The Secret Joy of Mastering a Tech Deck (Yep, Even the Most Basic Ones)
If you can master a Tech Deck, you’ll never be without a fingerboard. Seriously. You can find them at virtually ANY big box store, so if you forget your board at home you can just stop by Target and grab a new one.
One thing that’s always fascinated (and honestly frustrated) me about fingerboarding is the split between pro gear and bare-bones, basic, stock setups. On one side, you’ve got the high-end, beautifully crafted decks that feel amazing and last forever. And on the other… a Tech Deck. A cheap little piece of plastic that shouldn’t be good, but somehow still is.
And here’s the weird part:
Sometimes I genuinely get more satisfaction landing a clean trick on a crappy Tech Deck setup than I do on a full-blown pro board. Maybe that’s just me, but there’s something raw and fun about ripping open a $3 blister pack and instantly trying to land a kickflip.
Now, let’s be real—stock Tech Deck geometry does not agree with me. The kicks are too long, the shape fights me, and half the time it feels like I’m using a fingerboard designed by someone who’s never actually fingerboarded.
But that’s where the fun starts:
Tech Decks are insanely mod-friendly.
You can sand the shape.
You can heat the kicks and bend them.
You can shave off material and basically sculpt the whole thing into whatever you want. I wish you could move the wheelbase, but the stuff you can modify is honestly enough to make a Tech Deck feel shockingly good. If you’ve never taken one and reshaped it to your exact liking, you’re missing out. It’s like customizing your own skateboard, but mini. Something about that DIY process makes the finished deck feel special in a way no off-the-shelf pro board ever will.
When I started doing R&D for my own fingerboard shape, a huge part of that process was literally just reshaping Tech Decks—experimenting with kicks, angles, silhouettes, and proportions. That’s how I discovered that I love short tails and long noses. Tech Decks were like my cheap, disposable testing ground. And look, I’m not a fan of Tech Deck as a company. They’ve got some questionable practices I’m not unpacking here—but using a raw Tech Deck? Landing clean tricks on something that shouldn’t perform well?
That hits different.
Whether you mod one or use it fresh out of the package, there’s something special about getting good with the bare minimum. It makes you appreciate every trick more. It teaches technique and control. And it reminds you what fingerboarding really is:
Creativity. Play. Flow. And making the most out of whatever’s in front of you.
So if you haven’t done it yet—grab a Tech Deck, mod one to perfection, or just see what you can do with it raw. It might surprise you how much fun a “crappy” setup can be.
for more info, see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zidyWAlKpQM&t=170s
