- [Narrator] We all remember playing
with fingerboards as a kid,
this man turned finger boarding
into his career and lifelong passion.
- My name is Mike Schneider.
I'm a professional finger boarder
and I'm the owner of Flatface Fingerboards.
- [Narrator] Since he was about 10 years old,
he's been building his own fingerboards
and customizing his own scaled down skate parks.
And he's been shredding ever since.
[peaceful music]
[metal screeching]
[rock music]
- [Interviewer] Learning a new trick,
do you think it's more painful on a skateboard
or on a fingerboard?
[Mike chucking]
- Learning a trick on a real skateboard's
definitely more painful
because you can actually get hurt doing it.
[bell dinging]
So I started finger boarding in fourth grade.
I had just started skateboarding shortly before that
and I was totally hooked, it was awesome.
And so kids in my fourth grade class
had fingerboards, Tech Decks,
and they were playing with them
during class and during recess.
And I just thought it was the coolest thing ever,
so that's where it all started.
A lot of my first finger boarding was done on books
and we would stack them to make
stair sets and stuff like that.
So you can be really creative
and you can fingerboard just about anywhere.
- [Narrator] You might be able to fingerboard anywhere,
but Mike has spent most of his life
creating the ultimate fingerboard park.
He spends well over 40 hours a week,
surrounded by miniature skateboards
and his collection of tiny skate parks.
- We are in the Flatface Fingerboards building
in Dracut, Massachusetts.
It's basically a huge building full of fingerboard parks.
There's at least 25 of them in here.
So you can come in and just fingerboard all day long.
And it's just an awesome place
for people to get together and have fun.
The first trick I remember learning was a varial flip.
I was trying to kickflip and it kept doing varial flips,
So I got really good at varial flips.
One big moment that I can remember
learning how to fingerboard that was pretty profound,
was like the first time that I did a kickflip nose slide
because it took me an hour,
like straight one hour at my desk,
trying it over and over again, not doing it.
And then all of a sudden I did it
and I noticed my camera was off.
[electronic dinging]
The battery had died so I didn't even get it on film
but it was more of like, all right,
I actually just did this thing
that I thought was impossible.
Then I realized I could pretty much learn any trick
if I just apply myself to it.
There's a lot of really complex tricks that I do
and once I do them and they feel easy afterwards,
but it takes a long time to get to that point.
So it's kind of always growing and evolving over time.
- [Narrator] 19 Years of intense practice
has given Mike a catalog of tricks
that rivals any skater to grace a "Thrasher" cover.
[Mike chuckling]
- So the most basic trick is an ollie.
And that's just a simple jump
where if the board appears to be stuck to your fingers,
but it's not.
The way that it works is that your middle finger
is going to pop the board against the ground
where the board kind of gets momentum
from hitting the ground.
And then you're basically lifting your hand with it,
guiding it, and then when you've reached the peak
and level out, then you just go back down with it.
So once you've mastered the ollie
people usually move on to kickflip, which is one of these.
Basically you pop it like an ollie,
and then you flick it with this finger,
which makes the board flip
and then when it's done flipping you land on it,
and then you're laying on the ground.
Next, you could learn something like a varial flip,
which is a kickflip where the board also turns 180 degrees.
Then after that, you could do a tre flip,
which is a 360 degree rotation plus a kickflip.
Instead of popping straight down with your back finger,
you're basically scooping at a little as you pop,
like that, and that's what's setting the spinning rotation
and then you're flicking it similar to a normal kickflip
with your front finger.
Then you can start turning your whole hand with it.
You can do like a frontside flip, backside flip,
spin in the other direction, big flip,
which is like a tre flip with the 180.
So there's tons of levels
and then you can combine more and more things together.
I can do a kickflip to late impossible.
So an impossible where you wrap it around your finger,
but I can do like a kickflip first.
[Mike chuckling]
I got it first try.
- [Interviewer] Yeah it's hard to believe it's so hard
when you're making it look so easy.
- That's the thing, once you learn it,
it's not really that hard
but until you get to the point where you can do it,
it's super hard.
If I invent the trick,
I'd probably name it rhombus after my cat.
[electronic beeping] [rock music]
[electronic dinging]
- [Narrator] Just like real life skating.
Mike is constantly pushing himself to master new tricks.
- Once you have all kinds of tricks, you've learned,
you can incorporate them onto different elements
of different skate parks doing tricks
in different combinations, so the possibilities are endless.
When I want to learn a new trick,
I pretty much just go for it.
Finger boarding and skateboarding
are both kind of trial and error
and just learning what doesn't work
in order to learn what does work.
So you have a vision of how you think
a trick should be done, and each time that you try it again,
there's a slight adjustment.
So you might be moving one of your fingers
into a different spot or faster or slower
or different angle and all that kind of stuff
comes together and then you'll notice
that you're either getting closer and closer to landing it,
or you're getting farther from it.
And then you can keep adjusting.
A lot of times when I have a trick in mind,
I kind of have a spot in mind for it.
Some of them are pretty specific and then other times,
if it's something more basic,
you can really do it anywhere which is cool.
It's still crazy to me,
even though I've been doing it for so long
that I built what I built
and then I made the boards and everything like,
when I'm using a board that I made on one hand.
I'm used to it but on the other hand was like,
wow, I really made a board that I think,
at least for me, it works better than any other fingerboard.
So it's really satisfying in that way.
[upbeat music]
- [Narrator] In his quest for the ideal fingerboard,
Mike decided to just do it himself.
So in his humble basement in Massachusetts,
Mike estimates, he's built thousands of decks over the years
and shipped them out to customers all over the globe.
- All right, so we're going to mold a board here.
We're going to start out by cutting the wood.
It's this really thin maple,
which is going to be layered and then molded into shape.
So we'll cut two plies with the wood grain horizontal
and then there's going to be three with vertical grain.
So that keeps it basically so that the shape
will hold over time,
just keeps the whole thing really strong and sturdy.
Now that we've got our wood cut,
we're going to glue it together and put it in the mold,
which will give it its shape.
The plastic wrap is just to keep everything clean.
So it doesn't make a huge mess everywhere on the mold.
This is the mold it's got the shape of the board
and the wood just goes right in it.
And then you squeeze it in here.
- [Narrator] The molding process takes several hours
in order for the board to fully harden
and be ready for sanding.
- So while the board sits in there,
I picked out another board that I've already molded
so I can continue showing the process.
[upbeat music]
So basically it starts out as a rectangle
and you need to sand it to the right width
and then you have to sand the nose and tail to be round.
So it's going to end up looking like the skateboard shape
and it just helps with performance and everything.
All right, so now the board is finished
being sanded into shape.
As you can tell, it's got that skateboard shape to it,
and it's pretty much ready for the next step.
- [Narrator] Mike's process for lacquering
and finishing his boards is proprietary
but after several hours that recently sanded piece of wood
looks and feels just like a real skateboard.
- First, we're going to put the trucks on.
These are made in Germany and they're super realistic,
just like a real skate truck and they have bushings,
they can turn and they got lock nuts and all that.
So they're going to screw on to the board
pretty much how you do it on a skateboard.
Luckily, most people like to put their own boards together.
So we pretty much just sell the parts
and people do it themselves.
I think my favorite part of putting together a board
is kind of the whole thing,
like each step is pretty satisfying.
The way that the trucks go on
when the holes are perfect is nice
and then just getting the wheels on and putting the tape,
it's just a really good feeling.
Like anytime you set up a new board,
it's really exciting, no matter what.
And there it is.
[Mike chuckling]
The decks have evolved a lot.
The first ones that I made, they were pretty good
but if you compare them to now,
they're all super shiny and perfect and uniform every time
and back then it was kind of hit or miss
because I was still learning what I was doing
and really making them as I go,
kind of in an always tweaking the dimensions and the shapes.
Basically every single upgrade was,
oh, I think if I change this part,
it'll make it a little better.
If I just move the nose and tail shorter,
or farther away from each other,
like all these little movements
and adapting it as I went along,
made it into what it is today
and now it's like pretty much perfect.
I think my favorite thing about the fingerboard community
is just how much joy it brings to everybody
because it doesn't matter who you are or where you're from,
it just like everybody gets along really well
and a lot of us have made like lifelong friends
through the whole process.
You can just do it anywhere.
You see the world in a different way
because you'll see something that looks like a ramp
that nobody who doesn't fingerboard would ever notice,
but because you fingerboard, you're just like,
oh, I gotta do at least one trick on that.
And so it just kind of makes the world like more exciting.