Skateboarding is a common sport, especially among teenagers. It’s said that the most enjoyable aspect of skateboarding is the tricks you perform. However, it isn’t the only way to enjoy this sport.
Another way is having a skateboard representing your personality and design preferences. It’s something you can achieve with skateboard customization. A personalized skateboard evokes the right emotions just by looking at it; add this to skateboarding, and you’ll have an enjoyable time.
That said, how do you customize a skateboard? Here are the steps to take:
- Plan The Design
With skateboard customization, there’s nothing you can’t achieve; it all depends on your creativity. Therefore, start by pinpointing the design you want on your board. It can be a theme, like a beach, forest, blue sky, and nature. You can also opt for colors, where you paint the board with your favorite colors. In this case, the choice of design is based on preference.
As you plan the design, you should know that customization goes beyond its appearance. You can change other features like its wheels. All you require is an electric skateboard kit, whose choice highly depends on the terrain you skateboard. You’ll find all terrain and street kits, among others. Here, the main difference is the width of the wheels; some are wide, and others narrow.
- Understand The Customization Technique
Depending on your preferred design, there are different ways to customize your skateboard. You must understand how to customize your skateboard to ensure you get the desired results.
Some techniques related to the board’s appearance are spray painting, photograph transfer, stickers, and hand painting. Besides choice being based on your preferred design, it depends on your skill set as well.
Suppose you want to paint the board. Can you spray or hand paint? Be sure to choose the technique you know best. Yet it doesn’t mean you can’t learn a technique. There are many sources to get this information, including the internet. Alternatively, you can ask a guru in the craft to assist you.
- Gather The Materials
Like the techniques to adopt, the materials to gather depend on your chosen customization. If you opt to paint the board, you require duct tape, acrylic paint, spray paint, and a paintbrush.
Should you opt for photo transfer, you require a picture of your preferred design and a heat source you can press on the photograph.
But there are materials you’ll need despite the choice of technique. These are sandpaper and a screwdriver; their uses showcase herein. As you source materials, ensure you get the right tools for the job. It’s the only way to more or less achieve high-quality customization.
- Clean The Board
Before customizing your skateboard, it should be clean. Start by removing any debris stuck on the surface and cleaning it with clean water. You might require soap if the dirt is extensive. Be sure to dry it properly before starting the customization process. You don’t want to retain moisture in the board, especially if it’s plywood. It might affect the longevity of your board.
Once dry, and as part of cleaning, sand it using sandpaper. It’ll smoothen your board and provide a rough surface. The rough surface provides a better bonding surface with your paint or preferred customization technique.
- Add The Customization
Here, you’ll customize your skateboard with your preferred design and technique. You require several skills for this process, and it’s important to follow the right procedure.
Before starting the process, ensure the board is bare and exposed. You might require to remove the wheels and other parts that might make the customization process challenging. Here’s where you’ll use the screwdriver.
Suppose you prefer to spray paint your skateboard. Start by taping the sections you don’t want to paint. And the duct tape comes in handy if you want to mix colors without them touching each other. Follow the taping with a primer to the exposed parts. It provides a smooth finish for your design. Next, consider applying background paint that contrasts with your final color. Here, white is the ideal color; it’ll make your design pop.
Please follow the background color with your desired color paint; preferably, add two coats to make its color pop. Lastly, you want to add clear paint to give your skateboard a glossy finish unless you want a matte look.
As you paint your skateboard, ensure you allow the paint to dry between the coats. Once the glossy paint dries, screw back your wheels and the other parts you removed. Your customized skateboard is now good to go.
Conclusion
The discussion above has shown that customizing a skateboard isn’t challenging. All you require is the knowledge of the design you want and the technique of achieving the design. Besides establishing the ease of customizing, the read gives a step-by-step guide. Highly consider referring to it as you customize your skateboard. It makes the process straightforward and faster.
