How to Cut & Polish Skateboard Grip Tape

Video Transcript

"So now we put this to the side, and now we have everything set up on the board, and all of the extra pieces. Now you're going to want to grab your razor blade, and on the edges of the board, where the nose begins to turn up, you're going to want to cut small slits, out of these areas. And the reason for this, I'll show you in a second, so you go to each corner of the board, right about where in front of where the wheels would end up being, and you just put a small slit there. So, I'm going to put that down, and I'm going to grab the file. Now with the file, I'm going to score a line all the way around the skateboard, like that. Now you get a defined edge that shows you exactly where you're going to be cutting, and it will define exactly the skateboards shape. Now you don't need much of a line, you don't want to wear it out too much. All you want to do is, get a white line, and you want to just get rid of what would be the top grip tape itself, but not the adhesive that's behind it. So now that I've done that, I'm going to grab my razor blade, and I'm going to start a line, and I'll start on the end here. And I'm going to run it along, and pull the grip tape away as I cut the grip tape off. And noticing your edge that you have here, and the color, and trying to make that nice and even as you go down. Now, some people like to put the blade underneath and pull it, but I usually find that a little difficult so I just do it on top. And go all the way around, grabbing the pieces as I go because grip tape is extremely sticky and can end up sticking on, or sticking to anything. So now I'll show you how you go underneath, if that's what you'd like to do. Now, you roll up your piece of grip tape here, let it stick to itself. Now, you've got your edges defined here, and your skateboard grip tape is perfectly cut out. Now, one of the troubleshooting things that you can do is, if you end up seeing a bubble, you can take your razor blade and poke a small tiny hole in the bubble and let the air out. You won't be able to see it, and then force the air bubble out like that. Now, another thing that you can do, that some people swear by, and like to do, is to make the grip tape around the edges of the board a little more worn than the grip tape inside the shape of the board. Now, what they do is, taking the scrap of grip tape that you cut off, and running it down the length of the board, like this. And just scoring the edge of the board. Now, there's two reasons why people do this; one, is so that the grip tape isn't too sticky on the edge of the board, so it feels a little worn in. And the other reason is, that if you score the edge of the grip tape, it may stick a little bit better by giving it a more finer edge, and it won't peel back as easily. Now, if you skateboard in a cold climate, I would suggest doing this, because grip tape tends to peel off in really cold temperatures, and it's something about the adhesive not sticking. So that's one thing that you could do in cold temperatures. And the other thing to keep in mind, is that you're going to have to poke out your bolts through your grip tape. So the best way to do this, is to flip the board around, and I'm using an Allen key to put my mounting hardware on, so what you do is, you stick it in here, and then you pop it through. This way, you do as little damage to the grip tape as you can and define where the trucks are eventually going to go. So, now I'm going to flip the board over, and I can see exactly where I'm going to be putting my bolts through. Now, one more thing you might want to do while you've got this in your hand, is poke it back through and king of circle it around. And you can get these edges of grip tape that might be a problem while putting your bolts through, and cleaning them up. And this is how you put grip tape on your skateboard."