When it’s essential clear and restore or substitute your skateboard’s grip tape, you by no means wish to fall in need of restoring your tape and board to their optimum efficiency potential. If you’re about to sort out cleansing, restoring, and changing your grip tape, what must you do to ensure the method goes easily? Listed here are the most effective methods to scrub, restore, and substitute your grip tape!
To scrub grip tape, use a sanding belt cleaner or a small quantity of light dish detergent to take away gunk or built-up filth in your grip tape. When eradicating grip tape to revive it, think about using a warmth gun to heat up the adhesive and make it simpler to take off. Then analysis and purchase a brand new pack or roll of grip tape to put in.
What makes some grip tape manufacturers totally different or higher than others? What else must you pay attention to and know earlier than you leap into cleansing, restoring, or changing your grip tape? Let’s go over in depth what to search for on the subject of all issues grip tape, and easy methods to finest keep a wholesome layer of it in your board.
Find out how to Clear and Restore Your Grip Tape
To scrub your grip tape, use a sanding belt cleaner. These sanding belt cleaners could be bought comparatively inexpensively from native {hardware} shops and on-line shops like Amazon. There are even some skate manufacturers that promote their very own grip tape cleaners, reminiscent of Shake Junt, Grip Gum, and MOB, together with many different choices.
To make use of a sanding belt cleaner to scrub up your grip tape, rub the cleaner in your grip tape like an eraser. For the areas in your skateboard which have thicker or denser filth spots, the grip gum could not assist take away the detritus fully. If that is your scenario, get a toothbrush and slightly water to dislodge and take away the stains.
You could possibly even use a little bit of delicate dishwasher detergent (like Daybreak) or light cleaning soap to assist do away with the filth. Don’t overdo it with water or cleaning soap. For those who use an excessive amount of of those cleansing brokers or use cleansing brokers which can be too sturdy, this might lead to weakened grip tape.
Shopping for New Grip Tape
In terms of utilizing grip tape, do your finest to analysis all the varied sorts and choose a model and sort of grip tape that serves your particular skateboarding objectives finest. The model and type of skateboarding that you just aspire to do ought to inform the kind of grip tape you find yourself shopping for. The choices mainly break down into customary, specialised, and non-abrasive. Non-abrasive grip tape is a comparatively new addition to the market that makes use of molecular adhesion to provide friction and doesn’t injury your footwear!
Find out how to Greatest Preserve Your Grip Tape
The easiest way to take care of your grip tape is to begin by shopping for a high-grade kind of tape. It doesn’t matter what kind of grip tape you select to go along with, clear it gently and mindfully so it would final for so long as potential.
Keep in mind to keep away from going overboard with cleansing or scrubbing your grip tape, particularly with detergents. Must you clear or wipe at your grip tape too aggressively, the general grip and maintain can be weakened. Grip tape is at its core an adhesive strip with small crystal grains on high in your footwear to grip and achieve traction on. If the crystal grains fall off excessively or get rubbed off, the grip will degrade till the grip tape is ineffective.
Find out how to Take away Your Outdated Grip Tape
In case your grip tape will get worn down from use or cleansing, take it off your board and substitute it with a brand new coat. To start out eradicating the grip tape, warmth it. This will likely sound counterintuitive, however because the binding agent in grip tape is adhesive, heating it would trigger it to weaken and detach far more simply.
Some methods which you could warmth your grip tape embrace utilizing a warmth gun, a hair dryer, or simply by leaving your skateboard within the solar for a brief interval. Some folks may also use a razor to peel up one finish of their grip tape to get the elimination course of began and completed pretty rapidly. Nevertheless, the heating course of helps guard towards unintentional scratches in your skateboard.
Relying on the kind of adhesive utilized in your particular kind of grip tape, it’s also possible to put one hand in your deck after which peel it up and off, or place your skateboard deck on the bottom, and put a foot on it to get higher leverage, and slowly peel it again and off.
There’ll typically be some leftover, cussed adhesive tape residue left in your skateboard deck after you peel up and take off your outdated grip tape. Fortunately, this leftover residue is just not an enormous deal. Making use of a brand new layer of grip tape over it would cowl up any outdated proof of earlier grip tape layers. For those who nonetheless wish to take away previous coats of grip tape residue, use a product referred to as Goo Gone. Goo Gone could be discovered and bought at most skateboard shops, {hardware} shops, dwelling enchancment shops, or on-line.
If Goo Gone isn’t an choice, it’s also possible to use WD-40 to take away tape residue. Even lighter fluid, alcohol, and acetone merchandise (like nail polish remover) will work since they’re sturdy chemical compounds that may break down adhesive bonds.
Bear in mind although, that utilizing these kind of merchandise might spoil the end in your board, so solely use them as a final resort, or take a look at on a small patch first. That is why most individuals go along with Goo Gone–it’s an authorised product that takes off the adhesive with a bit extra care and delicate contact than different choices.
As soon as the outdated grip tape is eliminated, and the adhesive residue cleaned off, it’s time to select a brand new layer of grip tape to revive your skateboard to optimum efficiency!
Selecting Your Grip Tape
In terms of selecting out your grip tape for the primary time, or on the subject of changing your grip tape, there are plenty of manufacturers to contemplate. Selecting your grip tape additionally is determined by what kind of skating you propose on doing. The preferred manufacturers of skateboarding grip tape embrace Jessup, Mob, Diamond, Grizzly, Madrid, and Viscous.
Individuals who have used these manufacturers have reported that Jessup model grip tape is usually the least coarse model of tape to purchase. The Diamond and Grizzly manufacturers are extra coarse on common than the Jessup manufacturers. Lastly, Mob model grip tape is normally reported as essentially the most coarse kind to buy and use.
Nurturing and preserving the usually ignored but essential layer of grip tape in your skateboard is a part of making certain a clean and managed journey. Common cleansing, strategic software of grip-enhancing options, and periodic alternative when put on and tear grow to be unrepairable are important practices in sustaining optimum efficiency. The grip tape not solely dictates your board’s responsiveness but in addition performs a pivotal position in your security on the streets or on the skatepark. By dedicating time and a focus to the maintenance of this seemingly easy part, riders can lengthen the lifespan of their grip tape, improve their general skateboarding expertise, and finally take pleasure in a extra dependable connection between board and rider. As riders commit to those care routines, they not solely protect their tools but in addition foster a deeper connection to the artwork and sport of skateboarding.
