00:00 (rock music)
00:02 Inventing a skateboard trick is difficult enough,
00:06 but this man home makes boards
00:08 that are part of the tricks themselves.
00:10 - The most difficult board I've worked on
00:16 was the tri-fold 360 flip I did recently.
00:19 Yeah, that one I had to make
00:20 at least five iterations of the board,
00:22 and it would constantly break.
00:24 - Meet Matt Tomasello,
00:25 professional skateboarder and amateur engineer,
00:28 reinventing the sport with a unique approach.
00:31 - I think the board modification
00:32 just adds a layer of complexity
00:34 that kind of steps away from competitive skateboarding
00:36 and more into like an art form.
00:39 It's definitely, to me, the most interesting skateboarding.
00:42 There are no rules.
00:43 Probably skateboard as long as I can physically do it.
00:47 Now to fall on the ground.
00:48 Oh boy.
00:51 - Matt spends countless hours
00:54 testing any of his 50 plus boards,
00:56 all in a space as DIY as his own work.
01:00 - This is a semi-abandoned parking lot.
01:02 Me and my friends built some ramps here to skate on.
01:04 This one did not take me long to make,
01:08 but it took me forever to land the trick
01:12 that I intended to do with it.
01:13 You do half a flip,
01:15 and then it does one and a half flips back.
01:17 When I land on it upside down,
01:18 or it hits the ground upside down,
01:20 pops, and it can.
01:22 Oh God.
01:24 I knew that was gonna happen too.
01:25 I wanted to design a board where the truck
01:26 goes around the entire skateboard.
01:28 There's one spring loaded hinge
01:30 that should just propel the truck around the board.
01:32 This one took a while to figure out.
01:36 Freely flips both ways.
01:38 Done a few tricks where both sides flip at the same time,
01:40 and sometimes in opposite directions.
01:42 This one's probably my favorite.
01:43 I honestly would rather destroy my body.
01:53 I'm awkward.
01:54 (upbeat music)
01:57 As far as taking a beating,
01:59 the board will usually break
02:00 before I'm physically harmed enough to stop.
02:03 I think falling is the most important trick in skateboarding.
02:06 It's an inevitable thing that's gonna happen.
02:08 If you learn how to fall correctly,
02:10 you're gonna be able to just keep trying.
02:12 Always looking to test a new idea,
02:15 Matt volunteered to engineer a new board from scratch
02:18 in his bedroom workshop.
02:19 So this is my room,
02:20 and this is where I do my building.
02:23 Yeah, I got a little workbench over here,
02:26 and giant stack of boards,
02:28 usually donated from local skateboarders and friends.
02:33 So I've been thinking about this board
02:34 where half of the board falls down on cables,
02:38 and a lever brings it back up for you, land.
02:41 I have a sketchbook with a bunch of my old stuff,
02:46 but lately I've just been building like rough drafts.
02:48 Sketching it is way harder.
02:50 I wish I had like a CAD program
02:52 I could just test the physics on,
02:53 but maybe I'll get there one day.
02:55 Sometimes I get inspiration if I see a machine
02:58 or one of the boards,
02:59 I got inspiration by seeing a gate in somebody's backyard.
03:04 Draw a line, I think it needs to be cut.
03:06 I decide where to cut based on how long the lever is
03:09 and how much time I have for the board to come back together.
03:13 It's usually working with anywhere
03:14 from like a half a second to two maximum.
03:17 If it's just flat ground trick in the air,
03:19 you really only have like a half a second,
03:20 quarter of a second, calculated it.
03:22 Nothing needs to be perfect, just needs to work once.
03:28 Have a spare nose, might as well use it
03:30 instead of cutting up a new one.
03:31 Reduce, reuse.
03:32 So they overlap because this would never hold anyone.
03:37 It's all a balancing act,
03:38 like weight distribution from the front truck
03:40 to the back truck.
03:41 Nothing's gonna work if there's anything in between
03:43 that can fold in.
03:45 Now I'm just gonna drill the holes
03:46 where the cabling is gonna go.
03:48 Probably spent like hundreds of hours
03:50 building different boards in here,
03:51 just tinkering with things.
03:53 First board I built,
03:59 I think it was just a single hinge attached to the truck.
04:02 I'm popping the momentum,
04:03 causes it to do a heel flip late.
04:05 I saw the physics get altered from the moving part
04:08 and I was like, "Oh, this is interesting."
04:10 You can use it to your advantage.
04:12 I've been in Boston my whole life.
04:15 There's not many spots to skateboard.
04:17 So you gotta work with what you got.
04:19 I think that's just natural progression.
04:21 How can I find a way to adapt to my environment
04:24 and make it interesting?
04:26 - This is the self-Natus board.
04:29 There's this trick on a skateboard called the Natus spin.
04:32 Invented by Natus Kappas,
04:33 he ollied onto a fire hydrant
04:34 and grabbed a pole and spun around.
04:36 And this is like way, way back.
04:38 Yo, Andy, what year did Natus do the Natus spin?
04:41 Okay.
04:44 This one, when you ollie,
04:46 the back truck is attached to a metal bracket.
04:49 You can stall and you can spin around,
04:51 even manual down a bank.
04:52 This one just took a while to figure out the proper angle
04:55 for the stop on the L brackets and spring load tension,
04:59 'cause you want it to hit as soon
05:01 as you're at the peak of your ollie.
05:02 'Cause otherwise it's gonna kick back
05:04 and then just fold right back under.
05:06 This board is kind of like a book, I guess.
05:08 The only trick I've ever done on this is a kick flip
05:10 where in the air it will open and close.
05:12 The momentum of it closing kind of finishes
05:14 the last quarter of the flip.
05:16 It's pretty impractical for anything else.
05:19 This one actually did not take me long to make.
05:21 It's just cut in half with a spring loaded hinge.
05:24 Essentially just wind it up and you do a trick.
05:26 Just release.
05:27 You can flip the front or the back,
05:29 depending on where your foot is.
05:30 You can adjust the tension so it'll close faster or slower,
05:33 depending on the trick.
05:34 The other ones you saw,
05:35 where it was mostly like flipping two coins,
05:37 the timing, it's impossible to stop it.
05:39 This one's actually more on track.
05:41 Still working on this one.
05:42 It's supposed to do one and a half flips
05:44 and then bounce off these compression springs.
05:47 Can't quite figure out the timing of it.
05:49 Still a work in progress.
05:51 My success rate is probably,
05:54 say about 20%, maybe 25.
05:56 Gonna build a lever.
06:00 Luckily I have some leftover parts for that.
06:02 We're gonna use some metal cabling
06:04 to bring back the second half of the board.
06:07 Threading the cabling through the holes,
06:10 giving it its track to reel back on.
06:12 My foot will essentially be on the lever
06:16 while I'm doing the trick.
06:17 And then it's going to slide off.
06:19 The reel's gonna retract when the lever closes
06:21 and that's what's going to cause
06:22 the board to come back together.
06:24 So now I'm just securing the cabling.
06:27 This clamp I made out of some old metal brackets.
06:30 It doesn't come flying off.
06:32 Now I'm gonna set the tension of the spring,
06:37 control how fast it's going to close.
06:39 And I usually adjust it at the spot
06:41 based on how long the trick's taking.
06:44 Not bad at all.
06:50 With his success rate in mind,
06:51 Matt returned to the skate park,
06:53 hopeful to make his new creation work.
06:56 So we're at the skate spot.
06:57 Just gonna try this board out.
07:00 I'm gonna try to slide down here.
07:02 Have the board drop while sliding.
07:05 Then reel back up right away.
07:10 (upbeat music)
07:12 Oh my God.
07:13 Yeah, I can't get over it.
07:20 Need weight in the front.
07:21 Might just have to take a different approach at it.
07:24 That was close.
07:27 One slide didn't work, but luckily 5.0 worked out.
07:38 Think that's it?
07:39 No matter how many tries his boards can take,
07:42 Matt loves the freedom of the process.
07:44 They're trying to make rules,
07:49 and they want to fix everything,
07:50 but you can do absolutely whatever you want.
07:53 Nobody can throw a flag on the field
07:55 and say you didn't do it right.
07:57 (horse neighing)
08:00 [BLANK_AUDIO]
