1- Introduce yourself and your company, what is JF skateboard?
Hello, I’m Joel Meuwly, I’m 32 years old carpenter by trade and craftsman of skateboards/longboards and various furniture but, especially founder of the brand JF-skateboards (J.Family-Skateboards) and shop JF-Skatebaords (Skate & Tattoo) which are the subject of this article 😉 .
JF-skateoards is a brand born of a passion for the ride and wood that wants to represent the craft of skateboards / longboards Switzerland first and foremost, but also the promotion of various ride sports such as skate, freestyle scooter, longboards, Pow Surf, Snowscoot and I pass.
2- When did you start this project?
I think it all started in late 2015 with a buddy Frank who is passionate about drawing. We shared a common passion ” skateboarding ” and started thinking about different projects. That’s how the shop JF-Skateboards (Skate & Tattoo) was born in mid-2017 and then at the end of 2020 the brand ” JF-Skateboards ” that I launched with my brother Jérémie.
3- Why did you create JF skateboard?
About a year later (early 2017) with my buddy Frank who started to move nicely into the world of tattooing we
We said, but why not try to open a small store that mixes skateboarding and tattooing to end up with a handmade and unique product 100% handmade. Motivated by the idea, we were able to quickly find a commercial space and start our activity.
4- How did this idea of creating your own decks come about?
That’s when I started looking for boards on the internet and suddenly I came across a site that sold veneer, for me, with my training as a carpenter, it was a no-brainer, I was going to be able to put my ideas into practice.
At that time, I was already making solid wood longboards on my own.
At first it was hot, I was working in a large carpentry company and in the evening we were going to open the shop I had more than Sunday to make the boards.
Very quickly, I understood that I had to make a choice and there was no need to force me. My passion is first and foremost the world of riding.
I went for it.
I threw myself wholeheartedly into my goals, we couldn’t do things by halves if we wanted to see our projects succeed.
I quickly placed orders on this site, I started making my own boards for friends and myself.
It started to be known and I had my first orders in my circle of friends.
JF-skateboards was primed.
5- How did you hear about Roarockit?
My biggest problem when I started was that I couldn’t find a high quality maple supplier, but finally after some research, I came across the Roarockit website. What a relief, quality, reactivity and always good exchanges when I need information.
Roarockit Skateboard Europe
6- Where can we find you ? Where do you sell your products?
Currently, you can find all our products in our store JF-skateboards (skate and Tattoo) at Rue du Marché 16, 1820 Montreux Switzerland.
As well as on our e-shop JF-skateboard in which we deliver on order in all Europe. For more information, we also have an Instagram JF_skateboards.
7- What are your future projects?
My brother Jeremie joined the adventure in mid-2020 we are developing a sport store side, a visibility on the web and we have just registered the brand JF-Skateboards, the future projects for us would be to evolve this brand that will always remain handcrafted products regarding the wood and at the same time attack the whole universe of the ride. We are currently on a project of Pow surf we already offer the possibility of pyrography and customize all our decks and in a short time you may see a world premiere, we do not say more for the moment, but 2021 reserves beautiful surprises.
1- Can you introduce yourself? What do you do for a living?
My name is Enji Wadel and I am 44 years old. I am currently in ” reconversion ” as they say. Circassian acrobat since I was a kid, I rolled my hump a little bit everywhere with our circus ” La Compagnie Le Filet d’Air ” created with Isa my wife in 1999.
Funambulist, tent erector, Gypsy jazz musician, mechanic sometimes, this job allowed me to touch a little bit of everything and especially to develop the sense of ” bidouille ” when there is a problem… The show must go on !
2- When did you start making skateboards?
Mino I was a real daredevil, everything went bmx, rollerblading, skateboarding… As long as there was big slope, I was up for it !
Then time passed and it was through the wire that I channeled that need for adrenaline.
Living in the Alps and tired of the increasingly short snow seasons, we started longboarding with my son Nino.
One thing leading to another, we started to tinker with boards, to recover some, to cut CP to test different Shapes …. It was gone, we were taken by the passion of skate !
3- How did you learn to make a skateboard?
It was meeting two years ago with Christophe Stagnetto of Made in Alpes Skateboardthat was a revelation for me.
I hosted him as a stage manager on the festivalFesti’Streetorganized by our Trièves teens and Christophe was demoing Shape with Made in Alpes.
We spent the day chatting about skateboarding, he showed me the TAP, took the time to explain everything.
I’ve never taken an internship or anything, I’m observant and mostly a stubborn !
I search a lot, I make mistakes, beautiful discoveries and little by little I find myself making more and more boards of better quality…. It’s progressing continuously, just don’t let go !
4- What do you make them with?
This happens in three steps:
1 – Designing a prototype with the TAP technique and polystyrene mold.
2 – Once the concave and camber are found, make a wooden mold.
3 – Production, using a mechanical flange press, of a micro series of up to 10 boards.
I am currently working on a hydraulic concrete mold press that will see the light of day in early 2021 and should speed up the manufacturing process. It currently takes about 1 month from design to completion of a new model.
I also make knives that I mount with recycled skateboard pads or better with my wood scraps. I especially make a derivative model of grafting that I called ” The Gripper ” a tool that makes it easy to put the grip on and also works great for pizz’s during sessions !
5- How does Roarockit help you with his boards?
The TAP is an indispensable tool for making protos easily.
From its simplicity of use, one can quickly modify molds, search for the right shapes, size ect…
I also use the TAP a lot to press different objects I make with wood scraps (insert for knife mounts, guitar picks, wooden games ect…)
I use Roarockit’s Canadian maple for all my work, which is super quality. It’s a real pleasure to work on super clean materials. I love the color folds and the different shade changes the wood takes on depending on the stages of work ( rough, sanding, varnishing…)
7- What are your future plans?
To get back to roaming by being present on skate-parks, contests, sports events etc… With a Caravane-scene that we used to use for our shows that I’m going to refurbish this winter to make it a Mobile Skateshop.
The idea would be to distribute only boards from Independent Shapers and to have a workshop ” dépanne ” where the riders could rework the breakage of the day with material recovered here and there. I’m not sure how to do that.
By the way, if anyone is into this, feel free to contact me, the more the merrier…
9- You have free card for your last question. (thanks, sayings ….?)
Thanks to Béber for the old Kity, to Bernard for his sanding roller and his advice in woodworking, to the LET workshop and Laurenz for the knives assembly, to phil for the log, to polo for the future site to my neighbors for some illustrations and especially to the Riders who trust me.
A big big up to the family, buddies, and people in my village who support me.
It’s amazing to see that when you scratch a little, poke around, take an interest in others, a lot of doors open. You just have to be patient…
Thank you for taking the time to be a part of our “Shaper of the month” articles. It is a pleasure to see and put forward your work!
– We will start with a little presentation of yourself. Where do you come from? How old are you? What is your life goal and what do you do now?
I’m 30 years old from a small town in the south of Brazil but have been living in Germany since 2012. I like skateboards since I can remember and got my first one when I was around 10 years old. It wasn’t really a great setup with it’s plasticky wheels and rubber bushings, but I learned how to comfortably cruise with it. When I was around 13 I got my first real skateboard and started learning some tricks. I was riding regularly for about 2 years, then on and off until 2012 when I moved to Germany. In 2014 I got my first longboard, which I used to cruise around and commute, but also learned a few dance steps. About a year later I bought a proper dancer, then a mini cruiser, then a downhill deck and so on.
By the end of 2015 I built my first deck, I really enjoyed the building process and the feeling of riding a self-made board, so I started looking more into it and found out about Roarockit.
Shortly after I got a TAP kit, better tools and built a couple more decks, which were not perfect, but already much better than the first one. Now my main project is a downhill deck for myself and the crew I’m part of (we are Draft Train Media on Instagram and Youtube). I also have my personal Youtube channel with some skate videos, where I also plan to post the production process of my next decks.
I have the dream to make deck building (and woodworking in general) a way of living, but there’s still a very long way until I get to a level of product quality and design that is commercially viable, so for now I keep it as a hobby, improving on every deck I make.
– Have you recently started woodworking?
Yes and no. In my childhood and teenage years I helped my dad build some simple stuff out of wood, like a small house for our dog, and with some friends a small ramp and a grinding box for street skating. The first deck I built was with hardware store plywood and a heavily improvised press with whatever heavy stuff I could find to bend it. It wasn’t pretty, but it’s still very rideable.
– What is your relationship with Canadian Maple veneer? Why is it so special to you?
It’s actually a love-hate relationship. It’s a fantastic material to work with, I can bend it relatively easily and the deck I’ve built with it feels very solid. Problem is, it’s a difficult material to find where I live and a bit more expensive than I would like, so that still holds me back. Right now my plan is to use cheaper hardware store plywood for prototyping then when I achieve the results I’m satisfied with, get a batch of Canadian Maple veneer to make higher quality decks.
– How did you find out about Roarockit and why did you choose a TAP system instead of another kind of press?
The first time I read about Roarockit was at diyskate.com. I was looking for information about how to build a press and came across the Roarockit TAP, which was a surprise as I had never heard of deck pressing with a vacuum bag. I don’t have a lot of storage space or a workshop, I make the builds either on my apartment’s balcony or in the building’s backyard, so being able to fold and store my press in a shelf made all the difference, which is something I wouldn’t be able to do with a bottle jack press for example. The usage is very simple, making a mold out of hard foam is much easier and cheaper than wood or concrete, which is nice for amateur builders as myself, and if you take your time to do it right, the results are outstanding for such a simple deck-pressing method. The tutorial videos on Roarockit’s Youtube channel are also excellent and helped me avoid many mistakes.
– You wrote an excellent article of your experience with our kit. You can read the article here. It’s a really good one thank you! What is your relation with blogging and the website LongboardEnvy? And why write an article about Roarockit?
I’ve actually never had a Blog myself. The opportunity to write for Longboard Envy came after I posted on /r/longboarding a short review on the Ronin Cast Katana trucks I had recently bought. I couldn’t find any reviews on it so I decided to share my experience with them with the community, then JC from Longboard Envy contacted me inviting for a guest post with a bit more in depth analysis of those trucks. Some time after that, he invited me to write on an ongoing basis and I joined.
The idea of writing about the Roarockit TAP bag kit came from both the need of original content for Longboard Envy and some tips and details about using it that I gathered by reading articles about it, watching tutorial videos and my personal experience designing and building a deck. I wanted to put it all together in one place to help first builders get a good idea of the whole process.
– What are you working on now? And what are your future projects?
Right now I’m sketching some ideas for boards I want to build for the next season. One of them is a 1960’s style, flat, solid wood board. I really like how they look and I want to learn how to stain wood. I want to learn how to apply fiberglass and carbon fiber in order to build a light but super stiff downhill deck and I have a couple of waiting orders from friends for a cruiser and a slalom deck.
– Any comments or special thanks?
Thank you Roarockit for inviting me to be part of Shaper of the Month and for making it’s products available in Europe, to my friends who support me in deck building, specially Kim and Roberto who painted the amazing custom art on my decks, and the longboarding community on Reddit who is really helpful as well.
