Fingerboarding has always been a hobby of mine since Junior High. A guilty pleasure I guess you could call it. Man I am getting old, that was about 10 years ago since I started. Anyway, I recently discovered the world of wooden fingerboards. Up until this point I have only used Tech Deck fingerboards which are made of plastic. But there is a whole world of homemade wooden fingerboards. Berlinwood based out of Germany I have found to be the best. They are handcrafted perfectly and work really well. Only bad part is that they cost about $30-$35 to get them shipped from Germany.
This is a Berlinwood Wide- Deep Concave. This deck is great, but I thought I could probably make my own That would work just the same. So I gave it a try. These first couple of decks I made out of plies of birch veneer. I call the company Ampersand.
This was my first one. I made the kicks pretty high, a little too high. I also chose not to have very much concave at all. I just never got into that whole thing. I like fingerboarding with an almost flat deck. Maybe with just the slightest bit of concave. I made it wide, about 29mm. That is great because I have large fingers and it's easier to control the board when it is wider. I was pleased with how it turned out. Although it is definetly too steep to easily perform tricks.
So I gave it another shot. This time even wider (31mm-32mm) with lower kicks, and a better shape. I also played around with some graphics on the bottom before lacquering it.
Once it was done and I drilled the holes and everything, I slapped on some FBS Extra Smooth pre-cut griptape and I was ready to go. This is probably the best deck I have ever fingerboarded with. It reassured me that I will probably never need to buy a deck again. The extra wide cut is perfect for my fingers and the shape just feels right. This is still only a prototype. The next step is too find some more exotic wood veneers. I may also experiment with screenprinting, dying, or carving on some of the plies of wood.
Maybe when I have fine tuned the decks and have a mold made, I can pop some of them up on ebay and see how they sell.
I have been slowly working on a little fingerboarding video. I hope to finish editing it soon. I will probably put it up on here once it is done.
