A few days ago, I got a surprise e-mail from my buddy Danny Creadon over at Factory 13. Those e-mails from Danny are treasured documents here at the Everything Skateboarding offices. If you don't know, Factory 13 is a "microbrew", do-it-yourself skateboard company formerly of Chardon Township, Ohio (a suburb of Cleveland), but now based out of Los Angeles, California. Factory 13 does do a few "production"models... the quotes are there because even "production" models are fairly limited in quantity... but for the most part, Factory 13 specializes in handcrafting custom decks for extremely discriminating customers with very unique tastes.
Included in Danny's e-mail, as usual, were a few pictures of some of the custom boards that he's been making recently. We decided to share them with our readers:
This is a custom Chris Strople/Factory13 deck... possibly, for Chris himself? At first sight, I e-mailed Danny right back, and told him that this should really be a production deck. I mean, look at it! Tell me that you wouldn't order five of these, straightaway...!
Danny offers decks in a multitude of shapes, dimensions, and even concaves. But I think this might be one of the prettiest decks that I've seen come out of the Factory 13 lab yet.
Understatement of the century. Factory 13 is the fucking coolest...
One time, I was lucky enough to be able to go up to Chardon, and see Danny's workshop/office/laboratory for myself. It remains one of the most inspiring and adventrous journeys that I've ever made, in all of my years as a skateboarder. It's so rare to see a guy take the "do-it-yourself" ethic to that sort of extreme... he literally does everything, from building the presses, to shaping the molds, to pressing the wood, to shaping the decks, to doing the screen printing, and even through to programming the website and photographing the results... all by himself, with very little outside help whatsoever. The one outside influence that he did freely admit to me, was his love for the early '80s era Sims decks. The Sims influence is clearly seen here, in this very Brad Bowman-esque, heavily routed wide pig.
The '80s influence continues with another liberally routed, snubnose pig. It's very rare to see two of anything leave the shop, as each deck is built to order, and customers are encouraged to push their own boundaries of what's possible, as well as Danny's. For the most part, the only restraint that limits the production capabilities over at Factory 13, are the limits of the customers' own imaginations. And if you need help with your daydreaming, there's hundreds more of these sorts of pictures at the Factory 13 website to help you along.
If you're interested in learning more about Factory13, getting a custom quote, or just saying "hey" to Danny, surf on over to www.factory13.org, and check it out. Just make sure you've got some time on your hands, because you'll definitely be there for a while.
