board with personalized sandpaper, it's time to install a pair of metal brackets on it.
The most important thing to pay attention to is the width. Too wide or too narrow will cause different problems, but for example, Independent, Venture, Ace and other different brands have different ways of naming their own brackets, which often confuses newcomers, according to the plate you have determined the size of the bracket is the most important.
After the problem of width is solved, whether to have a high bridge or a low bridge is the next place to choose. Takahashi means that there is more clearance between the wheel and the plate, and the possibility of biting the wheel is reduced, but the distance between the plate and the ground is also greater, which means that you need to use more force to hit the head or tail of the plate to the ground. In general, low bridges are more suitable for novices.
In terms of materials, special materials such as titanium alloys do have an advantage in weight, but they will wear out relatively faster. So ordinary forged steel brackets can't go wrong.
wheel
Wheels are also available in different shapes, sizes, hardnesses and colors. Hardness is the most important of these, and the wheels with high hardness (101a) mean that the faster they can slide on a very flat and hard road, and the easier it is to slide. Compared to the 101a, the (99a) is actually not so obviously different, and it is also suitable for all terrain, but it is enough to add a little potential risk to the novice. Super soft wheels (78a), this hardness of the use of the scene is basically rough pavement and long periods of taxiing. While the size of the wheel depends on your speed requirements and the height of the bracket, for beginners, a 52 or 53 mm wheel with a low bridge is enough to cope with most cases; a 54 or 55 wheel is faster, but it is best to match a high bridge or a low bridge with gaskets.
Ps: If you like a plain style, you can turn the wheel pattern inward to give the skateboard a cleaner look.
bearing
For a newcomer, any bearing over 200 blocks is redundant (if you have a good budget, ignore the above sentence). A set of Bones Reds or Bronson G2 is enough.
Bridge nails
The existence and survival of so many bridge nail brands is a typical example of "marketing really works". They made the skaters willing to spend dozens of dollars more on almost identical things by spraying the nails with color and forming teams to promote them. Of course, installing different colored studs is one of the ways to make it easiest for beginners to distinguish between board head and tail.
summary
Therefore, in simple terms, the first skateboard is mainly selected according to their budget, aesthetic preferences and future use scenarios. When you have your first skateboard, you will most likely spend a lot of time before learning the first action. The best thing to do during this time is not to think too much, practice patiently, and then enjoy the fun (and pain) that skateboarding brings!