FlatFace puts the G4 in front of a camera with James O'Neill

It is brand footage, posted from the FlatFace channel under Schneider's name, and the description underneath it is the shop's standard line: flatfacefingerboards.com, worldwide shipping, "all the best products on the scene since 2003." No spec rundown, no voiceover walking through the shape.

That makes it a particular kind of release note. A deck video with one rider's name in the title is a claim that the shape holds up under someone who can make it look easy, and it asks you to read the board through the riding rather than through numbers.

So watch for the things footage can actually tell you:

• How the nose and tail come back to the surface after a pop, which says more about the kick angle than a degree figure would
• How the board sits in a manual, which is concave and wheelbase doing their work
• How it leaves a ledge — whether it slides clean off wax or hangs up
• How the edges look by the end of the clip, since primo landings wear the sides and ledge slides take the bottom graphic

The clip and its description still carry no widths, ply count, price or colorways. FlatFace's product pages have since filled in most of that.

The listings date the G4 mold to around 2005 and say Schneider had a metal mold made to fit inside his original bondo mold, so the new decks stay "completely true to the original shape." They describe a curvy medium kick height and a low-medium flowy concave, carry FlatFace's deck shape guide with the G4's profile set beside the G15 and G16, and announce sizes of the original 26mm plus 29, 31 and 34mm.

The decks themselves have come in at other widths. In September FlatFace listed a 29.8mm G4 in hand-cut split ply, which was gone from the site by October 10. On October 9 it listed six G4 decks with Real Wear graphics, five at 32.7mm and one at 33.6mm, at $52 and $60; all six were in stock when we checked on October 10. They are on FlatFace's G4 Deck page. Ply count and veneer species are still unpublished.

The naming question is narrower now, but still open: the listings call this the G4 deck mold, FlatFace also sells G4 bearing wheels, and nothing FlatFace has published says whether the two share anything beyond the name.

FlatFace has been running out of Dracut, Massachusetts since 2003, started by Schneider with grip tape and grown into decks and the G-series bearing wheels. The shop was the first US distributor of Blackriver ramps, keeps a museum of historic gear, and hosts the FlatFace Rendezvous at the shop twice a year.

That history is the reason a plain rider clip works as a release move. A brand with its own museum page and twenty-plus years of catalog behind it doesn't need to explain what a deck is; it needs to show you that this particular one gets ridden well. The footage did the arguing, and the spec sheet followed within weeks.

FlatFace G4 Decks - James O'Neill is on YouTube, posted by MikeSchneider. Decks and the rest of the line are sold direct through flatfacefingerboards.com; FlatFace gear also turns up on the Kingpin marketplace.