January 2021: Project Announcement
Over the years, we have heard from many board builders that it can be intimidating to build your first custom foam mold. This is why we decided to work in collaboration with independent board builders to create a foam mold kit consisting of 4 tested shapes so that new builders can feel assured that the boards they produce will perform as they should.
Check out the four incredible builders we worked with on this collab:
Beau Trifiro of Open Source Skateboards
Matt Berger of SK8Makers
Patrick Jérôme of Rêverie Woodworks
Chris McCann of Good Roads Collective
February 2021: SK8Makers City Cruiser Design Development
Matt developed a versatile mold for a cruiser shape, perfect for riding around town! This board is also the board on the cover of the updated version of The Handmade Skateboard.
Matt Berger of SK8Makers is the author of "The Handmade Skateboard", a timeless guide to designing and building your own custom longboard, cruiser, or street skateboard from scratch. Through his book and workshops, Matt has inspired countless builders to make their own handmade boards. Since the first SK8Makers workshop in Los Angeles, CA in 2013, Matt has graduated hundreds of students with a diploma in the form of a custom skateboard.
March 2021: Open Source Dancer Longboard Design Development
The longest board shape we have ever released, Beau’s Dancer Longboard mold will allow new board builders to create a functional dancer while still maintaining the freedom to play around with the profile shape!
Beau Trifiro is a skateboarder, a builder, an educator, and more! Beau founded Open Source Skateboards as a way to empower creativity through skateboarding. Creating tools for skaters and builders, providing board design and build services, and running board building workshops and online tutorials, are just some of the ways he helps the board building community.
April 2021: Good Roads Freeride Longboard Design Development
This board was designed by Chris with wheel wells that can be fully pressed without clamps in the Thin Air Press vacuum bag! The mold is incredibly versatile, allowing any new longboard builder to experiment with the profile shape while still being assured that the board will perform well.
Chris McCann is a huge contributor to the DIY community with his informative Youtube tutorials, open-source project files, and custom tools, making board building more accessible to everyone! Chris works hard to help expand the DIY board building space by teaching builders how to create their own wheels, bushings, and even more.
May 2021: Rêverie Woodworks Commuter Longboard Design Development
This Commuter Longboard is a great option for cruising around the city. It’s large enough for stability while riding but still small enough to carry around while you jet from place to place - plus it saves on material by being able to be made from our Street Deck size veneer!
Patrick Jérôme is a firefighter by day and a woodworker by night! Patrick started his woodworking journey over a decade ago with a Roarockit longboard kit. Along the way, he has become a huge inspiration to fellow hobbyist woodworkers, documenting his process on Instagram. Patrick brings fresh ideas to the world of longboard design with his fine woodworking background.
June 2021: Pro-Foam Collab Unboxing + First Look
After watching the boards being designed, built, and tested by the four builders, we couldn’t wait to get our hands on them! We filmed our unboxing and first look at the custom boards and molds to capture our real-time reactions.
We love how much variety there across the four molds, allowing new board builders to use them as a baseline to easily begin creating boards.
July 2021: Development and Testing
Once the boards arrived here at our shop in Toronto, the hard work began!
We took the molds that each builder sent to us and set them up for production.
Then we tested, tested, and tested some more!
August 2021: Development and Testing
We also developed preshaped versions of the City Cruiser and Dancer Longboard kit, for board builders who don’t have any power tools (except a drill if you want to set your board up for riding!).
These shapes are also available for teachers and schools to build in the classroom in our Teacher’s Kits and Multipacks!
September 2021: More Testing!
We rigorously tested all of the foam molds throughout the design process to ensure that they functioned as they should, but also to make sure the vision of each board designer was captured!
October 2021: Preparation!
The whole Roarockit team was involved across the development of this project. The manufacturing, packaging, shipping, photography, and more is all done at our shop in Toronto!
November 2021: Product Launch!
After working on this project for the whole year, it’s finally here!
Check out our video introducing the full collection to learn more.
Rêverie Longboard
SK8Makers City Cruiser
Open Source Dancer
Good Roads Freeride Longboard
Taryn O'Grady,
Roarockit Skateboard Company