RTCustoms Skateboard Snare x No Comply collaboration

If you have ever broken a skateboard after nailing a backside heelflip into a bluntside, you will know the emotional roller coaster from landing the awesome trick to having to buy a new deck with your rent money. And what do you do with the broken board? Throw it away?

Well next time, give it to the legends at No Comply Jewellery who use these useless, broken boards to make some super cool stuff like this bottle opener. I'm not sure how we got chatting originally but to cut a long story short, we decided to collaborate on a snare that incorporates the skateboards that they recycle as the focus, built into a fresh, modern snare that sounds as good as it looks. Simple! So over to No Comply to make a start on this project for us. Step 1. Source some broken decks

This is what a bunch of broken skateboard decks look like when they are glued together. So cool!

Step 2. Glue the decks together then slice up into thinner pieces then send down to us. (I am sure there is more to it than that but you get the idea)

We were super excited to receive the skateboard ply and see what we would be working with. It was more flexible that I had imagined and pretty brittle cut to this thickness, but ideal for our inlay that we had planned.

We carefully sliced the ply into the required size and got to work smoothing it out. As you can see, it is pretty rough at the moment. We needed to to take extra care to not snap any the pieces, but as you can see, some are shorter than others 🤨

Ollie forward a few steps and we have cut the inlay channel and fitted the broken deck ply flush into the maple shell which will become our centre section of the hybrid. The joins are super tight and the colours are already starting to look amazing! We sanded it to our preferred grit to ensure it was smooth enough for the finish then went to work on the inside.

Here at RTCustoms we would normally sand the inside of a snare shell to a reasonably high grit and apply a few layers of finish to get it lovely and smooth for all that resonance. This one needed a bit of extra magic, like getting that extra rotation in on your trick!

So we added a layer of the ply on the inside of the shell to complete the maple section of the hybrid. Usually you can't see the interior of a snare due to the coated head, but with the acrylic sections top and bottom, it will be perfect to show off these stripes. Look closely and you can see the rebates cut ready for the acrylic sections.

Once the acrylic pieces also had their rebate cut it was time for a test fit. To get the joins spot on takes a lot of checking and sanding fractions of a mm off until it is perfect but the extra effort is worth it when it turns out like this 😍

Now it is getting exciting! Once we got past the nerve-racking stage of drilling such a beautiful shell we started assembly and this drum was shouting out for some extra special touches. We went with the skateboard ply in the strainer, as gaskets on the vent and butt, and as backing to the custom made badge.

Also check out the different coloured washers on the tube lugs. We couldn't just go with the usual black on this build now could we!

This is it all finished up! RTCustoms x No Comply skateboard snare collaboration complete. The wood hoops were a great choice as they really frame the centre stripe and finish off the design nicely. They also add a bit of extra warmth to the sound complimenting the acrylic shell nicely.

As always, the build is finished off with Evans heads and Puresound wires. The clear batter head looks super cool and is the perfect choice for this drum. Thanks to No Comply Jewellery for supplying the skateboards, hope you enjoy your new snare! Time to box it up and head off to Scotland. I wonder how all these decks got broken ? #rtcustoms #customdrums #nocomplyjewellery