The SUPER Pump!

Have you ever made this face while evacuating the air from your Thin Air Press vacuum bag?

Have you ever wondered if there is a way to draw more air per pump, thus reducing the amount of feverish pumping that is required to get your TAP bag fully sealed?

If so, today is your lucky day! In our efforts to continually improve our board building process, Roarockit now offers a hand pump that draws more than double the amount of air per pump than our standard pump. We call this...the SUPER Pump!!

With more than twice the volume, this larger "Super" pump can evacuate the air out of a TAP bag in half the time as our regular pumps can! The volume of this pump is 98 cc vs 40 cc's of our original pumps.

It works exactly the same way, simply place the pump over the grey valve and start evacuating the air. If you've used our original pump before, you will notice it takes a lot more arm power to make it work. For those with small hands, especially young people, this pump may harder to manage. 

All our larger Thin Air Press Kits (20x70”, 36x52” and 40x80") now ship to include the Super Pump.

Note: This pump does not make the "click" sound to indicate when all of the air has been evacuated from the bag. We suggest pumping until the veneers have fully bent to the shape of your mold, and the bag is too tight to be able to pull away from your project.  

Salvaged Skateboard

It is important to us here at the Roarockit Skateboard Company to keep up with trends in the skateboard industry – especially anything to do with supporting local builders and artists! We recently came across a unique start up called Salvaged Skateboard Shop that is trying to create an online marketplace that focuses on independent builders and crafters who are working with skateboards as their medium.

The man behind Salvaged Skateboard, Chris Anderson, got his start making projects out of recycled skateboard decks after travelling with his wife and coming across a shop in Nova Scotia that sold rings made out of old decks. He went home, tried making some himself, and eventually started expanding his production of custom skateboard accessories.

As his hobby grew, he soon realized that he was not the only person making beautiful projects out of reclaimed skateboard materials. This (combined with his background as a web and app developer) led to the idea of an online marketplace where builders could display and sell their work in a focused community.

We spoke with Chris to hear more about his plans for the site and the crowdfunding campaign he has started to help launch the marketplace.

Where do you get recycled skateboard decks for your own projects?

I get my boards from local skate shops here in Ottawa. They have a program where you can bring in your old boards and they will fix them up to give back out to the under privileged in the community. Some of boards are too far gone and they give them to me or to other local artists.

What benefits do you think Salvaged Skateboards can offer to an independent builder/artisan?

Salvaged Skateboard is about creating a focused online marketplace for those buying and selling unique, functional pieces of everyday art from recycled skateboard decks - such as handcrafted jewelry, accessories, furniture, eyewear, and the list goes on.  This will also be an environment for independent skateboard deck builders to sell their custom decks and a great way for these people to find each other on a local level.

What do you mean by a focused marketplace? Like Etsy, eBay etc.? 

Basically one of the winning strategies behind a large online marketplace is that it lets everyone setup, share and promote their own unique shops. Not one shop selling many products, but many unique stores selling their own unique products. All under the same umbrella, collecting all the metadata from all the different storefronts combined.

Why then might this be a better option than paying for your own 'out-of-the-box' style ecommerce website?

The first major advantage with this marketplace is that it would be large enough and focused enough to get out in front of every search engines category related to skateboarding. The second major advantage over your own ‘out-of-the-box’ ecommerce website is word-of-mouth and the community. Instead of trying to sell your own products to everyone in your social circle, there would be hundreds of people telling all of their social circles to go checkout Salvaged Skateboard.

How have you been received by the skate community so far?

It’s been extremely positive so far! There has been a lot of enthusiasm, support and some great feedback. I can take criticism and am always looking to improve the idea to make it a great hub for everyone in the skate community.

What other communities do you look to engage with the site?

I would like to engage with artists, designers and board builders of all kinds because there are endless amounts of possibilities for creation with salvaged skateboards. We also need to engage skaters that want to donate their boards, as this is a very important part of the artistic process, and the general public that are interested in promoting local artists and want to buy unique one of a kind items.

Make sure to check out the Salvaged Skateboard Indiegogo campaign!

We think this is a great project, and any help spreading awareness to get this idea off the ground will go along way towards making it a reality. 

Bamboo Review

It has been a few weeks since first getting our shipment of 1/16” Bamboo veneers in at Roarockit. Not only have we been building boards with the new material, but the first orders have gone out and we have received some great feedback from other builders as well. In this edition of Rockit Talk, we wanted to share some of our experiences and feedback we have received about building boards with the Bamboo.

Let's get to it!

As we have mentioned before, the bamboo is somewhat fragile before it has been laminated into a deck. It is important to remember this when handling it, especially if you are using bamboo as a face (outside) layer. As you can see in the photo below, it can split along the preglued seams fairly easily; however, once glued it does not seem to affect the strength or look of the veneer.

If you are going to laminate a bamboo veneer as a face layer on the top or bottom, we have had good success with laying a strip of tape across the seams to help prevent any additional splitting while the board is being pressed.

We have pressed three unique decks with the bamboo stock, and all of them have come out great! It is very nice to work with and machines a lot better than we had anticipated. Each sheet comes pre-sanded and we found that it cuts very easily as well.  

Click on the photos below for futher information about these two bamboo builds on our Instructables page

Now, we would like to switch gears and show everyone what someone outside the shop has done with the Bamboo veneers. This build and review was posted by an incredible builder out of Florida called Jords Boards. In the post, not only does she document the amazing custom board that was pressed with the material, but she actually took a photo of the veneers fresh out of the box. This was one of the very first orders of the Bamboo veneer we shipped, and needless to say we were super stoked to see it arrive safely without damage! Extra big thanks to Jords Boards for that one :)

The quotes and photos below are from Jords Boards' post on Silverfish:

The bamboo splits really easily if you're not paying attention but is completely manageable overall. Roarockit speaks to this on the order page for the bamboo and I concur - if it splits, you can deal with it. Roarockit packs the veneer really really well, I had no splits from shipping, only handling after opening the package, and specifically, rolling glue onto it on a tarp that had a wrinkle in it. I rolled over the wrinkled part and *pop* - the veneer split from about 6 inches in to the end of the sheet. Definitely more sensitive than cross-grain veneer but once you get the hang of it it's not brain surgery.  

The bamboo is all face quality with a very clean, almost gloss, finish. I normally take 60 grit to my deck blanks after cutting them to clean up grain, burrs, glue mess, etc. and the bamboo as face to your decks just doesn't need it...220 is probably where you need to be otherwise a damp cloth with a mild detergent to clean up marks or greasy fingerprints is all you need before painting it or pre-sanding before clear coat.

I use a jigsaw to cut my blanks and I usually cut slightly wide of my mark and then orbit sand the excess. The bamboo cuts incredibly clean, and cleans up crisper than maple alone. Normally a jigsaw leaves that fuzz top and bottom, right? That stuff just zips right off leaving a knife's edge look without any real effort, it's pretty neat actually.

The Low-Fat Monkey (bamboo) next to the Mad Monkey Howler (maple)

We would like to thank Jords Boards for sharing her unique custom decks and taking the time to review the Bamboo material. It is always great to see people doing such creative work with our TAP bags and material! Make sure to give her a 'like' on facebook and check out her awesome build/riding videos on Youtube.

If you have any questions, comments or reviews of the new bamboo veneer, we would love to hear from you and see your boards! Feel free to email chris@roarockit.com 

2013 Year in Review

2013 was one heck of a year! After getting settled into our new warehouse facility in 2012, the team at Roarockit refocused their efforts onto some new and pretty exciting projects for the board building community. Here's a recap of what we were able to accomplish this past year...enjoy!

In the early months of 2013, we had two very special guests stay with us at Roarockit. Sarah Jackson and Nicolas Alix spent nearly two months in Toronto learning about the custom board building business and training to become our official European branch of Roarockit. By August, the two young entrepreneurs had officially launched Roarockit EU and have been supplying the UK/EU with high quality products and materials (including 1/16” Canadian Maple) ever since.

Visit Roarockit EU by clicking the photo above

One of the last things we did this year, was also one of our most exciting developments! Right before Christmas, we announced the launch of our 1/16” Bamboo veneer. This is a really big deal for us. Having focused for years on supplying the world with the infamous 1/16” Canadian Maple veneers (and proudly doing so), we decided that we wanted to expand our material choices for custom board builders... Bamboo was the logical next step! Now builders can mix and match Maple, Birch and Bamboo to find that perfect combination.

Click photo for more information about our Bamboo stock

Next we have everyone's favourite skateboard/street art/high school program, the Oasis Skateboard Factory (OSF). Now in their 5^th year of operation, the ever-expanding OSF program is starting to get some serious recognition for innovation in education! Working closely with the teachers and students of the program, we were able to collaborate on some amazing events this year.

OSF x Longboard Living Product Launch - click for more photos

Board N' School Skateboard Art Auction - click for more photos

Oasis Graduation at Roarockit - click for more photos

OSF x Anomaly - click for more photos

After launching the RockitRuler in 2012, we received a lot of great feedback and were able to make a small adjustment to help improve the versatility of the popular tool. By adding two new holes, we were able to give the builder the option to layout both their new school AND old school truck hole setups.

Some other great events we were apart of:

Hosted the 6th Annual Swap Meet - Click for more photos Had a great time at Maker Faire TO - click for more photos

Other notable developments for 2013:

• Creation of our Instructables online board building tutorials

• Relaunch of our DIY SK8 custom board building classes

• Rockit Talk being published to Concrete Wave (continuing in 2014)

• Growth of our social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram)

• Youtube channel broke the 1000 subscriber mark!   

We always look forward to seeing what people are doing with our Roarockit Technology, and encourage builders around the world to contact us with any questions they may have about our tools and materials. 2014 should be a great year, so stay tuned and keep producing those high quality handmade goods! Happy New Year from the Roarockit Family :)

Week Long Classes 2014

Roarockit offers full-week building programs, designed for you to build your own custom board with one of our experienced instructors! 

There will be 3 seperate sessions held in our Professional Deck Making School, located at 880 Millwood Road in Toronto, over the next year.  

The Session Dates:

July Summer Camp 1 - 2014

Monday July 7 to Friday July 11

9:30 am - 12:00 am (12.5 hours total)

July Summer Camp 2 - 2014
Monday July 28 to Friday August 1
9:30 am - 12:00 am (12.5 hours total)

August Summer Camp - 2014
Monday August 18 to Friday August 22
9:30 am - 12:00 am (12.5 hours total)

Choose to make a Lil' Rockit mini-cruiser, street deck skateboard, pintail longboard, top-mount speedboard, or a more advanced drop deck. With an experienced instructor to show you the steps and share all the builder’s tricks and tips, you will produce a seriously awesome board the very first time, and will be able to continue making boards with your new-found knowledge.

Using the best wood in the world for a skateboard (Canadian maple), you’ll learn how to laminate a 3 dimensional board in a Thin Air Press, finish it, design and apply your own graphics. Using Roarockit’s patented method, your quality board will be entirely hand-made, using the power of vacuum, no power tools required.

As there is drying time between many of the steps, skateboard building requires multiple sessions to complete the stages. Sessions are planned so that all the steps are completed by the end of the 5 day program, so attendance at all 5 days is required. Space is limited, so submit your application early to ensure your spot!

What’s included:

The materials and use of our tools to create a custom board. During the 5 sessions, you will prep sheets of Canadian maple, glue up and press them in a Thin Air Press, over a mold. You sand and finish the edges top and bottom, clear coat and apply your own graphics to finish up your board.

What’s not included:

Wheels and trucks, hardware or grip tape

 

Feel free to contact us for more information:

Phone 1-416-422-5487

Email - marcel@roarockit.com