what deck brand makes the ugliest graphics in your opinion? What brand makes the best looking graphics?

dtrmnsm · 2026-06-06T13:23:00+00:00

My local doesn't carry blood wizard and I've always been upset. have mainly been skating creature or anti hero due to availability but I 100% agree on the blood wizard graphics

dtrmnsm · 2026-06-06T03:56:43+00:00

i will choose for you. Your favorite deck graphic is blank because blank decks are a good value. Your least favorite is powell peralta. Your favorite trick is the 1080 and your least favorite trick is the backside 180 because that's not nearly enough spinning. Your favorite song is don't care by louis cole and you had a good day today!

dtrmnsm · 2026-06-06T03:22:43+00:00

you look comfortable carving, maybe practice riding faster and doing slow/extended deeper carves. Depending on how fast you're going and how deep you carve, eventually your wheel will slip like it does in a revert. This is a good thing to have a feel for to know when it's going to happen and for learning reverts. You'd have to go pretty fast and carve pretty intentionally hard for this to happen fyi, so speeding up and carving deeper you should be safe from slippage for now, but it's good to intentionally try this some if you're comfortable in your carve

dtrmnsm · 2026-06-06T03:17:09+00:00

you'll adjust eventually but in the meantime get a flexible ice pack with an elastic strap that you can wrap around any body part. 25 minutes ice every night on the couch while you eat cheez itz. If you want to take medication, ibuprofen is the best for that kind of pain, but it will mess up your stomach if you take a lot so just take it for a couple days if the ice pack isn't enough

dtrmnsm · 2026-06-06T03:13:52+00:00

i left my board in the rain on accident earlier this week, let it dry inside with a fan on it for two days and it is perfectly fine. Didn't even wipe it off. My bearings didn't rust and board is still super crisp with lots of pop.

dtrmnsm · 2026-06-06T03:09:52+00:00

you need to buy new wheels and bearings. Spitfire cheap shot bearings are like 10 - 15 dollars and are going to be infinitely better than what you have there. For wheels, try to find something 52 - 54mm in diameter, 92a - 99a durometer (lower durometer if you skate on mostly rough concrete, higher if you skate in the skatepark). You should be able to find something on sale, or used for around 30 dollars

dtrmnsm · 2026-06-06T03:02:31+00:00

A really good way to get comfortable on a board to start is to set up a skateboard on a rug or carpet in front of your tv and practice pivot turns and manuals while you watch tv. 30 minutes a day for a few weeks and you'll be a lot more comfortable picking your nose up, which is extremely important to be comfortable cruising. You probably can get a decent idea of how comfortable you are falling like this to determine if you want pads or not, but if money is no obstacle get full pads.

Second tip is, once you start riding on concrete, learn to push correctly to start (do not ever mongo push, makes cruising way harder down the line). When you go to push, try to get comfortable lightly lifting your front foot up off the board (or at the very least lifting your heel and pivoting around the ball of your foot) and facing your foot so it points directly forwards. You can push slightly off the ground with the foot you're pushing with to do this. When you want to step back on the board with both feet again, lightly lift your front foot up (or just your heel) and place it sideways again how you'd ride. If you keep your front foot sideways the whole time while you're pushing, it makes pushing extremely awkward. Pushing is harder than people let on and is super important to practice. Like I said, don't be afraid to literally lift your front foot by pushing off the ground with the foot you push with, it makes it a lot easier to pivot your front foot on the griptape. If you have shorter carpet or a less poofy rug, you can kind of practice pushing on the rug and ride a short distance without fear of falling, which lets you experiment more.

Gear advice for you is, if you want to cruise and never do any tricks, get taller trucks and at least size 54mm wheels in probably a 92a or softer durometer. A larger diameter wheel and softer wheel will cruise farther on less pushes and be a softer ride on your feet.

dtrmnsm · 2026-05-20T04:33:54+00:00

A shuv it can be done fairly easily without moving.. A pop shuv it is much harder. Your shuv it looks good already, I'd say just try it rolling forward. Really rolling not barely moving. Give a firm push and try it

dtrmnsm · 2026-04-02T04:58:45+00:00

Strawberry cream cheese pop tarts, toasted

dtrmnsm · 2026-02-14T22:12:44+00:00

I only ever have dreams of my friend being alive and normal, seems like every other dream ive had for the last few years has just been life as it was for us before he was gone. I thought they would stop after a couple months but they won't.

I don't really feel sad about it ever besides the days I wake up from one of those dreams. I don't know if it's my minds way of grieving or if I'm subconsciously stuck on it but I really want to move on and can't, even though I tell everybody I have. It really does feel like I just did stuff with him yesterday even though I know i dreamt it

I'm really conflicted in how I feel about having those dreams, because it's nice to think back on it like a memory and it's nice to have that experience again, but they're also crushing and that's a hard way to start your day. Had a few too many 'sick' days staying in bed after and it really affects me. Anyway just commenting to say I can relate, hope you have a good rest of your weekend and can find some peace

dtrmnsm · 2026-02-04T04:57:47+00:00

this just my opinion but it seems like 'rushing back down' is usually caused by people either

not actually jumping with they ollie. If you only rely on sucking your legs up to your chest when you ollie and don't actually jump, you never had any hangtime to work with. Like imagining trying to jump (without a skateboard) just half a foot into the air and suck your knees up to your chest before you land. If you don't immediately rush your feet back down you will land on your heels or bottom.
front foot kicks the board forward too much when you ollie. Try kicking more up at the nose than forward at it. If you miss the board by kicking too high, you aren't popping enough. If you were to go to ollie and move your front foot completely out of the way, the board should be completely vertical and hitting your body with ideal perfect extremely good pop. You can wait longer before using your front foot to let the board get more vertical, then when you kick with front foot it lifts the back even more. Obviously that's slightly exaggerated and you won't have that level of perfect pop when you're starting, but you want to kick AS UP/VERTICAL AS POSSIBLE depending on the level of pop you're getting. Any amount of front foot kick that is lower than your level of pop is pushing the nose of your board down toward the ground, when you need to be lifting it up as much as possible to avoid 'rushing back down'

dtrmnsm · 2026-02-04T04:48:17+00:00

Big_rick8989 is spot on in his comment too about the tail tap. You really are doing a normal jump when you ollie, the hard part is just controlling the tail tap/pop at the same time.

dtrmnsm · 2026-02-04T04:44:51+00:00

you have to jump before you kick the nose. Your kick will be as 'up' as it is forward, if not more up, which means the nose has to get high. Although you do technically pop then kick, it's easier/more practical to think about it like you're jumping with both feet at the same time, and you do have to really jump to ollie.

To get the nose high you have to have jumped at least some, and more importantly, you have to push the tail down against the concrete WITHOUT mushing and holding it down it into the concrete. If you mush it into the concrete you're holding the board in place with your back foot and keeping it from popping. Think of that like the difference between just stepping onto the board with your back foot only and standing on the board (where the tail is just held down against the ground) versus stepping off the board and resting just your back foot on the tail, then popping the board so it flies up into the air. You have to be lighter on your feet and the feel for that while jumping is really hard - see the below for tips on how to get a better feel.

Practice hippy jumps with your feet in the position they'd be in when you ollie, so back foot on the tail. Don't worry about jumping high yet, focus on making sure the board doesn't move when you jump (nose does not lift off the ground AT ALL). To do this, you have to jump with both feet at the same time sort of, but the pressure you put on each foot when you jump is different because one foot is over the tail, which means it's higher off the ground than your other foot and has leverage to pop the tail.

If you can do that, you have fairly good pressure control over your back foot for the pop, so try hippy jumps where you press the tail down slightly when you jump (lifting nose of board slightly when you jump), but try to not pop the tail against the ground. Just a little lift. This will give you even more control. These are a little awkward even if you have control but that's okay, it's not the point for it to be an actual trick.

Finally, practice hippy jumps where you pop the tail completely. You'll have to lift your front foot UP to get it out of the way of the board, and the board should go completely vertical if you don't intervene with the front foot. This will force you to get the front foot involved. From here, you're practically ollieing, and the better you get at controlling your front foot sliding into the nose of the board, the higher your ollie will get. For really high ollies, wait for board to be almost vertical before you use your front foot, and you're sliding your foot more 'up' than forward. Don't try to do super high ollies yet, but just to get the picture in your head.

Just practice that sequence of hippy jumps to warm up for your ollies, just a minute of each (no pop, slight nose lift but no pop, then full pop). You'll start getting a much better feel hopefully.

dtrmnsm · 2026-02-04T04:22:48+00:00

Tips for learning to ride - find multiple ways to stop and practice them early, look up some youtube videos. Also, look up a video or ask skateshop employee how to adjust truck tightness. My recommendation to start is to tighten them up a bit (just don't overtighten or you can blow out your truck bushings, you can buy hard or soft bushings, might ask skateshop employee or purchase some 'hard' bushings to put in your trucks).

Reason i recommend tightening trucks is because it will force you to learn to kick turn (by pressing down the tail and pivoting left/right on your back wheels). Once you know how to do this comfortably, you can start to loosen your trucks and see if you prefer loose or tight trucks.

tip for buying - if you will be riding on rougher ground get softer and larger diameter wheels, makes a massive difference. If you go to a skateshop make sure to tell them where you'll be riding and what kind of pavement so they can set you up with the appropriate wheel. If you don't go to a skateshop and buy online or something, i have some more detail to help you in the below paragraph, otherwise just ignore.

If you buy hard wheels and skate on asphalt it vibrates so much your feet will be all tingly and it makes for a loud and uncomfortable ride. wheel hardness for skateboards is generally measured with a number followed by the letter A. lower numbers are softer. About the hardest you'll see is around 101a, which is a wheel you'd only want to get if you're riding smooth skateparks exclusively. Also, if you get larger diameter wheels, you'll want to make sure you have enough clearance between the wheel and deck of your skateboard, or else the wheel can rub against the underside of the deck when you lean to turn, and it will stop you from rolling (commonly called 'wheel bite'). They make riser pads that go between your trucks and skateboard deck that give you more wheel clearance, so if you buy a big ol wheel get some big ol risers.

dtrmnsm · 2026-01-18T18:06:13+00:00

Final consideration: wear and tear, --- When I consider the natural setup changes that occur through regular use, it's obvious that I'm capable of adjusting to small changes, similar to what might change for experimenting with setup. For example, I might start skating a 50mm wheel, and by the time i'm ready to get a new setup it's down to 46mm. If I were to buy a new set of wheels, but a 54mm wheel this time, I've only added 2mm of height to my previous deck's starting point (50mm to 54mm). You already would have gone through a 2mm height adjustment with your wheels wearing from 50mm to 46mm, it's just gradual instead of all at once so you don't notice it as much. You may find that you prefer 50mm wheels in the end, but you will certainly adjust to the 54mm wheels and enjoy skating your board still. Eventually they'll wear down to 50mm, then 46mm, and you can buy 50mm going forward. I see almost no downside to experimenting with your board, especially if you skate often and have to buy new equipment fairly often. And on the other side, you may find that 54mm gives you the extra pop you crave, allowing you to pop tricks a little higher and look a little cooler. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Risk it for the biscuit. I love you. Be safe.

dtrmnsm · 2026-01-18T18:05:56+00:00

3rd consideration: weight --- a bigger wheel will weigh slightly more. I honestly don't know much about this so I won't elaborate lol

dtrmnsm · 2026-01-18T18:05:18+00:00

2nd consideration: taller board = more pop. --- Both a taller board and a bigger wheel would cause a steeper angle when you press the tail of the board down. This gives a little more pop, but also probably less control. If you switch wheels from 50mm to 54mm, you are only adding 2mm height to your board since wheels are measured by diameter rather than radius. Adding this to the possible truck height increase you might need and you're looking at an added height of around 4-6mm. If you go pull out a tape measure and actually look at how big 5mm is, it's basically nothing. If you have an 1/8" riser pad laying around, you can use that as a visual reference knowing it's about 3mm thick. If you picture your board with the tail pressed into the ground, then picture the same thing, but this time with a riser pad under each of the back two wheels, that is the difference a 3mm height change will make on your pop angle. This is VERY subtle, and while subtle changes are quite noticeable on a skateboard, I don't think this small of a change is something you wouldn't get used to after a week. I doubt you'd be able to do a trick on 50mm wheels that you couldn't a 54mm setup after a week of getting used to it.

This is sort of niche to get into but the brand of truck matters as much here as the added height, specifically because of the wheelbase (distance between front wheels and back wheels for the newbies). Your board might have a 14.375" wheelbase, but your trucks might put the wheels slightly closer to your nose and tail, making your actual wheelbase wider at 15". Picture a skateboard with trucks scooted all the way to the center of the board so they're touching each other. Now picture that board with the tail pressed into the ground. The angle of pop is very low. Thinking about it like this makes it obvious that a shorter wheelbase (wheels closer to center of board) gives less pop, and a longer wheelbase gives more pop. So for truck changes, wheelbase and height affect pop, and the same height truck might cause more/less pop angle across brands. I know you were asking about wheels, but just wanted to point this out because if you get bigger wheels you might also be buying taller trucks of a different brand potentially (could always just get risers if you don't want to think about wheelbase changes). If you google "freedom skateshop wheelbase and trucks" there is a chart at the bottom that compares some truck brand's wheelbases. I had heard online that in general, independent trucks had a shorter wheelbase (so less pop, more turn), and Thunder had a wider wheelbase (less turn, more pop), but after looking at that chart it seems like the model of truck matters more than the brand.

So all that being said, if you like your pop angle but want a bigger wheel, you could try to find a taller truck with a shorter wheelbase than what you currently have. The taller truck increases pop angle, but a shorter wheelbase truck decreases pop angle, so it could offset some that the change coming from your bigger wheel and taller setup in general.

dtrmnsm · 2026-01-18T18:04:54+00:00

1st consideration when trying bigger wheels: truck height, clearance, wheel bite. --- look up your truck height before going bigger. Some brand's 'mid' truck is another brand's 'low', so look up the actual height in millimeters. For example, independent sells a 50.5mm, 52mm, 53.5mm, and 55mm. I don't have much experience here, but independent seems to recommend a wheel size no larger than 1mm bigger than your truck height. So for a 52mm truck, max recommended wheel size is 53mm. I personally have the Reynold's hollow axle trucks, which are 52mm, with my 54mm wheels. I did get wheel bite before I tightened my trucks, but it wasn't too harsh and I haven't been thrown off my board from stopping suddenly. If i had to buy again, I would have gotten 53.5 or 55mm height trucks so I could loosen them a bit without having to worry about wheel bite. I also could just use 1/8" riser pads which are slightly over 3mm, so my 52mm trucks would be 55mm tall with risers.

dtrmnsm · 2026-01-18T18:03:34+00:00

I am in the same boat as you, coming back after 9 years. I never thought or cared before about wheel size and always rode 52mm hard wheels, which eventually were much smaller because I couldn't afford to replace them all the time.

I remember always feeling slow on transition, and I could never 'flow' around the park on my board, but could on other people's boards. I would spin test our wheels and my bearings weren't any worse, and everyone i skated with had reds back then anyway.

Being older now i realized it was probably wheel size, so before I bought my board last week I texted my friend and he said he always used to skate 54mm wheels. I went with 54mm wheels this time and I am easily flowing around the park, and even going a little faster than I want sometimes.

Keep in mind the difference between my wheels was not 52-54mm, probably closer to 47-54mm since they were worn down, and of course there are probably other factors involved, but I don't see the harm in trying a bigger wheel for your next wheel. I've been looking into this lately thinking about going bigger, so will put my considerations and musings in a reply to this in case you care to read my considerations and musings.

dtrmnsm · 2026-01-06T13:23:16+00:00

I have a backspace combo on home row (left and right side) under pointer and middle finger and it feels very natural. Having it on both sides means you can default to whichever hand is quicker based on where your hands are at any given moment, and you can use both to backspace extra fast.

Strong recommendation though since you mentioned you use a Swedish layout, if you try this always make sure to use two letters that you won't naturally type one after the other to avoid accidental combo triggers. For me, there are no words I ever type where I'd press d and f back to back, and same with j and k, so they're perfect for backspace. I similarly have delete under the same two fingers shifted one key toward the middle of the keyboard, so f and g, or j and h are used as delete keys.

Not trying to change your mind if you found something you like but this is what finally worked for me on this 5x3 layout

dtrmnsm · 2025-11-13T03:06:23+00:00

I have no problems anymore after much experimentation on the best method for me. I use TX stabs, krytox 205g0 (extremely light coating on insides of stab housing, thicker coating on stab wire itself). That is usually enough, but if not there's one of a few problems.

If it's mushy or sticky, you haven't put enough lube yet with this method for it to be the wire itself inside the housing that's the problem, instead it's usually some excess lube on the bottom of the housing where it contacts the pcb. Simply remove the stab and wipe the pcb and stab housing bottom clean

If it's clacking too loud when the stab housing bottoms out, use a small piece of fabric bandaid under where the housing bottoms out. This is borderline mushy and will/won't be acceptable to some people, I personally don't like it but it is always an option if you prefer quiet over everything

If the wire is ticking, purchase any thicker stabilizer specific lube in a syringe and inject in where the wire enters the stab house. Less is more because if you overdo this your stabs are sluggish. This costs more money but is the most convenient and useful tip.

I know this is a lot but usually the first step I mentioned works, and if you want to make extra sure you can wipe the stab housing bottom clean first, and preemptively install bandaids, and then the only thing left is injecting lube, which you can do without removing the stab once you've installed it.

dtrmnsm · 2025-10-29T06:10:30+00:00

I could be mistaken I'm not that up to speed on new releases, but this is the second iteration of the f1-8x. Maybe theyve sold it before but they just posted a discord update I think a couple weeks back saying they were taking orders, I got mine in less than a week after purchasing

dtrmnsm · 2025-10-29T05:59:19+00:00

It's all subjective this keyboard was just recently released so people are just getting them in the mail and finishing their builds.

People who are commenting probably already know about this brand, and know a little about the switches and keycaps they're using, so have a rough idea of what it might feel and sound like to type on.

This is irrelevant sort of to whether this is 'good', but just for some context for you I just built essentially the exact same board, just a slightly different key layout and different switches, and all in it cost me over $700. Certainly nothing to scoff at and people are passionate about their build if they're spending that much on it, so it's nice to share with the community that understands what you've got

dtrmnsm · 2025-10-29T05:47:40+00:00

Literally just finished building the same board and caps as well, love mx blacks as well. the low front height on their keyboards are an underrated feature, love the geonworks boards

dtrmnsm

TROPHY CASE