Since I was a kid, I have always figured out a way to make whatever I was into. When I was around 12, I read about how to make your own skateboard in a book I got from the library. At that point I had never seen a skateboard before, and I don't know what attracted me to it. The directions were to cut a rollerskate in half and attach the halves to the ends of a piece of wood with screws. So I did. You couldn't really turn it, but at the time just going straight but sideways was enough.
A few years later, inspired by the snowboard scene in the James Bond movie “A View To A Kill,” I made my first snowboard. First, I drew the shape on a piece of graph paper. Then I traced the shape onto a piece of plywood and cut it out with a jigsaw. This was a trick I learned from my dad—he used the same method to turn cardboard boxes into costumes for us.
I poured boiling water onto the plywood “snowboard” to try bending the nose, and used rubber straps attached with screws for the bindings. It rode about as well as my first DIY skateboard—I couldn’t turn it, but standing sideways was enough to get me stoked.
Eventually I got my first production snowboard—a Burton Elite 150—and have lived to ride ever since.
Stay tuned for more stories from the Venture Vault.
—Klem
