Assembling a Skateboard together

In order to assemble a skateboard you need to make sure you have all the necessary parts. You are going to need a deck, a pair of trucks, four wheels, one sheet of grip, 8 bearings, and the 8 bolts and nuts for fixing it all together. Additionally you will also need some tools to do this. These will include a file knife, a screwdriver, possibly an allen wrench (if you have them type of bolts) and of course you will need a socket wrench to fix the wheels on with.

Step One

To start off with put together all your tools and materials needed and put them in a clear workspace.

Step Two

Next lay your skateboard deck flat along the ground, with the nose and tail pointed upwards towards you. Take your sheet of grip tape and peel the back of it off and then proceed to lay it down on the board. In the meanwhile make sure it covers the whole of the deck. The next part is to take the file and scrape yourself a line around the deck so cutting the edges will be is easier to perform. When you have your outline, just start to cut as straight as you can around the circumference. That should be the hardest part to do, so once your done just poke out the 8 holes where your bolts will go and that's the grip tape all sorted.

Step Three

The next step is to fix the trucks to the deck. Start off by guiding four of the bolts through the that holes you made earlier through the grip tape and then place your truck on it. You must remember to make sure the bolt that holds everything together (kingpin), is facing inwards as if it is not then this will ruin the whole process. Now continue to do the same task for the other truck truck and remeber to make the kingpins face one other.

Step four

If you do not have a bearing press then, Putting the bearings into the wheels can be a difficult task, but not impossible. The process that will make it much easier is this. To begin with you need to sit on your skateboard on one side of it, so it is resting onto its wheel axle. Now remove the nut found at the end of the axle. Now what you have to do is place one bearing onto the axle and proceed to slide a wheel onto it. You will now be able to use pressure to pop the bearing into place on the wheel. Now you must remove that wheel and then slide another bearing on and continue to do the same process again. Also another point ot mention is that if you have wheel spacers, then you need to put them in once the first bearings are on. Do this over and over again so that you have done it three more times.

Step Five

Once you have completed the above steps, you're skateboard should be fully assembled. Now you can start to test it. To do this you need to take it out onto perhaps your driveway, garage or possibly the basement. The first method of testing to do is tto perform a truck test. You need to do this by leaning on your toes and heels. While you're doing this see if your wheels touch the deck, if they do so then your going to need to tighten them up a bit more with a wrench. You will after time have a preference of either having them tightly fixed, loose or just the average truck tightness, but to start with it is not essential.

The next testing method is, to test the wheels. To start this you need to give it a push. If you feel as if you are sort of dragging a little, then you may have your axle nut done up way too tight and it will definately need loosening to prevent friction from slowing you down. Now that these tests and adjustments have been completed, you can proceed to take your board anywhere you want.
As you may well know, pretty much any area you can skate in.