What Is A Longboard?
Longboarding began its journey in the 1990s, it has been popular since then. These days, people take longboarding as a sport and a recreational activity. If you’re also planning to take on longboarding, the questions such as what is a longboard? How to ride a longboard? What are its kinds? Need to be answered. For the complete solution to your inquiry, this article follows with some of the most searched questions about longboards and their answers. Read to know all the tricks.
What is a longboard used for?
A longboard is an extension of the skateboard. These are longer than skateboards and can go up to 60 inches long, giving better stability for longer rides and hilly racing. Longboards also have a wider deck, making them better for transportation, commuting around the city, and working. For day-to-day cruising and traveling, you must know what is a longboard and why longboards are the first choice. These days, longboarding has taken a form of sport, including longboard dancing and freestyling. All of these activities require you to be a pro in handling the balance of the longboard with your body for swift motions and glides fluidly.
What is a longboard made of?
A longboard has three parts, and all of them are made of different materials. First, is the longboard deck, mostly made of bamboo, birch, or maple. Solid hardwood, carbon, and fiberglass are used to make the deck lighter and stiff. But still, bamboo is the most preferred material by manufacturers, sometimes combined with maple wood to give flexibility and durability. While the wheels are made of polyurethane, which is a petrochemical. It makes them bouncy, grippy, and available in many colors. The best quality trucks are made up of alloy and aluminum for durability. Trucks require a stable and supplemental metal for better turnability and stability without faster aging/rusting.
What is the average longboard length?
While choosing a longboard, you must know the deck’s shape, size, and length as per the height and activity you’re performing. Given your height, the longboard lengths vary along with the longboarding style. Choose wisely according to your comfort. What is a longboard ideal for you? For a rider of height up to 5’10,” the longboard can be 32-40” long and suitable for cruising. While for a rider of height over 5’10”, the longboard length should also be more than 40” for comfortable cruising.
For downhill racing, if you’re up to 5’10” in height, a longboard of length 35-40” will be suitable, and if you’re more than 5’10”, the longboard should also be longer, i.e., more than 42” in length. When it comes to freestyling and freeriding, you don’t need too many lengthy longboards. For instance, if you’re up to 5’10” in height, your longboard should be around 38-42” long for a smoother ride, while if you’re more than 5’10”, the 38-42” long longboard will work the same.
These length variations are made due to your height and activity differences. Since longer boards are suitable for beginners due to more stability, speed, and comfort, shorter boards are suitable for professionals indulging in speed racing with sharper turns. The shorter boards have shorter wheelbases, which make turning easier and more stable.
What is a good affordable longboard?
A good longboard is defined by its good parts, which narrows down to the quality of its parts, the assembly of its parts, and the combined interactions between its parts. Know what is a longboard? And how a good longboard will have a balance among its main parts: the deck, the wheels, the trucks, the bearings, and the grip tape.
The longboard decks made of bamboo, maple, birch, or carbon fiber (composite material) are the best for high durability. These layers are glued together with epoxy giving a nice and sturdy finish. The deck shape and wheel cutouts also affect the deck’s quality in improving your ride. The size of wheels is also crucial because larger wheels cause wheel bite during turns and speed riding; therefore, longer boards require larger wheels with more diameter.
Based on your preferred activity, be it cruising, carving, freeriding, freestyling, downhill racing, commuting, speed riding, or tricks, the longboard should be appropriately priced; not all inexpensive boards are bad. Expensive boards can be as high as $200 to $500, but the goal is to look for moderately priced and quality boards between $60 and $250. Some of the inexpensive and widely popular longboards are mentioned here.
What is better a longboard or a penny board?
From an average rider’s view, a longboard is easier to ride than a penny board due to its design. The penny boards have a very small and narrow standing platform, which makes balancing harder, so a little movement can cause a complete loss of balance. The shorter standing distance makes it harder to balance and can result in wipeouts.
On the other hand, longboards are easier to balance with wide standing platforms, bigger wheels, less pushing, more stable, easy to learn, and safer than penny boards.
What is a good longboard to buy?
Longboarding is a sport that involves ferocious movements, from cruising to gliding to jumping, and many tricks, to be specific. Based on these riding styles, longboards come in various shapes, sizes, styles, and other particular features such as concave decks, softer wheels, wheel cutouts, and many more. If you plan to buy a longboard, the first step is to consider your needs and preferences. Know what is a longboard, how it works, and how to ride it.
The best longboard for you suits your needs. It should be durable, flexible, affordable, suitable for beginners (if you’re a beginner), have a good deck material (preferably bamboo and maple), be lightweight, easy to carry, suitable for your height and activity type (freeriding, freestyling, cruising, commuting, racing, or tricks), have alloy or aluminum trucks, have a tail if required, large and soft wheels, and a gripping deck lined with a gripping tape. Considering these factors, there are many options available in the market.
What is a carving longboard?
A carving longboard is quite similar to a cruiser longboard. It is designed to glide on snow if you’re snowboarding or skiing making swift turns. These boards have a more curved top making them look like big concave, which helps you learn while making a quick turn. The wheels on these boards are soft, with a small wheel cut into the board to prevent a wheel bit. However, carving longboards is difficult, so learn carefully before riding.
Junli Free Ride and Magneto Hana Twin can be good choices.
FAQs
1. What is a cruising longboard?
A cruising longboard is typically used for chilling and relaxing while leisurely roaming around an area. The activities include a mixture of speed, downhill, freestyling, and carving in a pleasant environment such as a beach or a park. For this purpose, the popular choice is a pintail longboard, which is longer with a flat deck, stable, moderately flexed, and with big soft wheels, giving you a comfortable ride.
2. What is a commuter longboard?
A commuter longboard is a long and wide-shaped longboard. It is used for transportation and commuting to school, work, or simply cruising around the city as a pleasurable workout and recreational activity. These boards are ideal for commuting due to their low riding deck and large wheel bearings for good usability, soft wheels for smoothness and gliding, long deck, and appropriate height with good storability and portability.
3. What is a complete longboard?
A complete longboard is a full-packed board that comes ready to use with a deck, trucks, and wheels all fixed to begin riding. The package that you have bought comes with all the parts assembled into the product already, you don’t have to begin with assembling the individual parts. It is generally cheaper and ready to use.
4. What is a wheel-cut longboard?
A wheel-cut longboard is a modification of a normal longboard made for bigger wheels. In the process, the wood surrounding the wheels is removed from all four corners of the deck. It allows you to dive in deep without the wheels touching the deck and causing friction. These changes allow the riders to run fairly loose without fearing wheel bite. However, the standing area on the deck decreases in the process.
I’m Tami Thompson, the founder of HIR Adventure, my team and I are passionate about outdoor adventure sports. We’re committed to offering you the finest skateboards, longboards, and snowboards.
