BUYER BEWARE!!!!

During a visit to a local skate shop, while looking at some of the skate decks on the wall, we noticed that there were some decks that didn’t look right. For people who look at Hard Maple day in and day out it was pretty obvious that these decks were NOT what they were advertised to be.   

We purchased several decks that looked suspect and sent them out to an unbiased independent third party laboratory that specializes in testing wood species. Here’s what we found:

The results were as expected. For the price range that these skateboards are typically sold, it does not justify using a high-cost material like Hard Maple in its construction. However, I should mention that the advertising of the deck, and the labeling on the deck itself both clearly claim that the product is made of “Maple”. This deck was especially conspicuous because of the bold marketing accompaniments claiming it as Hard Maple.

Yet, the test results did not support the advertising that they indicated, the material was a combination of Birch and Soft Maple. According to the results, no hard rock maple.

Several other products that were tested:

	Creature
1 – Bottom Layer	Birch	Betula sp
2 –	Birch	Betula sp
3 –	Birch	Betula sp
4 –	Birch	Betula sp
5 –	Birch	Betula sp
6 –	Birch	Betula sp
7 – Top Layer	Birch	Betula sp

…and another one:

	Santa Cruz
1 – Bottom Layer	Birch	Betula sp
2 –	Birch	Betula sp
3 –	Birch	Betula sp
4 –	Birch	Betula sp
5 –	Birch	Betula sp
6 –	Birch	Betula sp
7 – Top Layer	Birch	Betula sp