Assembley

Once you have assembled your board all by yourself, you will look forward to attaching the griptape or replacing the bearings. It’s not without good reason that there are pros for whom the assembly of a board has become a pre-warm-up ritual. How do I attach the griptape? How do I mount the trucks? How do I place the bearings inside the wheels?

A step-by-step guide to assembley your set-up

Fig. 01: Assembley of your set-up step-by-step

A

Let's start where the most mistakes are made: the griptape. Attaching it to the board in a clean, flawless fashion is not a god-given gift, but rather a matter of practice. So don't give up if your griptape has a couple of rough edges in the beginning.

First of all, place your board straight in front of you. Now remove the first 20cm of the backing paper from the adhesive surface of the griptape sheet and center the griptape over the board. Carefully attach the exposed part to the nose of the board while leaving about 1 cm of overhang. Again, make sure that the griptape is centered on the deck and that there is an equal amount of overhang on the nose and on the tail. Nowadays, most griptapes have tiny holes in them which prevent the building of bubbles, however, you should still meticulously take care that no air gets trapped between griptape and deck. Little by litte, attach more of the griptape to the board and pat it down firmly until the board is entirely covered by the sheet of griptape. Looks kind of unfinished, doesn't it? Right. So on to the next step.

B

In this step, we’re going to make sure that the griptape ends up having the exact same shape as the deck. You can use a screwdriver, a wrench, a skate-tool, or another metallic object on which you can get a firm grasp. Now score the surface of the griptape by going around the outline of the deck with the object. Apply pressure, but make sure not file through the griptape. This will create a white outline of the deck's shape, which will serve you as an indicator for where to cut.

C

Now it's best to place the board on the edge of a table in order to be able to cut from below. Cut a small slit into the tape where the nose begins until you reach the white outline you created earlier. Carefully follow the outline with the knife until you have removed all the excess griptape from the board.

D

Using a sharp object, punch in eight holes in the griptape over the boreholes. Subsequently, place the bolts through the holes from the top.

E

There are eight holes for eight bolts. First, put four bolts through the deck and place a truck on them from the other side.

F

Now place the nuts onto the bolts and tighten them, preferably using a skate-tool (-> Fig. 02). After you have attached both trucks, you can remove the axle nuts and the speed rings.

G + H

Since the bearings must be positioned firmly inside the wheels, a certain amount of pressure is needed in order to insert them. The greatest amount of pressure can be created by placing a bearing on the axle and then pressing the wheel down on top of it. Repeat this for the other side of the wheel.

I

In the last step, you place a speed ring on the axle, followed by the wheel and another speed ring. When you tighten the axle nut, it is important to leave a little room for the bearings so that the wheel can run smoothly. Don't tighten the nut too hard.