Under a Tin Roof in a Hailstorm: Revisionist History

I had the distinct priveledge of having skateboarding create a new friendship recently. My wife and I went over to a friend of hers to pick up some apples to make pie. My wife had told me that her friend was from the same home town as us (Loveland, Colorado) and that they had put peices together that they had known each other from high school. When we got to her house, I met her husband, Dean. We begin chatting about what we did for a living, and what we did for fun. We talked about making beer, and music. Dean and I both had very similar interest and we really enjoyed getting to know each other. Then, I mentioned my board building... Dean was a skater too! He grew up in Longmont, and skated there in the late 70's. He also hung out at the Boulder Hi Roller skatepark, and went to the Hester series pro contest down there. He and I had been at the skatepark at the same time. We swapped stories, and dug out some pictures and had a great time.

A bit of time later, I ran into Dean's wife over at the school and she asked me to create a board for Dean. Actually she asked me to build a skateboard for him. I am not sure now, if she meant put together off the shelf parts to build a skateboard, but I took it as creating a skateboard for Dean. Now, when I was over at Deans house earlier, one of the things he pulled out of his skate memorabilia was a almost pristine Sims Bert Lamar deck from 1979. I actually brought that deck home and made a template from it, just in case I ever wanted to build a Lamar. I knew that Dean skated Sims in 1979. That is the starting point for the design.

In 1979 Sims released a now famous line of decks.

There was also a Folmer model that was released during this time, Stinger cut in this line.

My thought on the design was this : What if Sims made another board in 1979.... for Dean. What would his deck look like? How would it fit into this line of decks.

My first sketch up

I like the rounded nose of the Bowman on this sketch, the stinger shape of the Lamar, Andrecht and Folmer. I created a custom font, that runs down the center. A signature below that. Large routes down the side would lighten weight and provide long grab rails. I imagined the colorway in White and Blue.

A few revisions later a created a template

By this time, I had moved the stinger cutaway forward, changed the font to a more traditional Sims style font. The routes stayed long and large.

I made a few more revisions. I decided that a stinger shape would not have been done in 1979. Sims had three stinger shapes already, they would not have done a fourth. The color scheme could not be white / blue as The Lamar was already done that way. That also leaves out black, and blue as base colors.

I pressed the maple laminates and decided on the final shape.

The stinger is gone. I decided on the base color of red. Actually this red was color matched to Sims wheels from 1979. I liked the blue in the routes, but I went back and forth if that color worked well in the overall line of Sims boards from that era.

I obtained Deans signature from his wife, and created a screen to lay it down on the board. I Further changed the font for the name to more closely match Sims from that time. I initially was going to ask another builder friend of mine to screen foil inserts for the routes, but ultimately decided against it. I decided that Sims would have done a different design for this board to seperate it from the Lamar and Andrecht. A special design was needed that goes along in the line.

First layout.

This scheme looks nice, I really liked it. But, I had chosen a brighter red to highlight the lettering and logos, and it does not show up well enough. Looks like another revision is needed.

Final layout