Diy Skateboards

As a skateboard manufacturer currently making skateboards for some of the top brands giving personal advice on how to make skateboards.

How much money will it take?

When it comes to funds you need to make a skateboard you will be surprised on how much money you will be spending on making skateboards yourself.  Depending on how far you want to take it and how much you are willing to invest will determine what quality and how many decks you will be able to manufacturer in a 8 hour shift.  There are two approaches you can take when deciding how much money it will take to make a skateboard.  You have to decide if you want to do it in your garage or in a factory.  Some power requirements have to be taken into consideration.  Most garages have a single phase electrical supply panel.  Most of the manufacturing equipment you will need will require a 3 phase power source.  There is 110 single phase found in homes or 3 phase 220 volt or 440 volt are most common at a industrial unit.  Depending on if you want to do it cheap and in your garage you can accomplish this but at a level that will make you work harder and spend more time building a skateboard.  Most Garage skateboard presses don't have a hydraulic pump so when you see these videos of people building or pressing skateboards they will use a bottle jack.   The bottle Jack is cheap and easy to acquire but will put you at risk of the glue drying up before ever getting pressed.   You have to decide if you are doing it as a hobby or want to go further making a high quality board for your brand.    The money route will take some time to plan out the dimensions and where to get the parts from along with finding someone to weld it.  

The Skateboard Manufacturing Press

The first thing you will need is a skateboard press.   Most manufacturers have them made or make them themselves.  Our pressed were designed based upon a high volume production manufacturing process.  So you will have to decide where you are going to go with this.  You can build a press for FREE if you really were wanting to save money.  The cost to build a press can range from FREE to over 10 thousand dollars.  The free route will take you more time and effort looking through dumpsters at industrial locations and put you at risk of having someone call the law enforcement if you are looking in a dumpster that has signs stating that it is forbidden.

Rest Of The Process

Its all up to you on how far you want to go with it.  With having a factory there in an enormous amount of responsibility.  One thing I have found that is the hardest task is employees.  Sure if it is your own company and you are small you can do most of the work yourself.  Soon you will find yourself needing workers.  We have had skaters and surfers work here and all of them seem to find that they are not interested in the manual repetitive labor.  With the decline of USA manufacturers building everything from cars to pencils Americans have farmed out the work to overseas factories because most Americans would rather make money using the buy and sell method.  This is a great concept and has caused American workers to get lazy.  I have worked in a snowboard factory at one point in my life and have seen most of them close their doors to have them made elsewhere.  Think twice about manufacturing a product.  If you don't mind giving up your life and body to the company then manufacturing is not for you.  What I mean by this is the hard manual labor of making decks is taxing on the body.  Repetitive manual labor will make a young person old really fast.  If you are about body preservation then forget about making skateboards.  All the diy guys have a press in their garage and it is a good way to figure out if it the future you are looking for or not.  Most find out how much time it takes and figure out they need a full time job to support themselves and the press starts collecting dust.