This is a big step forward for Sleepy Dan! A great friend of mine, Chandler in Arizona has been making skateboards for a while now for his start up company Informal Longboards. He offered to test out his trick board making skills on the prototype pillow deck for Sleepy Dan!!! I was crazy excited to get his help with this project, Sleepy Dan had to collab on a new Informal Longboards logo too!

He’s got a home based setup to create decks from start to finnish, similar to my manual screen printing setup, it’s all done by hand. It’s inspiring to see a another talented artist taking a multi process project to completion with his own hands, just had to share…

The pillow deck is going to be debuted this coming weekend at the Shut Up and Rumble event being held at Overground Project in the downtown Dallas area. They have been working on some new additions to the indoor park for this event, so I can attest it’s gonna be a bad ass event! I have been dropping by the park at random times for the past week to help the owners with the build out. Will have a blog post for behind the making of the event later this week…

A standard rideable deck has seven layers, each layer is glued and pressed to create the sturdy surface needed to ride like an animal! Industry board makers, like SK8 Factory, have huge machines setup to do what Chandler does by hand.

Creating the shape all depends on the preference of the rider and purpose of the deck. This prototype is shaped more like a cruiser, but the next ones will definitely have more rise for better trick-ability. Gotta love Chandler’s custom board makin t shirt!

The shape of the pillow deck is based on the Sleepy Dan pillow logo, which will be stencil painted on the bottom of the deck.

Then he uses a jig saw to cut out the shape of the pillow deck. Cutting thru several layers of glued wood, in very specific shape is crazy difficult!

The final shape is then sanded so the edges do not catch while riding. This process is very similar to shaping a surfboard. The center line has to be symmetrical so the deck is not wonky to ride.

The fiberglassing is added to the outer layer to reinforce the deck for riding.

The process is started by mixing chemicals to create a toxic glue that sandwiches the fibers. One glue layer is put down, then the nylon fiber sheet, then another layer of glue.

After fiberglassing is complete and sanded again, the holes are template drilled for trucks using the center line drawn for shaping.

Chandler loves creating custom grip designs, the pillow shape outer edge becomes a challenge too.

Just received the pillow deck in the mail this past week, so it had a sneak peek at the Artes Alley and fans loved it! Brand new wheels and bottom graphic are gonna be broken in this coming weekend at the debut, hope to see you there to check it out!