Dwindle shows you how their boards are made

This video tour of the Dwindle wood shop narrated by Rodney Mullen is fascinating on several levels. I’ll start with the elephant in the room, the factory location. Sure, the wood comes from Canada, but the labor appears to mostly be comprised of girls just old enough to compete on the Chinese gymnastics team. Next, there’s the joyless, dry narration by Rodney himself. In the first few minutes of the video it’s hard to tell if this is going to be a parody of corporate industrial films or a bona fide video. Lastly, there’s the technological innovation in board manufacturing. These guys have figured out how to make boards seemingly identical to one another. A big part of that would be the fact that only one board gets pressed in one mold at a time, although the molds are stacked on top of each other. To hear Rodney talk, they have a bunch of prima donnas really picky pros who would reject up to 80% of decks from a run because they weren’t up to their critical standards. I know people who are hyper aware of the physical characteristics of the deck they are riding, but most of us can make due with a deck off the shelf as long as it’s a model we like. For those of you who can’t, Dwindle has the solution for you, as long as it’s a 7.5 inch popsicle stick. Just kidding. Whether you are pro or anti (take your pick: Dwindle-Mullen-China), or even ambivalent, the video is worth checking out, assuming you have at least a passing interest in how skateboards are made, or the skateboard industry, even if you’ve already seen a few.

– Thanks to sk8Norcal for the tip.