Haven't you heard kids? Sky Blue dip is the new Black and Green Dip!
So I bought the bullet and tried to earn some "Non-Biased" points by putting my money where my mouth is and on-purpose trying some chinese-made skateboard wood.
Why would I do that?
Because I don't really begrudge the Chinese the right to make lumber, or American companies to source it from China, even though that practise is most likely a serious contributor to economic decline. Honestly, I am not smart enough or hard working enough to do the necessary study to form a solid opinion on Chinese lumber, beyond how it performs.
How does it perform?
Well, we've seen a LOT of failures.
We saw Punk Rock Ben's Sam Hitz Creature break on his second session. period.
...and on and on with the failure of chinese wood.
But we've also seen a LOT of failures among the american wood companies, as they stack up small companies and try to manage waaay more than they can handle in order to save themselves from economic failure... So many of them have already closed because of all the instability, that they flat out skimp on quality, themselves, stacking 5 and 6 boards per mold, and pressing for under an hour per pressing, sending wood straight to the saw without curing, and dipping puttycrack boards and selling them as proper...
So it looks like pretty much everyone's sucking for some reason or another, so why hate on the Chinese wood? and why hate on Santa Cruz for producing it that way? Well, like I said, there are probably a few well-stacked reasons to hate on that, but I'm not smart or hard working...
So let's on to the board, eh?
First off, Mike at 158 here in OBX calls these board shapes "Directional". I think we in the midwest call it "Old School". Santa Cruz rocks because they're putting out the shapes that people really want to skate.
Yes, thank you verymuch rodney and steve rocco, but people aren't stoked to skate giant freestyle boards anymore. Thanks be for that. wow. That was too much.
I actually had one of those barnyard valelly's back in the day... it was crappy crappy crappy, delaminating, chipping flattening wood. It was some of the lowest quality wood I'd ever seen, and have seen to this day. I shit not. Up to that point I had skated powells and santa cruz... there were zorlacs, but i hated them... and other historical nonsense. we were just ratty little kids and i loved my chris miller from schmitt stix...
and i loved my Tom Knox, even though it had a deplorably short nose, back in the day.
So I picked up this one, even though it was made in china... all the while thinking about making shapes like these for you in my laboratory one day soon.
...and they fixed the nose on this stuff...
Did you guys know that Tom Knox is a badass at Jiu-Jitsu? Seriously he is.
Tom Knox is also an all-terrain ripper, no doubt.
He is also massively underrated.
the concave is odd. it's properly deep, and who doesn't like that? But look at this:
Here you can see that the "zero point", where the concave along the sides ends, and the tail and nose begins... you can see that the truck holes are drilled waaaaay inside the zero point. See that? Look at it. You know what that means? That probably pretty much means that this concave mold is totally massively mass produced for a lot of different boards, maybe for a lot of different companies. It means the mold is generic, and they're just sliding the truck holes in and out to make different wheel bases.
I'm going to totally do that with Fickle Boards, you bet.
But that means that the chinese production squad is making these boards on a mold that could/should have longer wheelbases in order to be properly made. Don't mistake this board for one of the old santa cruz boards with the molds that matched the design. These are cookie cutter...
...and still radder than 2/3rds of what's on the wall, because boards have become so terribly bland and vanilla with their giant freestyle board shape and "Hey this is us" self-promotional graphics... looks like some tag wall down at the bus station with all these brand names. At least this board REMINDS me of the days when Santa Cruz was hand made in Cali... But then again, they probably sucked and that's just memory lane, right?
I don't remember it that way.
Now on to the wicked paint job.
First off about the finish, check out the sweet "Power Ply" on the side here... I actually bought a Jason Jesse "Super Coqueria" board a month ago at The Galaxie Skateshop, and pretty much hated that they have masked the layers of wood here with what is obviously a super inexpensive because it's chinese produced fancy touch. Yes, it's super fancy to do this. but it also masks what kind of wood flaws we're looking at. Shall i sand it down and check it out? Maybe after I skate the crap out of it. Keep checking for a breakdown.
but now look at THIS:
There are actually 2 of these blemishes under the paint on the top of the deck, each about 6 inches long, running lengthways. I know exactly what these are! These are surface cracks that they filled with putty at the factory! In fact, in production, they'll send the "putty tops" or "puttycracks" to the line where the design is for a dipped board color, so that the end user doesn't see that the board they're buying is already cracked from the mold.
The fact that a TON of boards crack in the mold makes puttycrack boards a real liability. I for sure will definitely be selling puttycrack boards... and you will KNOW it! They will be finished properly and LABELED as such, with a price discount! And they may last just as well... and they may not... but you'll definitely KNOW.
The fact is, a putty crack over the nose isn't that bad. Over or under the tail and I'm not buying it! This one's tail looks good.
There is a pretty significant finish blemish that isn't wood-related, but rather a paint defect here.
oh.. no... wait!
That IS a wood defect there. That is a KNOT HOLE ON THE TOP PLY! That is supposed to be FACE material there. If there's a knot hole on face ply! IF there are putty cracks! and the mold is obviously generic... what does that tell me?
Well, to be honest, it tells YOU that I am just like you, if you get stoked at the shop over a great color, and a shape that's a little ahead of the times, because it's retro. And if you have semi-romantic feelings about the amazing skateboarding of one super special Tom Knox, and get stoked that he gets a buck or 2 on the board sale... you're gonna eat the chinese aspect in hopes of a super ride anyway.
We're skaters.
We adapt.
We can skate any concave.
We can skate any graphic.
and we skate what we like, even if it's some economic downturn causing chinese crap, right?
and anyone that hates on you because you do is still picking your pocket because they're just trying to get you on their wrestling team.
So we'll see how the Knox skates. It's flawed, but then again, I pretty much can't hope to produce anything much better out of my shop! I'm just a dude! up against a whole generation of robot sweatshop squads.
Tom Knox is Rad.
Santa Cruz is rad.
The board is rad enough.
time to go skate.
go thirty.
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