Self-Trained Skateboarder Transitions to Teacher

Some college students return home for the summer with plans to rest, relax and recuperate. Ben Masters spends his summers tending to his own small business, a skateboarding camp he runs out of his parents’ home.

Masters, home for the summer from his studies at the University of Maryland at College Park, teaches how to build skateboards, specifically longboards, in an intimate setting. 

“Normally it’s one kid at a time,” Masters said, though on the day this reporter went to observe two brothers, Elijah and Nathan, ages 9 and 6, were in attendance. Both boys got to design their boards themselves, and Masters helped them stencil, sand and paint each one.

“It’s normally one week at a time, but they can come back if they need more time,” Masters, 20, said.

Masters knows about needing more time. He first tried using a regular skateboard in elementary school, but, he says, “I never got very good at it.”

Then, he said, he visited family in southern California. On a trip to the beach, he said, “everybody was riding their longboards,” and his passion was reawakened.

“I found out you can build [a longboard] yourself,” he said, so when his 13th birthday came around the next year, he asked for, and received, all the materials needed to build a longboard: a plank of wood for the top of the board, called the deck; four wheels, two trucks (the mechanism which holds the wheels in place and is then attached to the board), and the necessary tools.

“I built this really ugly board,” he said, but over time and as his skills have improved, he’s turned his hobby into a two-pronged business. On the one hand, he builds longboards and sells them privately or over the internet, taking orders via his email address at bmasters@terpmail.umd.edu. 

“I’ve built 50 or 60 now, and I have eight in my room waiting to sell,” he said.

The other side of the business is the camp where he teaches young kids to make their own longboards. His mother Karen, who owns Chatham Speech and Language Associates, lets Ben run the camp out of the family's Millburn home.

“Everything to make the board ride-able, you have to buy,” Masters said, and it all comes included in the fee he charges for the camp.

The difference between a longboard and a regular skateboard is in its design and its utility. A skateboard is a little shorter with smaller wheels and is generally used to do tricks on. A longboard has larger wheels and is, as the name implies, a little longer than a regular skateboard, and Masters said is usually used for transportation. 

Those who come to Masters usually know how to skate, but if they need lessons Masters teaches that, too. Mostly, though he teaches kids how to build their own longboards. This includes cutting and sanding the wood—“the smoother the wood is when it starts, the nicer it’ll look at the end,” Masters said—stenciling artwork, adding grip tape to the boards, painting the boards and attaching the trucks and wheels. He also uses an additive in the paint to make it slip-proof.

The camp costs between $225 and $350, depending on the quality of components used.