How to clean the skin on a skateboard?
Whatever sport you engage in, you need to monitor and care for the equipment. Skateboarding is no exception.
There are a lot of elements on the board that become unusable over time solely because the owner of the complete did not take care of them. The brightest and fastest moment is that your skin is dirty and doesn’t stick. Yes, this can happen, but you shouldn’t immediately change the sandpaper or even change the skateboard. Even the most dirty grip tape can be restored.
How does the skin get dirty?
If you ride at the skatepark very often, then the problem of dirty skin will not always be relevant for you. Although if the park is concrete, then dust from this material will constantly settle on the sandpaper. In street, your skateboard gets dirty from dirt from your feet when you don’t clean your sneakers before getting on the board. It gets dirty from spilled drinks, from glued chewing gum, from a candle falling off the edge, from falling into puddles, etc., etc., etc. – the street is just pure dirt, especially in the off-season.
As a result, you end up with sandpaper that is covered in some kind of dirt and your leading foot simply slips over it. You won’t get any pleasure from riding on such a griptape, and new tricks will be extremely difficult to master.
ALARM! Don’t ask your mom for advice on how to clean the skin of your skateboard, as she will advise you to wash it, which you absolutely cannot do. There are several generally accepted and most convenient ways to clean emery, the effectiveness of which we will consider.
1. Skin eraser (or emery gum)
This innovative development in skateboarding appeared not so long ago. Moms of sloppy skaters were tired of cleaning the house from dirt from the deck and decided to let the child bring a clean slate into the house. Lyrics, but the method is effective.
The grip tape eraser looks like an ordinary piece of rubber and feels like a Chinese anti-slip mat (probably it can also be used to clean sandpaper). Now almost every brand produces its own erasers, which essentially differ only in shape.
The cheapest sandpaper eraser from Russian brands costs about 200 rubles. This is the minimum price, cheaper only with a discount. On Aliexpress you can buy the same product in terms of properties and form factor. For example, such a Chinese eraser will cost you only 100 rubles with free shipping. But the quality of such an eraser for sandpaper will leave much to be desired. You can buy it just for the test.
The eraser does a really good job of removing dust and some small dirt. It won’t remove any greasy stain or something like that. It is worth noting that very frequent use of an eraser significantly worsens the clinging properties of the sandpaper. This is because you clean the emery coating due to friction, and the crystals of the grip at this moment become dull and in the future they will “live for a long time.” Therefore, you should use the eraser once after riding, but don’t bother with sanding the skin on the spot every hour.
Rating – 8 out of 10.
2. Vacuum cleaner
This miracle of technology copes much better with lightly ingrained dust on your skateboard. If we take an ordinary dirty skin and clean one side of it with a vacuum cleaner and the other with an eraser, the difference will be obvious.
A normal 1500 W “dust duster” without any attachments on a bare hose will suck dust well from the skin. You will be surprised how clean it can be. The main thing is not to use the cleaning version of the vacuum cleaner, and don’t scrub the sandpaper too hard with plastic, otherwise you’ll leave streaks and won’t properly clean the grip tape.
This method has a huge drawback, even two – you need a vacuum cleaner, which not everyone has, and you can only clean the skin at home.
Rating – 7 out of 10.
3. Hard bristle brush
This method is a kind of “collaboration” between a vacuum cleaner and a sandpaper eraser. The size of the brush can be any at your discretion. The most important thing is that its pile is as hard as possible. Using simple movements from one edge of the concave to the other (it is better to clean along the width), push the dust off the board. The pressure on the brush is moderate, and the output from the board is sharp so that the dust flies off the board.
Of course, such a procedure should not be carried out at home. Clean the deck after skating on the spot and you will be happy.
Rating – 6 out of 10.
Bottom line, choose the cleaning method that works best for you (we’re using both hands on the eraser) and don’t let your sandpaper get dirty. It can usually take a long time for beginners to “roll out” their boards, and a dirty skin can seriously shorten the effective use of the skateboard.
