When Dave is not in the streets, skating contests or traveling he's in his backyard building something. Turning old broken skateboards into rings, cutting boards, shelves, and just about anything he or someone else thinks up. If your going to try and get into something like this, a great deal of patients and problem solving is a definite must.
It was a pleasure to spend a few days with Dave seeing the process behind the art pieces he creates from broken skateboards. It’s always a bummer when a board breaks, especially on the first day. Why not turn it into a piece of art you can keep forever.
W: Tips for someone who wants to get into repurposing skateboards?
D: Number one, when you finish a piece, I mean it takes so long, all the detail put in to an actual product. Don’t just go get a can of spray paint or clear coat and try to epoxy it with that. Go find something thats a really amazing thick coat were you can do multiple layers and it's more resistant to water and stuff like that. Number two. If your going to be making pieces look in your local hardware store for tight bond its a glue, make sure you get something water resistant if you want something like that. Those are my tips.
W: Did you have much experience working with wood prior to starting this?
D: Prior to Shapethree I had no woodworking background, kinda building off of what I have done and what I see. All my family are construction and woodworkers so I kinda always got that background of wanting to build something new and watching a project come about. But yeah I’m kinda just learning off what I have done.
W: Whats your favorite thing you have built so far?
D: One of my favorite builds was restructuring a wine barrel and turning it into a side table. It’s got about 60 cuts of skateboards in it, and after two weeks of working on it. Its just nice to sit down, enjoy a meal and see a full piece put together and have it in the house and put it to use.
"Its just nice to, sit down enjoy a meal and see a full piece put together and have it in the house and put it to use."
W: You give back some of the profit to help build stuff in your hometown right?
D: Yeah so every piece that I do, I take a percentage, put it away and each year we do an annual build and a contest. It's hard to ask all the friends like yearly, can you donate to this and I don’t want to do that. So this year were going to do a giant BBQ and have a best trick contest. Basically it started out a friend was like, "Hey do you want to do something at Hadley, lets build something." I was like, lets do it, I would be so hyped you know! It’s actually going to be 20 years next year that the park has been there, and over the past 5 years we’ve been building, new pieces every year and just blossom. It's been so fun getting everyone together.
W: How is it juggling skating and everything else you do with ShapeThree?
D: Living in a place that only rains you know twice a month, I try to skate every day that I possibly can, and when I’m too sore thats my time for building projects. So it works out pretty nicely, skate till I can’t move then I get busy working on new projects.
Thanks for reading!
Up to the date of this post Dave has raised about $4,000 towards building things to skate!
@shapethree
@davebachinsky
www.shapethree.com