Q: Can you tell us a littl about yourself?
A: My name is Cam Brickenden but most people call me brick, I'm 19 years old. I live in Toronto Ontario at the top of a hill. I currently work at Longboard Living and am interested in all types of riding, Downhill, freeriding, sliding, bowl/park, and street if need be. I am also currently riding for Dimitri Komarov Longboards (DKLB).
Q: How did the idea to start prototyping a board come about?
A: The prototyping process started sometime in the winter when I was talking to Dimitri Komarov and he mentioned he would make me a board. I got the first board some time in February I think. I think the idea for the prototype occured after i figured out some mistakes I had made when designing the board.
Photo: Here the 3/4" drop on the Brick Model is visible.
Q: How did you feel when you first found out youd be designing a board?
A: I was and still am pretty damn excited about prototyping. Not only because its something I've never done but also because in the end I will end up with the perfect board! Thats definitely something to be happy about. Plus its cool to have my name on a board and its fun to try new designs for it, also testing boards is really damn fun.
Q: What was it like working with Dmitri?
A: Dimitri is pretty fun to work with. He is pretty patient with me since I am constantly harrassing him on facebook about changing little things on the board everytime I ride it. Its been a bit tricky since he lives in montreal and I live in toronto so discussing intricate board designs on facebook chat can a bit of a problem. But we've managed to make it work fairly well. He's got a pretty good sense of humour too so that helps alot.
Q: How has the board changed since you started prototyping till now?
A: Well the board has changed quite a bit, in fact when its done i'd like to take a picture with all the prototypes. The first one had a larger wheel base and it was ten iniches wide, It also wasn't stiff enough for me. I ended up having issues with wheel bite too. I was getting bite on my 184 kahas and 70mm wheels. Which is an issue considering I wanted to be able to run 76 mm wheels. The next one, the one I have now, has masssssssive wheel wells and the wheel base is an inch shorter, so the platform is pretty small. I'm a tall guy so my tuck just fits on it. we also decided to taper it but then the back became too narrow. We also added a huge kick tail for fun, we've been discussing the new one lately which will have a smaller kick tail on the nose and tail and a slightly larger wb and a larger platform. Alsoafter prototyping a whole other board and figuring out the changes I've come to the third version of the board. it will be a little bit narrower.
Photo: Cam Brickenden lays down a pre-drift into a turn, while on a trip to Quebec.
Q: What do you want to see in the final version?
A: I want the final board to be a sweet speed board, but freeriding on it will not be out of the question at all. I want it to have is nice grip and nice pockets. Ideally I want to have two of them and have one for racing and one for freeriding.
Q: What have you learned from this experience?
A: I've learned that the more testing you can do the better. To test a board you have to ride alot of different stuff. You have to see how it handles when you tuck around corners, when you drift, slide/pendy, and all that stuff, you gotta ride a variety of terrain to accuratly test it. Reserving judgement till the board has been tested enough is also very important.
Cam's Review of the latest "Brick Model"
After prototyping a whole other board and figuring out the changes I've come to the third version of the board. I got the board on friday night and tested it on some pretty gnarly stuff in quebec, got it up to some decent speeds, did pendies and pre drifts with both toe and heel side as well was stand ups switch and regular. I gotta say this board is awesome. Here are some of the specs:
Width: 9 and 3/4 inches
Wheel base: 31 1/2 inches
platform length: 27 inches
total length: 39 1/2 inches
drop: 3/4 inches (he made the drop a bit sharper on this board than the last two)
Ive gotta say Dimitri really out did him self on this one. Even though I've only had for a weekend I put it through some tough stuff and it did what I wanted it to, I have no doubt that after riding that stuff I can ride just about anything on it. I'm also glad I can do some free ride on my down hill set up, its nice to have the versatility. I see this board having both free ride and Dh applications dependingon how you set it up.
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Posted On
May 25, 2010Posted By
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