has anyone (*cough*buttfart?*cough*) taken note of what bonding method for plys each presser uses? I feel like epoxy being a fairly hard resin would completely change the feel of the wood, as opposed to other glues that don’t harden as much? just a shower thought. I feel like I once heard PS say he hates epoxy? can’t remember
Sorry I've been doing non skate-nerd things more often lately and haven't checked the thread in a minute.
Resin is pretty much only a china thing as far as I'm aware, but it's more or less the standard there. I've heard it's really difficult to use in places that have actual environmental laws because the chemicals involved are kind of nasty, but that's just skate shop gossip and I have no real sources to back it up. Resin decks definitely feel different, they're stiffer and have a more hollow "thud" sound as opposed to the "crack" of a good cold press deck. They also claim to be lighter but feel heavier underfoot to me, although I've never actually weighed any of my decks (just every single truck I own component by component, I swear I'm not mentally ill guys) so I don't know if thats actually the case. I think that part of the "all chinese wood is bad" shit is more "chinese wood feels different than what I'm used to". That's not to say that there aren't a metric fuckton of dogshit chinese blanks out there, just that they're not all bad. Anyways, resin construction is standard enough that NHS has decided to make "cold pressed... ya know.. with actual glue...like everyone else has been doing for the last 4 decades" a marketing bullet point with some recent creature decks.
So, in summary - if your deck isn't chinese made then it's probably glue. If it is chinese, it's probably resin. There's advantages and disadvantages to both construction methods, but personally I rarely skate a deck long enough for the enhanced durability of a resin deck to actually come into play so I mostly stick with good old cold pressed maple from the land of the free and the home of the brave, Mexico.
Also I'd like to add that I recently got a Plan B deck from a UK shop and it's HLC, so I guess that's who they're using for their Euro decks. It's pretty good wood, quite stiff but not uncomfortably so and the shape is pretty good (although I definitely prefer the PS stix plan B shapes since unlike the graphics they're pretty fucking great). I've only ever skated one HLC deck prior to this, a Sour 8.5 that I gave up on fairly quickly because it was too big for me, so I'm curious to see how this one holds up over time.