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The Braw Story
How Did Braw Skateboards Begin?
Braw skateboards started as a home made press in a garage. This press enabled customisation of concaves, kicks, templates and wheelbases. After selecting our favourite decks we found quality manufacturers who produced decks in
these styles.
What Does Braw Skateboards Stand For?
Initially we wanted to produce quality decks with certified sustainable timber, or alternate materials, to achieve better harmony with the environment and skateboarding. This is actually a really difficult task! Other types of wood don’t match Canadian maples performance, (most importantly the sugar maple variety), for modulus of elasticity, (resistance to non-permanent, or elastic, deformation), flex as far as we are concerned in skating, and sheer strength, (resistance to forces causing the material's structure to slide against itself), deck snaps and fractures as far as we are concerned in skating. Other woods can achieve one quality close to Canadian Maples performance but not both. News we did not want to hear in relation to our goal. Canadian Maple, in the skate industry is not always certified, that doesn’t mean it has come from poor forestry practices, but it’s nice to know we are buying and riding what’s right!
In light of this we decided to look at other dimensional properties in skating and see if we could solve the problem in a different way. Skating has a great culture, welcoming and open minded, supportive of local/small businesses and grateful for local spots. In short, we appreciate what we’ve got. Moving forward, we decided that we need to offer what works for skaters to stand a chance of pursuing this goal to produce this board we dream of. For this reason, we decided that in spring 2023 we would offer two deck compositions, one with certified sustainable European Maple and the other Canadian Maple. The European maple still receives extremely hot summers and cold winters, just like the Canadian Maple, and therefore grows extremely strong. It is more than capable of taking what we demand of our everyday skating. We celebrate these decks with graphics that we feel portrays a love of nature. The Canadian Maple allows us to continue interacting with skaters who may be skeptical to the European Maple, and may initially want to try our decks in a trusted composition, we celebrate these decks with graphics that portray our local spot and shop. Both decks feel great when riding! We chose these decks because we feel a deck should only break if you land wrong, heavy, and hard, like on a stair set, with undesirable foot placement, and that’s exactly what these decks do, stand up to our demands and make skating feel good.
The Reality Of Skateboards And Where We Sit
Sugar maple is the specific type of maple used for skateboard decks as it is the superior form of maple that has the most strength. This particular species takes up to 40 years to mature, lives for 300 - 400 years, and in its life time stores massive amounts of CO2. A truly beautiful tree. As we skate we degrade decks quickly through clean breaks or razor tail etc. Kinda doesn't feel right taking that tree and using it for what we do, considering all it does, just to ride a couple months, chuck the deck, release that carbon and get another. Non-sugar maple species are still super strong, grow quicker and are able to achieve sustainable status on scale much easier. With improvements in glue and pressing procedures what is marginally lost in the wood is restored anyway. The reality is the slight increase in strength from sugar maple isn't needed, if you land heavy and not on bolts down a big flight of stairs you risk snapping your deck. Even the so called non-breakable bamboo decks snap in these scenarios! So really you don't even notice the change, if you like the template and dims of the deck go European Maple, it's purely beneficial! For this reason, as soon as we have sold all of the current stock of Canadian maple, we will stock nothing but sustainable non-sugar maple decks, so please go ahead and try us out on what currently suits you and join us on the ride.
What Does This All Look Like In The Future?
As you have probably seen, our dog is the face of our company. As a pup he was super friendly, inquisitive and non-judgemental. We think these are great qualities to embody at our early stage of business. As Viktor Schauberger said; "comprehend and copy nature". This is what we intend to do, watch him grow, observe him and install his qualities into Braw. We took some great photos of him to use for the graphics on the 2023 spring order decks. One future deck we are keen to develop will also help us reduce the prices of our decks as well as improve sustainabilty! We hope over time, as skaters, we can all come together with our different preferences of riding styles/decks and offer a range of deck compositions from certified maples, bamboo and whatever else we discover.
Forest Friends
Graphic
Coming Spring 2023
European Maple – A Viable & Practical Alternative
Maple works for skate board decks, it’s as simple as that, what does it do for us;
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Maple provides strength, in the form of flex.
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Maple provides resistance to breakage.
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It provides a nice feeling under foot for riding and popping.
Strength can be scientifically summarized as modulus of elasticity, the materials resistance to being deformed elastically when a stress is applied to it. Meaning it can flex and return to its former shape without loss of energy or structural integrity.
Resistance to breakage or shear strength; the materials ability that resists yield or structural failure.
There is a lot of good things about skateboard decks, they are made efficiently, veneer production minimises wood waste, and the resulting product is strong and performs its intended purpose. Using Sugar Maple, (the standard), doesn’t mean the Maple has definitely come from non-sustainable sources, it often means we don’t know if it did. European Maple however, is certified sustainable. Therefore, we know we are practically doing the best we can for skaters and the environment when sourcing decks.
No wood or timber product has both the strength and shear capabilities combined that maple does, meaning they are not suitable for the job. Some alternatives such as bamboo have these abilities, but do not satisfy the feeling beneath the foot for enough skaters. Sustainability and the way we interact with the environment’s becoming more important. What if we could simply fix skateboard manufacture by simply using Maple, (what we know works), from sources of good forestry.
That’s probably easier than finding an alternative material, that’s why we have chosen certified sustainable European Maple decks in our spring order. Here’s why European Maple can compete with Canadian sugar maple.
If we use materials with appropriate values for their intended purpose they perform well. In skateboarding this means we should be able to apply enough stress through use and allow the material to stay within the proportional limit. This allows the deck to return to its former shape and maintain structural integrity. Once we have exceeded the elastic limit or yield point we have a deck that is at least fractured or delaminated. Often the extreme demands we make when jumping down stairs for example, even on Sugar Maple decks, can send us straight over the ultimate strength limit and result in deck breakage.
Comparing Sugar Maple to European Maple
The elastic modulus of Sugar Maple’s 12.62Gpa while European Maple’s 11.80Gpa.
While rupture modulus for Sugar Maples 109MPa and European’s 123Mpa.
What does this tell us?
GPa, or 1 Gigapascal = 101 Kilogram-force per square millimeter [kgf/mm²]
Sugar maple provides 12.62 x 101 = 1274.62Kgf/mm2 That’s 1.27 tonnes
European Maple Provides 11.80 x 101 = 1191.80Kgf/mm2 That’s’ 1.19 tonnes
This is marginal difference in their modulus of elasticity, not enough to make a noticeable difference.
Modulus of rupture is defined as the materials maximum bending stress that it may be subjected to before it yields. As you can see, European Maple out performs sugar on this property.
Conclusion
Both deck compositions can fundamentally take well over a tonne in force per square mm and retain their shape and structural integrity, more than enough! Obviously, the question of what does this mean by the time we have a long wheelbase, trucks and wheels comes to mind, as we are more concerned with strength associated in skate use with surface areas well over a mm2. Science is a great place for starting out, but we need to test things out in reality and see if things actually work. Simply put, we have and they do! Remember, engineering also plays its part, decks have seven plys, in varying orientations, that are pressed extremely well with good glue! These elements and processes provide further integrity to the board.
European maple's a great alternative that works, without reinventing the wheel.
This is a great alternative that creates that familiar feeling we love beneath our feet because it actually performs as well as helps serve better forestry practices.
European Maple decks do exactly what Sugar Maple decks do, perform well and work, and only snap if you land wrong, heavy and hard. But that’s one of those things we all know as skaters, along with wheel bite, flat spots and periodically having a beaten up shoe on our front foot while our back foot shoe still looks new.
Modulus of elasticity; a product of stress divided by strain.
Stress - measure of an external force acting over the cross sectional area of an object.
Strain – change in length or volume.
