Innovative Decks

We take a look at the new deck designs now on the market, these deck innovations attempt to improve on the standard deck designs by making it lighter, stronger and poppier.

Plan B Prolite

Lighter, thinner, stronger that’s the promise of the recently released Plan B Prolite skateboards. With the 3 core ply’s made thinner and military grade glue used to hold it all together this looks like the future of skateboards, by making the board lighter board control should be improved. The 3 inner ply’s have been stained black to give it a distinctive look and the promise is the board will keep its pop for longer. The ads for these boards state that:

1. It’s the lightest thinnest and strongest wood construction in the industry
2. Three thinner inner core ply’s with military spec glue
3. Better board control and response with longer lasting pop

Check out this video of P Rod putting the new prolite model to the test

I recently managed to have a look at one of these boards and all I can say is LIGHT, these boards are incredibly lighter than normal boards and I may have to invest in one at some point to check out the strength side of Plan B’s promise.

Darkstar Armour Ply

Carbon Fibre used within board construction?? Darkstar have decided to try and make their decks un-snapable, constructed using 8 maple veneers and topped off with an extra strong carbon fibre top sheet all glued together with super bonding epoxy makes these decks pretty strong. With a standard retail price of £49.99 your not having to pay more for the additional strength an longer lasting pop. Personally I’m not a fan of Darkstar boards however the idea of using carbon fibre within board construction is a great idea for strengthening the board and many companies are incorporating this into their board construction

Flip P2 Construction

After putting in a few years of development Flip skateboards have released their Pro 2 or P2 construction which involves putting an oval aramid fibre reinforcement panel which just sounds pretty sweet as it is. This oval panel will accomplish a couple of things for you, the first is to spread the load and stress evenly across the entire board whereas normally most pressure is put across the area of your truck causing pressure cracks and eventually snapping (not fun for anyone). The second and I’m not 100% sure on how they’ve managed to achieve this is to give you a spring loaded pop which if true would be absolutely amazing, if anyone has used one of these P2 decks please drop me an email I would love to hear from you about the Spring Loaded Pop.

Here’s a short video of Geoff Rowley with his Pro 2 deck:

Almost Shockpads and Uber Light

There’s not too much I can say about almost shock pads, they use two circular carbon fibre reinforced discs around the bolts where you are going to get your first signs of pressure cracks thus increasing the life of your board, in theory.

Contrary to the shock pads is Almost’s Uber Light construction developed by Rodney Mullen and C.L. Composites it is a “Deck inside a Deck”. They use an internal Carbon Fibre Foam Deck which is extremely light but as stiff as metal and is used as the skeleton of the 7-ply layup. This in turn creates a longer lasting deck with better control and response. To me it sounds like Almost are on to a winner with this type of board construction.

Element Flatlight

The final installment on new types of board construction and probably the strangest and most backwards sounding of them all but bear with me because there is reason behind the madness. Push all the concave including the nose and tail down and make the board flatter, now when I first heard of this all I could think of is the Skateside decks I first started skated on which was like skating a plank of MDF. However after looking into it further I’ve been turned into believing that this could actually be a good idea.

The idea is simple by pushing all the concave out you can obtain a snappier pop and better board control Levi Brown helped develop this board construction and sells it well in this video advertising the board.