A Beginner's Guide to Buying Your First Skateboard

A skateboard is five things bolted together: a deck, two trucks, four wheels, eight bearings and eight bolts — plus the griptape you stand on. That is the whole list. Everything else is preference. This guide says what each part does, what it costs, what to pick when you have no idea, and what you can safely ignore until you actually need it.

Complete or built from parts?

Two routes, and neither is wrong.

A pre-built complete comes assembled in one box. It is the fastest way to be standing on a board this week, and for a first board it is a perfectly good decision.

Building it yourself means choosing the deck and the parts separately and bolting them together — twenty minutes with one tool. You get the graphic you want rather than the one the shop had in stock, you learn where every bolt is, and when you break the deck in six months (you will) you keep the parts and swap only the wood. That is what most people end up doing anyway after the first board.

If you want a deck that nobody else has, the second route is the only one that gets you there.

The deck

The plank. Seven plies of maple, pressed with a concave — the shallow dip across the middle that your feet lock into — and a kicked nose and tail.

Width is the only measurement that matters at the start. Length and wheelbase follow from it, and the tenths of an inch that riders argue about are invisible to someone who has been skating three weeks. The short version:

• 8.0" — the default. Suits most adult feet, light enough to flip, wide enough to stand on.
• 8.25" — a touch more foot room and more stability. The better pick if you are tall, have big feet, or expect to spend time on ramps and transitions.
• 8.5" — stable and planted, popular for transition and cruising, slightly slower to flip.

If you are under 1.60 m, or buying for a child, go narrower rather than wider. If you genuinely cannot decide, take 8.0" — it is the size most people end up back at. There is a full size guide that matches width to height and shoe size.

A deck from us is 89 €, printed with your own design, and it is the same 7-ply maple construction as any street deck. Sizes cost the same.

The parts, one by one

Trucks (39.95 € the pair)

The metal axles. They bolt under the deck and they are what makes a skateboard turn: lean, and the rubber bushings inside compress and steer the wheels. Two rules and you are done — match the truck width to the deck width, and do not overtighten them. New trucks feel stiff; loosen the kingpin a quarter turn at a time until the board turns when you lean and does not wobble when you roll.

Wheels (29.95 € a set of four)

Polyurethane, and they come in two numbers: diameter in millimetres and hardness in durometer. Smaller and harder slides and accelerates faster on smooth ground; bigger and softer rolls over rough tarmac and cracks without stopping you dead. A first street setup lives comfortably around 52–54 mm and 99a. If your local ground is bad, go softer before you go bigger.

Bearings (14.95 € for eight)

Two per wheel. They are what actually rolls. Ignore the ABEC number on the box — it is a tolerance rating from industrial machining and it says nothing useful about skating. Any bearing sold for skateboards will outlast your first deck if you keep it out of puddles. Wet bearings rust, and rusted bearings are done.

Hardware (4.95 € for eight)

Eight bolts and eight nuts. Unglamorous, and the thing people forget to order. Lengths vary depending on whether you run riser pads; without risers, the standard length is right.

Griptape (9.95 € per deck)

Black sandpaper with adhesive on the back, stuck to the top of the deck. It is what stops your feet sliding off, and it is what makes an ollie possible at all. A deck you intend to ride needs it; a deck going on a wall does not, and is better without.

Ours arrives already fitted, so there is no trimming with a blade on your kitchen table unless you want to do it yourself.

What the whole thing costs

Our deck with your design on it is 89 € with shipping inside Spain included. Add griptape and it is 98.95 €. Add the four parts as well — trucks, wheels, bearings and hardware — and a complete setup comes to 188.75 €, still inside Spain. To the rest of the European Union add 15 to 25 € per order depending on the country, however many decks the order holds.

Designing costs nothing and needs no account: you only pay if you order the board. There is a full breakdown, extras one by one, in what a custom deck costs.

What you can ignore for now

• Riser pads. Only needed if your wheels touch the deck when you turn hard. On a normal street setup they do not.
• Bearing spacers and washers. They help, marginally, and nobody has ever landed a trick because of them.
• The ABEC number. See above.
• Expensive wheels. You will flatspot your first set learning to slide. Buy the cheap ones twice.
• Brand loyalty. Decks from the same factory carry a dozen different logos. What changes between them is the graphic, which is exactly the part you can decide yourself.

One thing not to ignore: a helmet, and wrist guards if you are learning on concrete. We do not sell either — buy them wherever you like, but buy them.

Putting it together

You need one skate tool, which is a T-shaped thing with the three sockets and a screwdriver end. Grip the deck, punch the eight bolt holes through the grip from underneath, push the bolts down through the top, put a truck on each end with the kingpins facing inwards, tighten the nuts until the bolt heads sit flush with the grip. Slide a bearing into each side of each wheel, press them onto the axles, put the axle nut on and tighten it until the wheel spins freely without side-to-side play.

That is the whole job. If a wheel does not spin for a few seconds when you flick it, the axle nut is too tight.

Where a custom deck fits

Nothing about a printed graphic changes how a board rides. The print is on the underside — the side that faces the ground and takes the scrapes — so what you are choosing is what the board looks like when it flips, and what it looks like on a wall the day you stop riding it.

The reason to design your own is not performance. It is that the deck ends up being yours: a photo, a name, a drawing, a colour nobody else picked. Fifteen minutes in the browser, seen in 3D before you order, printed on the same maple as everything else in the shop.

Frequently asked questions