From the conception of its miniature predecessor; the fingerboard, to the small handful of companies pushing the activity today, the history of handboarding is an overlooked topic with little information on it. This article will be diving deep in the world of handboarding, covering its introduction to the skateboarding scene in the early 2000's, to its discontinuation and almost extinction, to its rise again.
It was the 1980's and the skateboarding scene was far from where it is today. Single tail boards and vert ramps were all the hype and Powell Peralta was at the forefront of manufacturing, pushing skateboarding into the sport that it was about to become. With riders such as Tony Hawk, Steve Cabalerro and Mike McGill, the Bone Brigade was skateboarding's dream team that every skater looked up to and with the release of their first video "The Bones Brigade Video Show" in 1984, the influence this team had over skateboarding's culture defined it.
It was in their second video "Future Primitive", where Lance Mountain premiered fingerboarding to the world. This is the very first documented fingerboarding footage.
Back then it was a fairly common DIY skateboarding project to craft your own fingerboard from cardboard, using toy car wheels and coffee stir stick for axles. While it started out as a fun craft project, fingerboards weren’t mass-produced until years later.
The first company to release fingerboards was in the form of keychains by Somerville International’s Fingerboard brand, established in 1987, but it wasn't until 1999 when Tech Deck came into the picture and the activity skyrocketed. Wal-Mart, Kmart, Kay-Bee Toys & Toys ‘R Us began stocking their displays across America and fingerboarding suddenly became almost equally popular to skateboarding, except to an entirely younger demographic that wasn't necessarily interested in skateboarding to begin with.
It wasn't until 2001, that Tech Deck began shifting their focus from their two-finger pastime to the other lonely hand. Handboards hit the market in the form of a larger miniature skateboard coming in at 10.6" as opposed to 3.8", intended for the use of two hands. The use of hands as opposed to fingers lent to a more realistic learning experience that translated to and from skateboarding more naturally.
The larger design left room for extra features, making handboards a touch more sophisticated than fingerboards with truck collaborations from independent and even tensor with their orange plastic slide plates for better noseslides and tailslides.
Despite the easier learning curve and slightly better features, the new size posed a new set of issues. Shortly after the initial release we began to see the ugly "DO NOT RIDE" text circling the iconic Tech Deck grip tape logo.
Teck Deck's handboard craze lasted just under a decade and with little known reason as to why they became discontinued, we are left only to speculation as to why Tech Deck closed their doors on the production of these beloved toys that started it's own underground cult following. I've come up with a few theories over the years so my guess is that one of these might be correct.
Why did Tech Deck stop making handboards?
The size posed an issue with children riding them despite the warning labels on top of the boards. This could have lead to lawsuits from small injuries if parts such as the trucks or axels were hurting kids feet.
Handboards weren't as popular or portable as the fingerboard and when thinking about this from the perspective of a child, an 11" handboard is almost a touch large for children to play with properly.
The cost to profit margin. The amount of sales between fingerboards and handboards could have made it an obvious choice for Tech Deck to pull back on the larger handboard production.
New parent company ownership. Tech Deck was originally owned by X-Concepts and was sold to Spin Master in 2007. In this video below, we are graced with this small piece of information that could be the reasoning as to why handboards got the boot.
Tech Deck's final installment of the handboard series came in the form of non-skateable classic skateboard wall hangers known as the "Collector Series" that didn't come with trucks or allow for handboarding at all due to the hardware holes not lining up with their previous models.
In the years to come, handboards were no longer available at any retail store. Their modest $20 price tag had been replaced by $100+ prices on eBay, pushing the activity into it's own unique territory, leaving handboarding only for those who wanted it bad enough.
Around 2016, Jordan Green of Redemption Fingerboards began making 7-ply wood pressed decks that served as a replacement to Tech Deck's plastic boards, but that left one major issue. Trucks. The weakest point of Tech Deck's handboards and the hardest thing to recreate. I remember sending Jordan messages on Facebook back then regarding trucks, telling him how profitable it would be if he were to actually figure out the process of making trucks to go with his handboard decks and that people would actually pay the price of what boards were selling for on eBay or even more.
At the time, it didn't sound very promising, but sure enough by early 2017, Redemption fully resurrected the handboard, not only recreating it, but surpassing it in every way possible, using manufacturing processes no different from how real skateboards were made. Pressing wooden boards, forging metal trucks and making real urethans wheels with tiny bearings. Selling for around $100, our small knit community of OG handboarders such as @handboardofficial @deckstra @handboarding_101 @boards_of_handia and @instahands616 began taking handboarding to new levels.
Almost immediately after Redemption launched their professional handboard, a new company emerged offering handboards at a fraction of the price at around $30. Hangnail was a budget friendly handboard that was made primarily out of plastic with the exception of their kingpins and axle screws.
This father/son business venture by Bryan Tracey and his son Zyler was the perfect balance of logistics handled by Bryan and video marketing by Zyler. The two took the company along with handboarding itself to new heights, collaborating with Braille and YouTuber, Sam Tabor.
In the summer of 2018, Hangnail made a small tweak to their branding by changing the company name to Handskate, a genius strategy if you ask me.
A little more about Sam Tabor... Sam Tabor became the world's most famous handboarder over the years from his YouTube channel that he started back in 2012, with now over 1 million subscribers. He's known for his skateboarding related content such as handboarding and trampoline boarding and vlogs his daily life with hundreds of videos of all kinds on his channel.
With two new handboarding companies on the scene, inspiration struck Reno James during the first half of 2018 and by the end of the year he was shipping out his own high-end, boutique handboards for around $130 known as Genesis Handboards.
These handboards are known for their exotic woods, steep concave, boxy shape and wide trucks that match the width of their wide boards. Genesis was the first handboard company since Tech Deck to embark down the expensive manufacturing trail that lead him to a worry-free aluminum truck design being fulfilled by a manufacturing company. They also collaborated with Level-Up Fingerboards on his bushings so he could focus more on other aspects of the company without being bogged down too badly by truck production.
Towards the beginning of 2020 a different type of handboard company emerged. Chandler Makes is a handboard ramp building company lead by Chandler Meierarend, specializing in budget friendly handboard ramps, rails and obstacles; a great, cheaper solution for the younger demographic starting out who don't mind assembly on arrival.
2020 was a crazy year for all of us. With ample time at home in my apartment, I set out to build the greatest handboarding skatepark in the world. I turned my 8.5x11' spare bedroom into a realistic handboard skate plaza, featuring over 40 custom cut slabs of 1" thick granite and marble. This will eventually be the second greatest handboarding skatepark in the world... more on that later.
We circle back around to Jordan from Redemption in the Fall of 2021, who figured out a way of producing composite trucks, the P4 lites, saving him both time and money with his production. These trucks are quite possibly the lightest ones on the market.
Just before the end of the year in 2021, we received word of a new handboard company coming onto the scene. Silent Skateboards is based out of China and started off as a skateboard company but began shifting their focus to handboards, offering mid-grade budget boards similar to Handskates but with upgraded wheels with bearings, bushings and foam grip tape.
By the start of 2022, Silent worked with manufacturers to bring their own aluminum trucks to the market and finally began pressing their own wooden decks, making Silent the first handboard company to offer both budget conscious plastic based handboards and professional wood/metal handboards.
Which finally brings us up to today, June of 2022, as we launch Handboard Warehouse, bringing premium realistic handboarding obstacles and accessories to the market. Our hope is to improve the handboarding community by offering beautifully designed, realistic ledges, rails, benches and more, that are just as fun to skate as they are to look at.
As mentioned before, we are currently building a brand new handboarding skatepark in our 21x30' facility in Buffalo, NY with hopes of holding yearly meet ups and events for handboarders across America and around the world. This will undoubtedly be the greatest handboarding park on planet earth and we cannot wait to share it with you!
It's safe to say that handboarding is here to stay thanks to all of the collaborative efforts set forth within our community. Although we are nowhere near the number of participants as fingerboarding, we are growing and expanding our circle each and every year, with the hopes of turning more people onto the addicting world of handboarding.
Missing some key information here. A few of us made and sold plexiglass handboard decks starting in 2002, then wooden handboard decks in 2006. I understand that not everyone has been in the scene since it's inception in 2001, but some of us have, and I i think that part of the history is critical. Most of us have families, and we're approaching forty, so we're not around anymore, but those who paved the way deserve mentioning. Here's a video we made back in 2002: https://vimeo.com/2329965?ref=em-share
This was fun to read and deffiently learned somethings. I always wondered where the display decks came from. I don't remember them. My only mark to this history and maybe somebody out there knows more, but from what I can tell I was the first sponsered handboarder.
This was a great read! I appreciate the time and effort put into this article. You are correct there is not much information regarding the history of handboarding, but you have created what I have wanted to read for a long time! Much love brother may this coming season invite more people to try out a handboard!!