@Woodshop yeah, memories can be a strange thing sometimes.
Anyway. Thanks to the pals who helped me with these old stuffs.
Just curious...2 days ago I assembled a set-up and it was the first time I used a blade to cut the griptaoe around the board. Back in the days my homies and I just scratched the outline with an hard tool (or against something made of concrete) until the grip's outline naturaly break, and we just had to pull on and that was finished. I guess we went that way because the owner of our favorite skateshop did it like that, don't remember exactly.
Anyone else use/used this method?
We used to use a big raw file to do the edges in one place, but compared to just running the side of a screwdriver round and then a razor blade, everything else just seems time consuming and redundant nowdays.
Out at skateparks when people had to set up boards, I recall one guy just using the edge of his baseplate to hack at his grip, which worked for all the older stuff like Jessup but would give him the biggest problems when grip got a lot thicker and needed a blade to actually cut it.
Like a lot of others, I still ride only the normal Jessup and that still works with any method or doing the edge with almost anything, but most other brands nowdays are thicker and need something sharp to cut through it.
Also gripping twenty or more boards in a day at peak skate shop hours (2005 or so) had to be quick and precise, so I know we got really good at just getting the grip on and not even doing the screwdriver line round it, just blade it off and grip scrap to clean up the edge.
We often would have friendly arguments about where the grip should come to, some saying it should go right over the edge and others saying you should always see the top layer of wood on the board, so it was interesting to see the different jobs by different people from the same place. Regular customers would come back in and you knew who gripped the board by how much top ply or completely covering the edge it was.
I liked to always see top ply stains on my boards.