Some words...

Lew said some things...

An exciting Week...

First off, the guys are at Colerain's own Clippard Park today. Go shred with them. There's Josh Viles, Weston Vickers, Sunshine on the cameras, and Ben Osborne... Native Nik is headed there shortly, as well... So go shred with them there if you're in the Cincinnati Area.

Next, it's been a pretty memorable week.
Our first pressings of prototype boards have come out pretty sick. There are imperfections, but they are pretty danged radical planks! Here's a quick pic of the very first five boards ever to come out of the Fickle Workshop.

We are hopeful that we will be able to STOKE YOU on something made by hands that hand make the boards... Josh Viles and Weston, Ben and Nik, Sunshine and Browndog, Carrie and Forrest, Brumley and Matt... Big Joe in Savannah, Ian Brown on electric and Adam Sherwood on welding... And Old Lew Covered in Glue...

All of these guys here are getting their hands dirty and experiencing what it is to produce YOUR skateboard. There isn't a person here who isn't actually involved in the actual hand-making, hand screening, hand-packaging of YOUR skateboard. So you can expect a personal touch with the whole experience, no matter what!

We'll have a board ready for you in May. Spread the word and check back often!

And please, make sure you get out there and go FAST today. Enjoy.

New Lighting and Electric

The Fickle Workshop (Lew's Lair) got a makeover yesterday, while prototypes pressed in the "Squeezer". Ian Brown came down with "Johnny" (a wicked cool neighbor with a 5 foot tall indian statue in his front yard)... and they put in all new totally up to code wiring for sockets and mass fluorescent lamps and stuff for all the workbenches and stuff...

Basically, they set us up to cook with grease down there...

So that's how that went. It was pretty insane.

Now we're focusing on getting enough wood cooked up for Josh and Weston to go home with a stack of Prototype Testers. Each one will have scribble scratched pencil details on it about it's contents and process stuff... As soon as they break, warp, chip or whatever, we'll bring them back and take a look at how we can do it better... Its insanely fun stuff...

We aren't taking over the world... we're just trying to get under and lift a little. these boards should help you out. Look for us in May!

It's ON!

Today we pulled the first two Fickle Boards hand-made-by-hand out of the press... an eight ply dummy board and a 7 ply skateable.

Insane.

Glue lines are perf.
Concave is proper.
Mold survived and is pressing more tonight...

And we spent the day engineering a new top mold with offsets so we can have three per mold pressing up and running this week or next... That will usher in a high enough production for all of you to enjoy boards on the regulars, hand-made-by-hand in the Fickle Workshop, by the Bearded Madman.

And Josh Viles and Weston Vickers and Sunshine were there to help it all go down.

Seriously, the coolest thing is that we made our own concave design. It's not perfect, but it's definitely what we wanted! We will put a lot into developing new concaves and shapes and combinations of different stuff as we go, because we have the luxury of only producing boards for Fickle Boards! We don't have all kinds of orders to fill, or a rush to bag the cash. We are just making what we make with our hands for the joy of skating it!

Come enjoy with us!

Again, we'll start to offer our boards and stuff to the general public in May. Come be part of testing out what might become something epic. Maybe it already is. We don't know because it's just enjoying skateboarding, to us.

All I'm sayin is...

On Saturday, Josh Viles and Weston Vickers arrived for a spring break week of skating in our area here... That's the general Cincinnati area...

Josh blew off the Florida Bowl Riders competition for it... a comp that you know he could have used to climb the ladder to the higher echelons of skateboarding industry reputation glory... Josh really appreciates all the good folks who encouraged him to go and clean up down there, as do all of us here, but MAN, the shredding that is going on among the brothers here in the Fickle Camp.

Make sure to get a session in with the boyos this week, all. These guys are an outpouring of joy, and joy gives strength. That's the fact! Skateboarding is an amazing, dynamic combination of movement and thought... and enjoying that is our top number one priority...

So get out there and go thirty... and get out and skate with the Fickle weirdos.

Oh, and did I mention that our press is going to make the first prototype board, today? Yep.

Springtime!

Well its springtime, and you know what that means!

Hoodguys dumping clips of ammo at each other half-a-block from our warehouse headquarters! Yeah, we love it here on the bleeding border of Over The Rhine and The West End, Cincinnati. Everyone but Old Lew has been outdoors shredding, then coming in for night sessions in our HQ Ramp Room, lately.

Lew?

Well, let's just say that Old Lew has almost got us completely up and running. Its looking like wood will become abundant in MAY, 2011! Keep checking back.

When you see our website get real good, like a whole new skin on it and all...
...and when you see our sweet online store, so you can get Fickle Stunt Lumber, even if your closest skate shop in 200 miles away...

You will know that Fickle Is With You.

Now go push that stunt lumber.

Go Thirty, Always.

Sweet Savannah Vibes from Woody's

Check out Woody's. These guys are the real deal. We'll be visiting Savannah for years to come, guaranteed. There is no scene that throws a party for a ragtag band of stranger. We posted up over there for days and days, sleeping on floors and shredding all day!

how can we say "Thank you!?"
By following through and making the best hand made (by hand) stunt lumber we can.



By the way, we popped out our first official mold today. Stunt Lumber Prototypes will be issued to a select few in the coming weeks.

Fickle Boards Is:

...a bearded crazy man locked up in his workshop lab, cooking up stuntwood to blow your mind.

...a feel-good crew of creative souls on a mission in your town...

...wood hand made by hand by skaters who love this so much that we make it by our own hands...

Stripping it down to roots!

We're taking it back down to roots. Keep your eyes peeled for fresh stuntwood from the Fickle Workshop! Prototypes dropping in April.

Mold

Here's a picture...

Last night, Forrest Hagedorn and I busted the Plaster Casting off this mold. It is pretty much perfect.

We spent the time dreaming and talking about dimensions and shapes for the wood we'll be pressing off this mold. A lot of our riders have gotten really excited about being able to really explore dimensions and shapes that they've wanted for years.

Now, don't get us wrong, we're not going to do a lot of custom orders. This is going to roll out pretty normally.
But we are definitely excited as a crew because we get to experiment on new shapes that WE make.

Because The Fickle Workshop is slated to be the only place Fickle Boards are made, we only have a few hundred boards to make for our customers, so we can continue to mess around with other stuff...

...There isn't a plan to become a factory...
...There's no path to providing blanks, shop decks, or pressing for any other brand...
we are planning to keep it to one workshop, one brand, hand made by hand...
Our hope is that eventually, a Fickle Board will be identifyable as a really fun experience, from concept to concrete. And that the quality of a 4-hour pressed, 4 Day Cured board from Fickle Labs will keep you stoked as you go 30.

Where do we go from here?

sitting at the Sidewinder Cafe in Northside Cincinnati, Old Lew is pondering the path of Fickle Boards...

all we are about is getting a local skateboard-producing workshop up and running to crank out decks that get you stoked to ride... This is what Fickle Boards is about. A crew of people who love skateboarding so much that they lock themselves up in the lab and make it happen to their best ability... to keep skateboarding stoked!

It's been a journey and a process to get to this point, and as we are looking at our first prototype-pressing this week, we want to fill you in with a little retrospective.

so for the next little while, we'll point out some points of development...

Making Molds: Concaves are rad...

It was always our intention to create a company that actually pressed boards, supplying a product over which we have total control and for which we can take total responsibility.

We never have minded that we may offer fewer boards to the market, because of the incredible STOKE of riding something that we MADE!!! it stokes us to no end to see our own molds, crafted by casting, chiseling, sanding, re-casting, re-chiseling, re-sanding, re-casting... then pouring concrete on it and creating a prototype "mirror mold". from there, we evaluate3 the wood product, tune the glue, re-shape the concave and continue casting new prototypes...

...it is a never-ending process, the creation of new concaves. This has been a passion of Old Lew for years, and it STOKES us to work on it, no matter how many setbacks there will be.

while we're waiting...

while we're waiting for the photo and video goods to be released from the shop... Ole Lew here is going to try to just post up some rhetoric to whet your appetite to shred...

winter is peeling back off the area here in Cincinnati. The sun is up waaaay earlier, and the below-freezing temps have retreated till next year, for the most part.

Our unheated warehouse HQ training facility is a great temp for sessions and the umpteen concrete parks are clear and ready for afternoon sessions, when the temps are up... when the skaters are up.

Streets are still grimy with salt and sand from winter storm weather, but it won't be long till street sweepers are out....

And Old Lew is downstairs in his Santa-Style Workshop, laboring over molds to put in our new press to make boards by hand for you. we haven't set a true "release date" but we are definitely looking at a flow of truly handmade boards coming out this spring, with increasing quantities available into the fall.

we are hopeful that this winter will see us expand the workshop, possibly to our findlay St. Location, and have all our stuff rolling out strong for years to come...

Until then, we want to tell you to get out there and skate. Skate hard. Go Fast. Get some wind, if not air. make a schralping noise and don't stand in line.

Until soon.

Lew

Quick Update: Apple Down!

Well, Old Lew was editing footage and getting ready to drop clips and "Poop", the Big apple crapped out for a minute. She's in the shop on her last month of warranty repair...

so savannah trip footy will be forthcoming in proper fashion...

now go shred.

Epicnesses...

Today Lew cast the first half of our first mold. As son as the second one is cast, we will input have days till prototype boards are rolling out to our testers...

We will set a releasedate on boards for everyone, soon.

Please, be stoked.

Go see photos

Go to aaronsphotoblogger.blogspot.com and see...