Mike Schneider has been fingerboarding since approximately late 2002 and has one of the most significant fingerboard collections in the world. From his own personal creations to boards made by friends and various fingerboarders around the world, each deck represents a significant time period and location in fingerboarding. Every board has a story, and many of them are extremely rare. For those who are unable to see this mythical museum in person, we've decided to document each board with photographs and captions for the world to see right here online!
*This page is a work in progress, please check back frequently!* Scroll down to see photos and read about each board! Freshly updated September 2026.
Please keep in mind, these boards are not being offered for sale and are part of a private collection. Enjoy!
1. My first fingerboard, ever. It all started around fourth grade. I was getting into skateboarding, and loving it. Kids in my class had TechDecks and I thought they were really cool and fun and wanted to get one. After begging my mom for months, one day she finally came home with this Tony Hawk Tech Deck and the rest is history!
2. One of my first creations was making a graphic and sticking it onto a Tech Deck for some customization! I made the artwork in MS Paint, and you can see the names of a few of my friends who I fingerboarded with and I made a "company" called Deaf FB, which eventually changed to Death FB, for about a week, and then I renamed it again into FlatFace! The FlatFace name stuck for good. A lot of people ask me the origin story for the name, and I wish I had a cool one. But it was just a totally random name, and I didn't know it would become something serious at all either. It was just me making fingerboard stuff and having fun with my friends!
3. A Tech Deck I got at Learning Express in town, which had the super rare Gold trucks and clear wheels! I still have some like it new in packaging which I collected later, they go for $100 online now! But I am keeping them. As you can tell, I was really into Tony Hawk when I started. He's still an awesome role model in many ways! I even got to meet him once, but I was too young and nervous so I just said "Hi, I'm Mike" but if I get the chance to hang out again I'll be sure to tell him all about fingerboarding :) and we can laugh about the time I met him 10 years ago!
4. The first wooden fingerboard I ever made! This was sometime in 2003. It was a lot better than the next few boards I made after it, somehow. I didn't know what the thin wood was actually called, so it took a while before I could make my own board from when I first wanted to, and I had already gotten some wooden decks before making any. One day I was in my friend Evan's basement and his dad had the exact "thin wood" I needed and he gave me some! Here's the first one I made, and it was molded in between two Tech Decks with some c-clamps, wood glue, etc. One day I came into my bedroom and the board was snapped in two places, but I never found out who did it or when. Maybe someone stepped on it or something, but I'm just glad I decided to keep it regardless of it being broken! This board is super special to me.
5. Another very early FlatFace deck. This time I had some oak veneer, probably with paper backing which just went right inside the deck anyways! The bottom was colored with a marker. This deck is pretty solid.
6. I started to dye my own wood using different mixtures. This one was using a very concentrated liquid dye meant for wood, and it worked out pretty well, as you can see the color stayed on the side after sanding, which was a big challenge. I like how some wood grain is visible under the red dye, which makes dyes a lot more appealing than paint in comparison.
7. A simple wood print graphic, text on a background color. I would put the wood straight in my printer, taped onto the printer paper. It works really well, however, I've broken about 7 printers doing this. You can see in the reflection that this board has neon fluorescent yellow griptape on it.
8. This is a deck I made for FFI. I can't remember the exact reason but I believe there was a contest, and I had made a board to give them for one of the prizes and made another one to keep. Maybe? Anyways, FFI was huge, long before the days of YouTube and Instagram, everything was on forums. I started on the Tech Deck forums, and then FFI was a big upgrade with a lot more serious fingerboarders. There was also RZF and possibly a few others, but FFI was the big one for a lot of us. YouTube didn't exist until around 2006 and I was one of its first users, way before it became a household name! Before that, we had to find file hosting websites to upload our video files to, and then post a download link on the forum to share our clips with other fingerboarders. Downloading these short clips could take overnight on our standard dial-up internet which was the norm back then, and it would tie up your phone line during the process.
9. A FlatFace deck made out of aircraft birch plywood style veneer. Each ply was like 3 plies, and the wood has a silvery-greyish hue to it. You could buy this wood in hobby stores like Michaels and AC Moore. It was super smooth and fairly hard, and made for some decent boards. Not quite as good as maple and others, but was very common and easy to work with. This has a wood print darkstar graphic on it, and colored skate grip design.
10. Mike Schneider pro graphic deck, FlatFace. This one's got some dark green griptape on it, which I had from hobs boardshop, the first skateshop I visited. I still didn't quite realize the bottom ply was supposed to be vertical. It does give them a neat extra crisp edge look, though! I think Jay made this graphic, because he knew how to align text all cool.
11. Another pro model graphic FlatFace deck, wood print, and this time with Rip Tape on it! Rip was super hard to get in the USA back then, and we all used skate grip on our fingerboards. When I finally was able to get a pack of rip, I put my first sheet on a Tech Deck, which you'll see here soon. I wasn't sure if it was going to be good, so I didn't want to risk ruining a wooden fingerboard with it. Turns out, riptape was way better than skate grip, and I immediately regretted "wasting" one of my three pieces on a TechDeck! Luckily, it was a really good TechDeck, and I was able to use my other two pieces on some good wooden boards. I think Jay made this graphic too.
12. A FlatFace deck showing off the true potential of a wood print graphic, with a beautiful maple burl bottom ply, which was still incorrectly horizontal, which would sometimes cause pregnancy. As you can see in this board, it is called "pregnant" because the middle bends upward like a belly, reducing performance.
13. The first wooden fingerboards I got were "Skulls and Bones" brand, and they cost $4. This is one of them, although my very first one was purple and I'm not sure where it is now. Getting my first wooden board was completely surreal and such a big upgrade from Tech Decks, so I quickly ordered a few more. These actually came in a plain white envelope with no bubble wrapping and it was a miracle when they would arrive safely at all, as the mail sorter machines would usually rip or flatten them. The fly griptape was from Martin Illsley I believe.
14. Berlinwood. This was my first Berlinwood, from Germany, which cost $20, back when the average price of an American board was $4-5. BW decks were nearly impossible to get, and not easy to afford either. When I finally got the opportunity to get one, it was absolutely incredible! I had never seen a board with such amazing beauty, craftsmanship, perfection. The board was strong, shiny, even, and rock solid! It definitely took things to a new level. This board was pretty long, and I actually sanded it a little bit shorter to my liking for better performance, although I wish I hadn't just because of the rarity of this particular board. Another crazy thing is that I traded this board to someone in France, and a few years later I tracked him down and was able to trade again to get the board back, as it meant a lot to me as my first Berlinwood ever! I am beyond thrilled to have it back in my collection. I still remember fingerboarding on the floor with this deck in Florida and how crisp the pop felt. I also dropped it off a 19 story balcony into bushes and found it!
15. Spode Deck with Josh Jones graphic. These were really good, solid, well-made boards! Wood print graphic and a semi-exotic maple with a beautiful burl. A really good grippy camo griptape on top.
16. Spode deck I had gotten much later than the previous one, and this one was disappointingly pregnant and a bit too long too. The previous one performs really good though!
17. Vegas deck. This one is super special to me! These decks were often referred to as having a banana shape, but they performed really amazing and there was nothing else like them! Vegas was one of the coolest companies of its time, and had amazing full length team videos.
18. Vegas Anti-Concave. Another unique board design, these literally had a small amount of "anti-concave" which was completely upside down. It wasn't too deep but still made for a very different feel, and mellow performance. This graphic was part of a series and this was the Martin Illsley pro model, he was a great fingerboarder from England and owned a few companies as well.
19. Vegas anti-concave deck I got in a trade, used. I'm not sure if I set this one up for long if at all, they were fun but I preferred the regular shape.
20. Vegas Deck, Chris Daniels pro model! One of my favorite parts ever was Chris Daniels' part in the Vegas video "Form of Sin" which was somewhere around 2004 ish and can still hold up in skill level to todays fingerboarding, not to mention being all filmed on 26mm Vegas and TechDeck boards with makeshift cardboard ramps. Chris Daniels is a FlatFace team rider to this day!
21. A newer Vegas deck, maybe Raymond came back for a little while and was making decks again? This was on different wood and of a nicer quality, although very lightweight. Doesn't look like I used it, probably got it later as a collectible.
22. A Martin Illsley deck. These were extremely high quality boards for their time, with excellent craftsmanship and performance. Great quality wood print on Maple. This board has the original precut 26mm riptape on it which was the standard deck size of the time. You can see the deck is just slightly wider.
23. Priest decks were Martin Illsley's oldschool decks. Also some of the best of their time and really good performance wise, too! Ziptie boardrails with double sided adhesive.
24. Holywood Deck from Poland. This was a really good one and I used it for a long time. Loads of pop, super solid and amazing craftmanship and performance. You'll see this in a lot of my old videos, probably around 2005-6 ish.
25. The best Prete deck I've ever had! I loved this shape, super easy to use and performs amazing. Probably 26-27mm wide.
26. Ingenunity Deck from Danny Rodriguez! He was a big inspiration of mine in fingerboarding back in the day, his videos were incredible! He made some cool boards too, I have a few of them and this might be the best one.
27, 28. Two more Ingenunity Decks. I wonder if it was Ingenuity, because that's a word, but maybe it was supposed to have the word Unity in it, because I remember it as Ingenunity, but I was also like 10 years old, so who knows. I'll find out and update this.
29. This is a pretty famous Jamie Thomas deck. I've had this fingerboard for a real long time and it's one of my earlier TechDecks, but must be a couple years into my fingerboarding adventure because I remember when these risers first came out!
30. Another one of my oldest TechDecks :) The grip on this one is super grippy. They changed the griptape texture slightly, numerous times over various early generations.
31, 32. A couple more older TechDecks, pretty sure these both came with the rare gold trucks and clear wheels too. The pig one also has the griptape on backwards!
32. This is the first deck I ever put riptape on! That's my first sheet of riptape ever, and on a "really good" TechDeck that I used a lot. As I mentioned before, I wasn't sure if Rip was going to be good or not, so I had to test it on just a TechDeck first. It instantly made it into the best TechDeck I ever had! Riptape was super rare and hard to get in the USA back then, so after this I only had two more pieces to carefully select a deck for.
33, 34, 35. Animaux Decks. The oldest wooden deck company that I am aware of. British, made by Reuben Binns. These boards are very skinny, 25-26mm (which was the norm because of TechDeck sizes anyways) and the one on the right is even shorter, too!
36. Blast! Deck by Jonno Lee. This was another awesome company that was around during my early years of fingerboarding.
37. Blast! Decks made with aircraft birch veneer that I sent to Jonno somewhat later when he was pretty much done making decks from what I remember.
38. Tragic decks were real good, probably around 2004-6 ish made by Doug Delanoy. Jay was on the team.
39. Hikkikimori Deck from Dario Marchini in Italy. This one is super crisp and solid with a wood print graphic and the classic U shaped deck typical of the time period. He is back on Instagram recently @dariomarteenee
40. Evolve Deck from Brazil. These were known for their extreme shapes and I had a lot of fun using them (I still have one of my old original complete setups too) lots of concave and pretty high kicks on this one. This was a custom one and has a wood print of a skate graphic and some real crisp/shiny woods.
41. Closeup Decks. This was the first product I ever distributed for another company (the board on the left was the first gen) and they came as a complete. CloseUp from France, even as a beginner-oriented fingerboard, has been a major game changer for FlatFace and I will always be grateful for them. 20 years later and we still distribute CloseUp completes, they have improved in quality a lot since then!
42. Some more old TechDecks, Tony Hawk and Birdhouse was an early inspiration to me. The Libtech one came with the rare gold TD trucks.
43. Another old CloseUp, skate graphic collab. They were one of the earliest companies to collaborate with real skateboard brands. In the early days, skateboarders didn't generally think fingerboarding was very cool so it was pretty hard to get a real collab, and most companies were just kids in their basement or garage making a few boards here and there. Nowadays, things are a lot more legit, fingerboarding is more respected and companies are more "real", all of it is much more embraced by skateboarding as a whole, and many companies do collabs with real skate companies. In the beginning it was a big deal!
44. Chris Deso's purple deck, his username was purpleyeti94 and I think this was a Holywood board. Super iconic because he used this for a long time!
45. Dragonball Z fingerboard. Seems like a TechDeck but 1% different, or maybe they did a licensing thing with an old generation or something.
46. A bunch more old TechDecks. I sanded the graphic off of one and put skate grip on it. I scraped away a small stripe on the tape on another one.
47. I think this is an X-Games fingerboard but I can't quite remember. I painted it with a silver paint marker.
48. C24 deck from Germany, another old company, pretty rare. 2006 era.
49. Defstone. These were really cool and I still have a few brand new in package, I'm pretty sure I used to distribute them for a few batches too. These got real popular for a while and I remember them performing nicely. I think I heard later that the company eventually was bought by someone else, which would have been the first time I ever heard of a fingerboard company being sold/bought and changing hands in ownership. I reviewed a Defstone deck in a video in 2007!
50. Woodguest Decks from Czech Republic. This is an example of when boards started to get really nice, you can see more shiny/smooth lacquer and higher quality craftsmanship on these. One has a wood print graphic and one is a blank exotic with a couple stickers.
51. Naipe Deck, an old company, maybe from Brazil?
52. Evolve Decks from Brazil. These ones have paper graphics and are a little newer than the one above. I think the blue one was newest, it's got longer kicks than the others. One of these is a FlatFace collab graphic, which I think was available on my site once!
53. I forget, but I'll update this when I find the board in person and will probably remember then (I took these photos a few years ago and just got back to them all recently). The board seems to be warped!
54. Holywood from Poland, looks to have original precut Riptape on it.
55. Carbon Fiber deck from Morning Wood. This material is really cool but it's dangerous to work with as you don't want to breathe the dust or get the dust on your skin at all. I had made a few carbon fiber FF decks too around this time. He's also the one who taught me how to make split plies!
56. Special edition TechDeck. These ones are pretty rare from what I remember. They have some kind of special ridges that claimed to help you do boardslides and tailslides and pop better. It's really cool that it's in black plastic as well.
57. ? Maybe J-Clant/F5BJ
58. F5BJ/J-Clant Deck. Justin Clanton made really good fingerboards. This is one of his slightly newer ones compared to his older work below.
59. J-Clant setups. This white one was my main setup for a long time in 2005 ish days. You can see it in my
old videos such as this one. Extremely good board, and the one with the star I had to get because of how good the white one is. The white one is still better but both are very good. These are setup with original G7 bearing wheels, and probably had other wheels on them in their earlier days. The white one has G7-T and star has G7-D.
60. Primo Deck from Brandon Jones! He was known for his obstacles more than boards but he also was the one who did the legendary bondo mold tutorial that taught so many of us how to make molds back in the day!
61. Fava deck from Germany, old and rare! From what I remember, these were pretty hard to get even back then. Not sure on the year but probably around 2010 or earlier.
62. Frost Decks from Chad Spradlin, he was around at the early Rendezvous events (maybe #2 or 3?) and he's just made a comeback recently. I also used a Frost deck in the "
Mike and Pat Fingerboard Tour" video which I wish I didn't snap in half, but made for some funny memories lol.
63. Evolve deck set up with FlatFace G3 bearing wheels (G1 and G2 were bearingless), TechDeck Trucks tuned with washers and Bearing Screws! Bearing screws are threaded screws used to replace the axles which would fall out on TD trucks. There were two sizes, one which fit only non bearing wheels and threaded right into the truck, and then a slightly thinner screw called a bearing screw which would fit through a bearing but not thread into the truck, so the truck had to either be clamped to make the hole smaller, or the screw would be epoxied in. All this was common around this time as we only had TD trucks (no other trucks brands existed until BRT in 2009) and the TD trucks were not single axle, they would break often so we fixed them by "tuning" them with these screw-in axle screws.
See this setup in my videos from 2007!
64. Priest Deck. Oldschool boards made by Martin Illsley. He made some of the best decks in his time period for sure. This one has FF G3 bearing wheels (T material) and clear boardrails. It also has some thicker foam tape on it which is no good, but I used it a bunch before it had that, so I probably was trying out something new later. This ply combo of maple and walnut alternating was called "Berlin style plies" back in the day, because it was made popular by Berlinwood!
65. Another Priest deck, this one has white skate grip and I think nollie wheels.
66. Athena Deck by Martin Illsley. This was his wide deck brand. This is probably about 28mm which was considered huge back then (all boards were 26mm normally). As you can see from the precut riptape on it, the edges hang off a bunch. This has yellow TD hangars with kingpin tuning, and FlatFace G6-A wheels (before bearing lock was needed, because the back of the wheel would hit the truck) and as you can see there's a different amount of space between each wheel and the truck because of TD trucks lack of precision compared to the pro trucks we are all used to today which fit perfectly.
67. Shortwood Deck, Holland Shape. Rare German boards made by Flaki/Flakensen. He's also the one who engraved some special edition Berlinwoods totally by hand, a really impressive artist! This has early G6-U wheels on it too. Probably approx 2006-8 era.
68. Gripskin cruiser. I can't remember what wheels they are, maybe also gripskin? They are very soft and grippy which was not normal at that time. Tough to use but a cool piece of history.
69. Berlinwood Old Mold (OM) wide (28mm) engraved by Flaki by hand, set up with TD wide trucks, FF G6-X red bearing wheels, and fbs smooth tape! Probably around 2008.
70. Another old Berlinwood engraved by Flaki, this is one of the most beautiful ones ever. The shape is kind of "pregnant" on this one as they used to say (the middle sort of bumps upward more) but it's a wonderful piece of art. Set up with shaped TD wides (maybe Chemistry or Tim Alexiel shaped them?) and FF G7-O dual bearing wheels (the first ones ever!)
71. Berlinwood engraved by Flaki with a really cool faded bottom ply. This one has a nice slightly steeper shape to it (just by nature of wood, some boards will hold shape steeper than others, and my favorite berlinwoods were the ones that came out slightly steeper, maybe 1 in 100 or so). This has the original Winkler Wheels (WWz) D-Rex Wheels which are super super special. A dark blue material with such a good feeling. I remember getting a set of them (maybe this set) from Martin Winkler at Rendezvous 6!
72. Berlinwood engraved by Flaki on a nice dyed birdseye ply!
73. Premier Deck (I think)
74. Holywood Decks from Poland. A new batch of these may be coming back to the site soon!
75. Swarmi Deck from Germany. These were well made and resembled Berlinwoods a lot. This one has the same bottom as my first ever BW so I kept it, I also have a blank one new in package still too.
76. Winkler Wheels - Timo Lieben Classics (TLC) Reloaded. One of the best wheels of it's time and still amazing to this day.
77. Winkler Wheels - Blue Magic - Clockword Dietschi - D-Rex - N.W.D.C. Limited. Probably my favorite Winkler Wheel of all time. Such a good feeling material. These packs come with bearing screws and washers. The washers could be put behind the wheel in between the truck and the wheel to give a smoother surface against the wheel, so it would wear down slower and last longer.
78. FlatFace G2 Wheels. These were before we ever got bearings, probably around 2006. The classic T material was a game changer, these wheels were so much smoother than TD wheels because of the precision machining and the special material. These would eventually evolve into our G3 bearing wheels.
79. Eurollt Wheels. A metal core and a heat shrink rubber outer. One of the early wheel companies!
80. Prete metal bottom. These are superb! Always been a highly sought after board even way back then. Not sure the year but likely around 2006-08.
81. Prete deck with tuned TD trucks and FF G6-X wheels. I lacquered this board extra. It's a super good one!
82. Waste deck with a wood print graphic. With TD trucks and G7-O dual bearing wheels. This is a very old company and was one of the "cool" kids back then for sure. What's even cooler is he has come back recently and is making boards again!
83. Berlinwood regular (26mm). The old mold BW's often had these really cool dye faded bottom plies. This one has riptape, td trucks with the dark chrome hangars, and FF G7-O dual bearing wheels. Somehow the riptape on this one is still pretty soft (they often get hard and crunchy if you don't touch them for so many years) this setup is nearly 20 years old.
84. CloseUp complete. One of the very early generations. The concave is pretty crazy and the grip it came with is extra coarse.
85. FlatFace G10 Deck. This was my first metal mold, the G1-G9 decks were bondo molds. I didn't like this shape )too mellow and harshly geometrical on the concave) so G11 I made a bondo mold again, and then G12 was the first metal mold we made that I was satisfied with. I think I sold the G10 mold, which would make it the only FF deck mold I've ever sold.
86. FBS (Fingerboardstore) O-Ringz Bushings. These were real good and came in many nice colors.
87. Riptape (Top) and FBS tape (bottom) both precut. In the early days when Riptape first came out, all boards were about the same size, 26mmx96mm like a TechDeck, so the tape was precut. Eventually they created uncut tape some years later once boards started to get bigger and vary more. Same with the FBS tape, but it was already precut a bit wider, I think 28mm, which must have been the most popular size at the time it came out.
88. Vouchers for free food at Fast Fingers event in Germany! The food there was unbelievable, they had such good sandwiches and pastries. I first had mayo in Germany... same with hard boiled eggs on sandwiches, and many more exciting things than that. The pretzels with salt, sliced in half the long way with butter in the middle, real good. Even the cheapest food in Germany is better than half the food here, just saying! If you go there, enjoy it all! Train stations got better food than our 5 star restaurants.
89. I don't quite remember but it says NW Small, so these may be Nollie Wheels. They don't seem very small, but quite standard size, although I remember Nollie having some huge wheels too, so maybe these are their small ones. Nollie Wheels was a German company.
90. FlatFace G6.5 Wheels. Extremely rare. These had a backless design to prevent the hangar from scraping the back of the wheel (still before pro trucks existed) but now the nut would scrape the inside instead. After this I made the first dual bearing wheels, G7 wheels, which solved both problems and made a wheel where there is no friction at all other than the bearing itself, a major upgrade which turned into the industry standard for highest quality wheels. Dual bearing wheels remained #1 until the first BRR trucks came out and only had axles long enough for single bearing wheels. We would glue the lock nuts to use dual bearing wheels on them, but eventually people kind of wanted to be able to change their wheels so single bearing with bearing lock became most common over the years. Nowadays, Blackriver (and others) finally make Dual Bearing edition trucks!
91. G7-Z Dual Bearing Wheels. Super smooth clear material! New in the package.
92. Some deck that had a metal inner ply and a wood bottom. It's hard to get the glue to stick to metal, so eventually the bottom ply broke off!
93. Can't quite remember but maybe Premier deck?
94. Another unknown deck, this one has a Bonsei sticker on it.
95. A very very old and rare Berlinwood with Rene Rennett graphic. This thing might be from like 2003 or something. I never saw old mold (BW OM = all pre-2009) Berlinwoods with graphics advertised online for sale, so I'm guessing they were either a limited in-person thing in Germany, or were sold before I started/found out about BW.
96. Very old early painted Berlinwoods. I don't know the story behind them (not sure why that one is scratched/sanded in that way) but I think Timo may have given me these, and the next few.
97. Another old Berlinwood with classic "berlin style plies" too!
98. An old walnut Berlinwood, with Cherry top ply, I don't think I've ever seen another one like it!
99. TMNT Berlinwood graphic, super old. I'd love to know more about this one. I have a vague memory that feels like a dream, of watching this show in the Steig, so maybe Timo was real into them.
100. Trap Skateboards graphics on old Berlinwoods. Maybe one of the first real skate company collabs on a fingerboard.
101. Berlinwood Deep Concave, Whale Graphic. One of the most iconic old +blackriver-ramps+ graphics ever, it was on their skateboards too, maybe like 2002 or something. I always wanted this cause I saw it in videos that were just slightly before my time.
102. Berlinwood with
Cattapult sticker. This was a fingerboard shop in Germany in the 2008 era. Click the link to see my video I made when I visited there.
103. A very unique old Berlinwood, these bottom plies were pretty uncommon on them.
104. A similar BW to the above one but after some very heavy use. I think I got this one from Darkwood if I remember correctly.
105. A real good Berlinwood Wide (28mm) that I rode for a while. Has a real cool grey dyed bottom ply with nice wood grain visible and a FF sticker on it. I remember this one being real good. The BW old mold decks always had amazing craftsmanship, but the performance did vary quite a bit, and when you got a good one, it was REAL good. I also think there's something to be said about wearing in a deck, sometimes once it's been used a bit it gets to a real nice sweet spot.
106. BW Wide with a real nice bottom ply fade. The white spots on the tip of the nose and tail on the top ply is actually paint from my wall, a lot of these boards were mounted to my wall for years on display.
107. Orange Berlinwood. Probably never used yet, I most likely kept this from a stock when I was distributing them. I was lucky enough to be the USA distributor for Berlinwood in the old mold days, and I have fond memories of getting to look through each stock of them. The beauty on these is really one of a kind, there was a lot of variation in terms of bottom plies and dye fades etc. and when you ordered one you actually received it completely at random, it wasn't until years later that choosing became an option, which is also why FF decks were random bottom ply up until a few years ago!
108. Maple Berlinwood with Blue middle ply! I remember being super stoked about the ply combo on this board and it was a nice one.
109. BW with some interesting woods, an oak top ply and probably ebony wood bottom ply. It was really cool exploring all the exotic woods they used.
110. Berlinwood Hammerhead. During the old mold days of BW (pre 2009) they had a few shapes: Regular, Wide, Deep Concave, Wide Deep, as well as some oldschool shapes like the Hammerhead, as well as a more fish shaped Oldschool, and a Longboard too! These were definitely more novelty and cool collectible but still functional as well.
111. Berlinwood oldschool shape! I didn't have many of these or use them often but they were a cool alternate shape they'd offer in limited quantities.
112. Another old Berlinwood dye fade. Hard to remember but I might have got this one from one of my friends from New York.
113. Another BW with maple bottom and blue middle, I probably came across this one and got it as backup for the other one I have that is very similar.
114. Berlinwood old mold. From left to right: Ebony, Birdseye Marple, Dye Fade, Lacewood, Dye Fade. A lot of really special ones here. I guess all the old mold BW's are just real special! Back in the day these would cost 20 euros or 20 US dollars, which at the time was extremely high, because fingerboards would usually sell for $4-$5, but the BW's were waaaay way nicer in quality than everyone else's boards.
115. Berlinwood Deep Concave. A really nice dye fade on this one too. This is still Berlinwood old mold territory, but the deep shape is newer than the regular ones and was added on sometime later than the originals as an additional option. Back in the day I didn't like this shape very much but I'm glad I kept a few. I set one up this past year (with dynamic 26mm trucks!) and I actually enjoy it a lot now. It's amazing what updated equipment can do to an old setup.
116. Berlinwood Deep Concave. I just set this up recently after having the deck new in package for around 18 years. It's a lacewood bottom ply with dye on it that looks super cool and has some nice colored plies as well. I put Dynamic trucks 26mm and FlatFace G6 Sherbet wheels on it with GoriGrip. It performs suprisingly great and I enjoy this deep shape a lot more than I did way back in the day. I do remember Tim Hurley had a real good BW Deep setup also, but most people I knew preferred the regulars as I did.
117. Berlinwood wide, I thought this was the set up from my
Planter Mini in 2007 but it might actually be a different one.
118. Berlinwood Twotone X-Wide "Steep Shape" - Eventually Berlinwood made these ?29.5mm or 30.5mm? boards that really felt way too wide back then! This board was amazing. Every once in a while a BW deck would be steeper than usual (it can happen with any board brand, depending how the wood reacts to the mold) and so I'd pick those out if I ever saw one because I liked them the most. It wasn't a different mold or anything, it was just boards that would be steeper than the average! You can also see an indent of a TD truck baseplate, we still only had TD trucks in those days.
119. Another Berlinwood X-Wide with an amazing blue to green faded bottom ply! The X-Wides existed in the later period of the old mold days, I'd guess maybe only the last year or two at most before they switched productions. This one is real special to me, as is the twotone above.
120. BW Xwide with
Fingerboard.de graphic (a German fingerboard website from back in the day). I'm not sure which Mike it's referring to and this graphic always confused me a lot. I think I got it in a trade?
121. BW Xwide with dye faded Oak bottom ply.
122. BW Wide, probably the dark half of a twotone wood.
123. Maple bottom BW.
124. Berlinwood Wide Deep Engraved with a BRR Skull and then I put a Fingaspeak sticker on it and cut around the engraving for a cool background. Fingaspeak was a legendary fingerboard shop in Austria run by an awesome guy named Emil. It's where Elias grew up and got his skills. There's a mechanic who works at a local gas station here who looks exactly like Emil and even has the same look in his eye, it's really really crazy and emotional to encounter him, and Elias actually had that same experience too when he was here visiting.
125. Berlinwood deep concave with FF logo hand engraved by Flaki. It's really special to have this and I still can't believe that these got to exist!
126. Berlinwood hand engraved by Flaki. The few boards off to the side are more of them so I kept them in the photo too.
127. Berlinwood regular, engraved with Blackriver skull logo by hand by Flaki, on a beautiful green dye fade ply.
128. A couple more FlatFace handmade engravings by Flaki on Berlinwood (wide 28mm) decks.
129. Another Berlinwood with FlatFace logo engraved by hand from Flaki, with a real nice black ply under maple.
130. NWDC engraved Berlinwood, also from Flaki of course. This one is on a real shiny birdseye maple bottom ply and looks so nice! NWDC was a crew of fingerboarders in Germany
131. BW Wide Twotone. This wood has the best pop and longevity in my opinion. I used a twotone BW as my main setup for many years and named it Henry.
132. Henry. My main setup for many years. It's a super good Berlinwood Wide (28mm) old mold Two Tone. For whatever reason it's slightly longer/steeper and is just super good. You'll see it in tons of my old videos. I probably changed the wheels and tape a few times over that period. It is shown here with FF G7-A Turquoise Dual Bearing Wheels and TD wide trucks.
133. BW Wide with a dark bottom ply, probably ebony.
134. BW Xwide with an exotic red/orange dyed bottom.
135. Blue bottom BW wide that I used a good amount, this one was awesome.
136. BW wide with a green-yellow-red rasta style bottom ply fade.
137. Berlinwood New Mold! 2009. These were peak vibes, performance, specialness. The early first few years of BW new mold (2009+) is the absolute best era of them in my opinion. Timo teamed up with Blackriver to bring Berlinwood production to a new level and they worked with Elias to make the boards completely in-house at the Blackriver facility. Creating new molds (this regular one, and the flatshape (now called low concave or low shape) which are still used to this day, BW was completely revamped with a fresh new vibe. While we all deeply miss the variety and old styles of faded bottom plies of the old mold and old production, there was definitely a big improvement in consistency and performance once the new mold era began. The boards Elias made are some of my most cherished in my collection. Boards like this one shown here first came in all maple, and later they started to add colored plies and real wear graphics like an actual skateboard. This board reminds me of the one I used in my
FBWeekly part which has over 1 million views and 1 million times nostalgia.
All the next Berlinwoods shown from this point on will be new mold (2009 and on) unless otherwise stated. All the previous ones above were old mold (pre 2009). Berlinwood new mold decks were 29mm in the beginning. Elias would sometimes hand shape wider ones around 31mm or so. Eventually they came out with 32mm decks (and all we would hear at events was "got any 32s?" all the time! Some years later, as a joke, they made 33.3mm decks one day, and to everyone's surprise those caught on and became very popular.
138. Berlinwood with shell bottom ply that I brought. When I went to Germany, we got to make boards together. Elias was working at Berlinwood and he made me some really special boards using plies that I brought. Using these shell bottom plies was a technique I pioneered for FlatFace boards around the time or a few years earlier. It was super cool to get to bring my own plies and have them made into Berlinwoods and I have a whole bunch of special stuff from multiple times I visited!
139. Berlinwood with turquoise to blue faded bottom ply, also from wood that I brought to Germany.
140. I got to mold this twotone Berlinwood with some of my own internal split plies inside. I rode this one for a while, real good! I also brought my own glue and used that on most of the custom boards made there, and I am convinced it performs way better.
141. Blank birdseye maple Berlinwood.
142. One of the early real wear graphic Berlinwoods. This was a big deal because it was something totally new at the time for fingerboarding. Blackriver got a custom heat rolling machine specifically for this use. It's giant and intense, somehow uses a hydraulic air compressor and makes a lot of noise and was very expensive. I think they may have been the first fb company to have skateboard style real-wear heat transfer graphics!
143. Hello My Name Is Berlinwood graphic. This one hits the nostalgia button for a lot of people for sure and is one of their early graphics in the beginning of the real wear era.
144. Berlinwood Flatshape (now known as Low Concave shape). Elias would ride these as his main and I noticed they perform real good. For some reason I'd had better luck with the regular shape than the low, but I still had some great ones such as this one which I used heavily. When berlinwood first got their dyed plies, I was hyped to make some different ply combos than the ones they offered, this one is just 5 straight purple plies. I also noticed over time that some of the color woods performed better than others, with the best boards having bottom plies of black, blue, or purple.
145. Berlinwood Twotone with wood I brought, I think this one is a low shape that Elias made a bit wider, hand shaped. I have one just like it set up right now, you can see it in use on the FF G10 wheels packaging photo!
146. Berlinwood with Harry's hand painted finger design, super iconic! 2011. Blackriver store Berlin days.
147. Berlinwood flatshape with a Bollie graphic. I put this graphic on, thinking it would be funny to have a Bollie graphic on a Berlinwood board. I guess that makes it super rare. I forget what ply is under it but I think it was something special that I wanted to wear down to but it was taking too long to show much of it. I might have to pull this one out sometime and set it up and use it a bunch more.
148. Berlinwood low concave with my shell bottom ply and my glue. This one is insanely snappy. Another one that I may re-setup soon.
149. Berlinwood with exotic bottom ply I brought. Still Elias-made era boards here, you'll notice a lot of my customs don't have the kingpin holes since I didn't need em.
150. Another custom Berlinwood, although it was made with their glue and I don't remember if I brought this ply or where it came from.
151. Fast Fingers 13 Hand painted Berlinwood decks! These are super special. I think the owner of Cattapult was the one who painted this series.
152. Blue Camo berlinwood, custom plies. Probably one of their most desired graphics of all time. This had a really soft grey wood bottom ply that made it feel way different and super lightweight compared to normal. It was a good board and I used it a bunch. I kind of like the almost-soggy feel of a really worn in board and this one really had it. Not actually soggy, but just a tiny bit less crisp than maximum, makes it almost more springy and responsive.
153. Berlinwood twotones made from my wood and glue by Elias in the early new mold days (2009). These in my opinion are some of the best Berlinwoods ever made. This wood is super great performing and beautiful too. You can see one in use in the famous
FF Bike Racks ad with Andrew, I gave some of these to a bunch of my friends when we went! I have a couple of these set up right now, one set up the same way it was since back then, and one newly set up with Dynamics.
154. Two setups from the above batch of 29mm BW twotones. The one with green trucks has Blackriver trucks and FF Dual Duros on it and is setup how it has been for many years, you can notice the upside down locknuts which was common for a while, it allows them to be tightened down less for a looser ride. The second one was set up recently with Dynamic trucks and feels super good and easy to use with the longer wheelbase. It also has some special G4 wheels, they are all white from one of our swirl batches so the material is different, we released a handful of sets of these.
155. Berlinwood Pirate (Pirat) graphic by Denise. This 3 graphic series with the Cat and Bird is one of the most iconic of all time. Hoping they bring them back some day! This was a great board, I used it a good amount.
156. Bird graphic Berlinwood from the same series!
157. Maple Berlinwood (low concave) with my name and logo branded on using the wood burning tool used on my pro Blackriver ramps!
158. Berlinwood Laser Split Ply. Berlinwood was the first company I'm aware of who got a lazer engraver/cutter (they were super super expensive in the beginning) and they made some cool laser cut split plies!
159. Berlinwood blank with some FF vinyl stickers I made. The boards started to get wider, and I also realized the black plies performed insanely good. Used this one a bunch, I think it's a 32.
160. An unfinished Berlinwood that Jay wrote Waist on as a funny joke/nod to the company Waste fingerboards!
161. FlatFace Cyan, the first FF real wear graphic ever to be on Berlinwood decks! A huge honor and something I still can barely believe :) This one was designed by Jay using the FF logo.
162. Berlinwood Friendship Keychain. They would make these from the Blem decks and they were pretty cool.
163. Berlinwood with wood burned Blackriver logo!
164. Tougui graphic Berlinwood, an artist collab.
165. FlatFace Cubes Berlinwood, I think this was the second graphic collab we did!
166. Cattapult fingerboard store graphic on Berlinwood deck
167. Berlinwood Jesus deck. Probably around 2010 era.
168. Berlinwood Dennis Laas Cleptomanix collab graphic
169. Berlinwood low shape with split ply that I made
170. Berlinwood low shape with a drawing I did on it by hand.
171. Berlinwood, split ply I did at the Steig.
172. Berlinwood low splitply I made, and shaped a little bit shorter, super good and I used this setup for a good long while.
173. Berlinwood custom, with a sticker I cut out from a larger BW sticker.
174. Pst Berlinwood, a tribute to an old fingerboard crew in Germany from the early days.
175. Crazyleg Skateboards graphic on a cruiser Berlinwood. The new mold Berlinwoods do come in oldschool shapes once in a while.
176. Harry graffiti graphic on a custom dark lacewood Berlinwood.
177. Berlinwood custom dark lacewood ply with clear Grip Skin graphic.
178. Berlinwood wide twotone with a ply I brought to Germany to make this.
179. Fast Fingers 15 engraved deck on Berlinwood from 2012. Fast Fingers is the biggest fingerboard event in the world and is hosted by Blackriver each year in Germany.
180. Berlinwood low concave with Zeph woodprint on green maple. I put some plies through my printer and brought them to Germany to make some special Berlinwoods with oldschool woodprints. These might be the only new mold woodprint BW's in existence but I'm not 100% sure.
181. Berlinwood with vibrant green dyed Oak wood top and bottom with wood print Zeph graphic. One of the most unique woodprint BW's I made.
182. Red dyed Berlinwood with Zeph woodprint, 3rd in this series.
183. Berlinwood with split real wear graphic of Zeph and Green Camo. I did this by manually cutting the graphics with scissors.
184. Berlinwood Neon Camo with FlatFace Cubes laser engraved! Low concave shape. Very unique and stunning.
185. Berlinwood maple with FF cubes lightly engraved, super clean.
186. Berlinwood Zeph graphic. Zeph made this really cool graphic of faces that has been really popular ever since! It's such a cool one. It's also appeared in various colorways on FlatFace decks but this right here is the original.
187. Berlinwood Jay graphic, some crazy guy that Jay drew plus the FlatFace slime logo up top, also drawn by Jay of course. This is another one that many people have fond memories of from back in the day.
188. FlatFace Cyan graphic again on a Berlinwood, this time a low concave one I think. This is the first FlatFace real wear graphic on a Berlinwood ever released.
189. Berlinwood splitply I made with my wood and glue on one of my visits to Germany. This was my main setup for a while and performs super good. It's got some FF G4 swirl wheels on it too.
190. Berlinwood two tone from the same time as the above one. This one's also real good.
191. Berlinwood low concave, sanded shorter than usual. This board has insane pop and performance, it's really crazy good, much easier to use because of the shorter kicks. I copied this ply combo from an old Yellowood deck I have that was insanely good too. So it's a Wenge bottom with 4 yellow plies!
