Before I was selling tire sealant, I was making aluminum protection plates. The Float Life's plastic plates got me thinking about a metal version, and I got in touch with Jeff McCosker to talk about the direction I had in mind before going ahead. It was a small community, and the people making accessories were usually people we knew from riding.

My first plates covered only the bottom of the board. Riding on aluminum taught me two things a workbench wouldn't have: it had a sticky feel against the ground, and it didn't last the way I wanted.

One early plate was personal enough to carry my signature. In October 2017 I posted a custom grind plate engraved with my winged-rider artwork and thanked Justin Lewis for making it. I could hardly wait to bolt it on. The drawing and signature are still clear in the photograph.

I moved to stainless steel and wanted the plate to reach beyond the flat bottom, up toward the rails. On the finished part that change is a short bent edge.

Getting that small bend right in stainless was hard. The edge had to follow the shape I had drawn, and it turned into one of the most stubborn details of the whole project.

Southern Manufacturing in Miami did the metal cutting and welding. I supplied the design and specifications.

Flight Guards came from a partnership with Flight Fins. As I remember it, they were essentially the same plates with different branding, made available through that relationship. Flight Fins had its own products and its own following; this was one offering we worked on together.

In April 2019 I joined The Voice of Onewheel for an episode announcing the collaboration. By then, a flat aluminum plate had become a stainless steel product with a partner behind it.

The tail-dragging I did while testing the plates led to Draggin Tail.