On 5/8/2014 2:35 PM, Lee Michaels wrote:
I read a couple stories about this couple. They started in New York and
moved to California. He is a woodworker. She is an artist. They buy
oak boards and make skateboards. He builds them. She paints them.
Without an kind of marketing, they have become the hot new board for the
skateboard crowd.

I found this story interesting for a number of reasons. They started
out in their apartment, moved to a truck in the street and worked in
their front yard. They have a shop now. And no big tools. They use
power tools, but everything is hand held and a small bench. She paints
them to look like retro surfboards. They are quality products designed
to last a long time.

And it happened all by accident. They started building their own boards
and it grew from there. No business plan, no financing, no fancy digs,
no big shop. A few hand tools and paintbrushes. Two young kids go out
and start a business building things by hand. I remember the crude
skate boards we made 40 years ago. These are much better.

LOL, If you saw my first "crude" skate board I would think that these
painted skate boards might be light years ahead of much better. ;~)

Mine was IIRC a piece of SYP 1x6 about 30" long, ends not cut square. I
forfeited my right side keyed roller skate and separated it into the
front and back halves. I removed the toe clamping mechanism from the
front half and with a hammer flattened out the leather strap section on
the back end of the back half. I care fullyplaced nails through the
leather strap bracket into the bottom back end of the board and placed
nails around the perimeter of the front skate on the other and bent them
over on top of the skate.

Result, a steel wheeled slippery on concrete SOG. By the end of summer
I had saved up enough money to buy that fancy new $5 skateboard at the
Woolco store. Somewhere around 1967 ;~)