- Hey, friends, I have a really special treat for you.
This is my daughter, Liberty.
If you have ever wondered who my videographer is,
well, it has been my daughter.
And one of the reasons why you haven't seen a lot of videos
come out of me is because unfortunately,
she graduated and moved out of the house first of September.
And so I lost my videographer.
And she even moved four hours away.
She lives now with my oldest son and daughter-in-law
and my granddaughter.
And so I don't see her very much anymore, unfortunately.
Well, she's down for the week.
And she got herself a brand new Carver Girl Swirl
for Christmas.
And she wanted to have me tune it up for her.
And I was really excited to tuned up for her, except,
I did something really stupid just a few days ago.
And I'm nursing a sprained wrist and knees,
and we're gonna talk about that.
So I decided that hey, you know what we'll do,
we're going to just turn this into a great video
on surfskate basics for beginners,
because I can't tune up the board for her
with this nursing in this wrist.
But it's perfect,
because I'm gonna just walk her through exactly
how to fine-tune her Carver
and tune it up before she rides it.
And that way,
it'll be like if you're a surfskate beginner at home,
it'll be like I'm guiding you through the process.
And you can do it just like her.
And if you want video tutorials
on learning how to surfskate,
check out my video course,
"Surfskating for Non-Surfers,"
at www.SurfskatingForNonSurfers.com.
Okay, so surfskate basics for beginners,
the very first thing that I wanna cover
is protective gear because as I said,
I did something stupid.
Just like four days ago.
I am usually very safety-conscious.
Anytime I'm skating something new,
especially transitions, pump tracks, or new bowls,
I always get full protective gear on.
And me and a couple friends went out to a pump track
about an hour and a half away from my house that we found.
And for some reason,
it was just one of those days where I just kind of like,
you know, we drove up to the parking lot
and I went up to the pump track.
And I was like, oh, it's kind of a small little thing
and I had my board with me and I just jumped on
and before you know what,
I'm doing a few more turns around the board.
And I've just, wasn't being conscientious.
And one of those times where one moment you're up,
and the next moment you're down going,
what the hell just happened and why the hell
was I so stupid.
So we're going to use my stupidity to your advantage.
And the first thing we're gonna say is,
if you are a surfskate beginner,
you need to get a full set of protective gear.
And that includes, for starters, a helmet,
you got to protect your head number one, of course,
and then you got to get a set of knee pads,
elbow pads and wrist guards.
But with surfskating,
I wanna add one more very critical piece of protective gear
and that is hip pads and the, I don't know.
I was, it's been over a year,
I started October 15th of 2020.
I got my first surfskate,
is how long I've been surfskating and all this time.
Yeah, I did just hurt my wrist.
But mostly what I hurt the most is hips,
all the time.
I've hurt my hip, my right hip because I'm goofy-footed.
So that's my front hip.
And if that track jackknifes it just will,
I've slammed on the ground with that hip a lot.
So hip pads is a huge piece of equipment
for surfskating especially.
And I would say from my experience
in getting hurt for me
like the three most important pieces of protective gear
are going to be a helmet,
wrist guards and hip pads for surfskating specifically.
So Liberty, I have a set of protective gear for you
that I'm going to send home with you
along with your Girl Swirl board.
Okay, so you're gonna wear protective gear.
- Yes.
- Okay, perfect.
Okay, now let's get to tuning up your board
before you ride it.
And the first thing I wanna cover
is just the tools you're going to need.
If you're going to be a skater,
there's a standard list of tools
that you really just need to have and be familiar with.
But the first thing you're going to need is a skate tool.
The most common design of skate tools,
you'll see something that looks like this,
it has about five tools on it.
But I'm going to encourage you to get something like this
and the reason being is because we want something
that has a bearing tool on it.
And I'm going to explain why that's important later.
You don't need a bearing tool
and I'm gonna teach you how to work with your bearings
without needing a bearing tool
but, I personally use this quite a bit
and I think it's good if you're going to get
a skate tool anyway,
go ahead and grab one with a bearing tool.
I'm going to go ahead and send you home Liberty
with this cute white SpiceSkate one.
The next thing you're going to want, Lib,
is some Bones Speed Cream.
This is a lubricant that we use in bearings
and other moving parts.
You can also use something
like a three-in-one multipurpose machine oil,
but for me I just always use Bones Speed Cream.
And you are going to want some paraffin wax.
I just, this was like the smallest thing
I can get on Amazon.
This is big brick,
and then I just break off chunks
but I use paraffin wax to stop squeaking
out of my pivot cup.
And then I use a utility knife to get some wax shavings.
Then this eventually
you're going to want to get a bearing cleaner.
This is a Bones bearing cleaner,
and all we can just really quickly put your bearings
on that we don't need to go on that,
I have other maintenance videos that cover this
but this is a very nifty little tool
for cleaning your wheel bearings.
Depending on the truck you want,
you may want some marine grease,
I don't think you're going to need that for this Carver CX.
Another substitute for marine grease
is white lithium grease.
And I'll use marine grease or white lithium grease
in like the YOW Meraki to lubricate the spring
within the truck housing.
Another thing you'll want is some isopropyl alcohol.
This is what we use for cleaning bearings and other parts,
you want something that's at least 91%.
And then beyond that,
there's kind of some more advanced tools,
a socket wrench set becomes very useful,
I use this quite a bit.
And then I also will use an electric drill,
you don't need this, but I'll use a drill as well.
And you'll need both Allen bits and Phillips head bits
for the different screws that are on different setups.
So those are kind of the basic tools
that you'll be working with.
But bare minimum, you need a skate tool,
and you need to just know what you're doing with your board
to know what this is all for and why it's even important.
One thing I want to point out is, don't ever use WD-40
in anything in a skateboard.
Reason why is WD-40 attracts dirt more easily
than other lubricants and it also dries out,
I'm going to just walk you through all the steps
that I take every time I get a new board.
So flip this thing over Lib.
The first thing that I'm going to tell any surfskate beginner,
is just familiarize yourself with the board
because honestly, I've worked with a lot of beginners
where they're like, like afraid of their board,
they don't know how it works,
they're afraid they're going to break it,
they're afraid of adjusting it wrong or something.
So you really just want to get confident
in knowing all of your parts.
You want to know your wheels,
you want to know your wheel bearings inside here,
you want to know how your truck works.
And I would encourage you
to just take the whole thing apart,
don't be afraid of it.
But the first thing we want to do is, Carver
typically does a really good job of putting lube
in their pivot cups, but almost every surfskate
I've ever bought squeaks and I have to put wax
in the pivot cup before I ride it.
So let me show you how to do that.
Your pivot cup, first of all, is right here.
It's called a pivot cup.
This is what the pivoting arm of your truck
and it's a little plastic piece that sits inside there.
So to get to our pivot cup,
what we do is unscrew your,
this is called your kingpin knot right here
because this is what it's attached to is your kingpin bolt.
Okay, so go ahead and put your skate tool on that
and just turn that counterclockwise
to take that nut completely off of that kingpin bolt.
Okay, that's it.
Now pull that nut off.
Now you're going to see a washer.
Now what you want to do is pay close attention
to how these parts are coming off,
so that you remember how it goes back on.
So you see you have this bushing right here
with the washer on top of it.
Just remember that sequence
when you're putting this back together.
Now to loosen that bushing up,
you can kind of just loosen that truck a little bit
and then pull your bushing off.
And then your truck comes right off.
And then you see your pivot cup right there.
And if you can look in there up close,
you can see that Carver always puts lube
in their pivot cups.
So you shouldn't have squeaking out of a Carver pivot cup,
but you might.
And if you do, this is what you do, Lib.
You're going to just take some household paraffin wax,
and you want to make sure that it's household paraffin wax
because there's waxes that have like a lot of other oils
and things in them. And you're going to get a utility knife
and get some wax shavings just like this.
And you don't need a lot, just something like that.
And then go ahead and put those wax shavings
inside your pivot cup.
And that will stop any squeaking out of our pivot cup.
And then just pay attention to how this truck goes together.
You have, look at all the parts here
and just pay attention.
You've got on this Carver CX,
you've got a washer,
followed by a bushing facing this way.
And then,
the hanger goes over the top of that
followed by the other bushing and the other washer.
Now I'm going to teach you a little trick
that I learned from somebody online and I've done it
and it actually works really well
and that is to use a little white lithium grease
on your bushings.
So what that does is it kind of just loosens them up,
it creates more of a looser feel in the truck.
And it also prevents squeaking as well,
you can get squeaking out of the bushings as well
not only out of the pivot cup.
So Lib, to do that go ahead and pull those bushings off.
And I don't like to use a lot
because this will attract dirt, right,
but when we see these bushings
and basically I'll just put like a tiny bit
of white lithium grease
on these bushings,
like so.
It mean it doesn't take much,
you do it on this other one here.
Go and put it back together.
Okay Lib while you're on that kingpin not,
I wanna cover adjusting your truck.
That's going to be one of the most important things
you're going to want to know as a beginner.
Whatever truck you have,
whether it's the Carver CX, the Carver C7,
the Smoothstar Thruster, the YOW Meraki,
whatever it is that you have,
you need to know your truck in and out.
And you need to know how to adjust it.
So on the Carver CX, Liberty, the way that we adjust
is just by moving this kingpin, tightening it up or down.
So obviously, the tighter the you make that,
the tighter the truck is gonna be.
And the looser we make that,
the loose your truck's gonna be.
I personally like a looser truck.
That's something that you're going to want to do
to your preference.
And I get beginners who asked me do you adjust your truck?
The answer to that is I'm always adjusting.
It's always part of this process,
is really tuning your personal preferences
and finding out what works for you
and experimenting with different fields.
Play with it tight, see how it feels, then loosen it up,
see how it feels,
and you'll dial in what is best for you.
The next thing that we want to do, Liberty,
is just make sure that our wheels are spinning freely
and just look at our bearings.
But first, I want to just help you understand your bearings.
Go ahead and flip this over.
And go ahead and use your skate tool to take off
one of these wheels and I'm going to,
I'm not going to teach you how to take your bearings apart
right now.
But I'm going to teach you how to take them out of the wheels
and put them back into the wheels.
That's something really important to know.
Okay, so Liberty, when you pull off a wheel,
you're going to see you've got the nut right there.
Now pull off your wheel
and you're going to see on top here,
you've got a speed ring,
speed rings you use to eliminate friction,
and you should have a speed ring both right here
on the truck axle
and on the other side of the wheels.
Now Liberty, there's a couple ways
that we can remove these bearings.
We want to be careful that we don't damage them.
So you can use a bearing tool like we talked about.
If you don't have a skate tool with a bearing tool,
you can just use your truck axle like this,
you just put in your wheel bearing like so.
And you just turn it at an angle like that carefully
and it'll just pop off.
And then you're going to see there's your bearing.
And then that's what's called a spacer.
Your spacer sits between the bearings just like so.
Go ahead and take that bearing off using that axle.
There you go.
And you've got your wheel bearings out.
When you're putting wheel bearings back together, Lib,
it's important that you don't ever push down
on the bearing sit inside there.
And if you use some kind of a tool
to push down on that sleeve,
it's going, it could ruin your bearings.
And that's why we use a bearing tool like so,
the bearing tool just sit inside there like that
and you can push down
on that bearing without damaging any of your bearings.
Now if you don't have a skate tool with the bearing tool,
you can just use your truck axles
like so you can put the bearing on like that,
and then you put the wheel over that.
So I'm going to go ahead and take these off again, Lib
and you go ahead and practice,
just putting those wheel bearings back in
using your skate tool and don't forget your spacer.
Okay, now go ahead and put your wheel back on.
Starting with the speed ring.
And then your wheel, you got to align that spacer in there.
Your other speed ring.
And then when you tighten up that nut,
you wanna just make sure that your wheels
are spinning freely.
Okay, take that all the way tight.
Now go ahead and spin that wheel, see if it spins.
And I would just back that off just a little bit
to make sure that that wheel is spinning more freely,
just a touch.
That's too much.
Yeah, what you want to do
is you want a kind of I move it around like this,
you don't want a lot of play in that,
there's just a little bit in that.
But that will make that wheel spin a little bit more freely.
That's one of our maintenance steps here is just making sure
that our wheels are spinning freely.
But I wanted to just start by helping you understand
the wheel bearings and how they fit inside the wheels
with your spacer and your speed rings.
But then now that you understand that,
now just make sure that all of your wheels
are spinning freely,
and if they're not spinning freely,
just go ahead and back that nut off just a little bit
so that it will spin better.
So you can see this one here is stopping pretty quickly.
This is one that I would loosen up just a little bit.
Same thing with that one there.
So I would go ahead and loosen up those just a little bit.
Just back that nut off just a touch.
You don't want a lot of play in there.
That's probably good.
That's plenty.
And let's,
yeah, that's good.
Now go ahead and try that one.
That's good.
And there you go.
So now you've got no pivot cup squeak,
you've got your truck adjusted,
you've got your wheels spinning freely.
You understand your bearings.
I would say this Carver Girl Swirl is ready to go.
Oh, and I almost forgot Lib,
your final step of course
is applying your Surfskate Love sticker.
- I'm scared.
- Nice, there it is.
(hands clapping)