That's funny. I always saw Strouty's avatar (I think that's what those things are called) and it made me think of Matt Hensley. I didn't think many other people skated on this site.
I've skateboarded my whole life and I can tell you the hardest part of this project was taking the grip off of the focused boards. When kids used to bring water-logged decks into the skate shop to get re-gripped, we'd tell them to pull the old **** off or we'd just grip over the old stuff and their bolts. Similar deal with broken kingpins.
My dad is a cabinetmaker and we actually made a press to manufacture boards when I was young. It worked alright and the decks were usable. However, we could only get 2-ply material, meaning we couldn't run 7-plies with the traditional cross-grained pattern you'd get with mass-manufactured decks. We'd just do 8 ply decks -- which were sort of a thing for a while, but ultimately proved you could manufacture a heavier board that broke just as easily as its 7-ply counterpart. Don't even get met started on everslicks.
Rip City Skates in Santa Monica used to have a chair made out of new Powell decks (mid '80s single kicks).
