Most of the time, the choice of screws on a skateboard or a longboard is quite simple.
The question becomes a little more complicated when you have to equip a board with pads (risers) or special trucks.
What size screws for a skateboard?
On all complete and custom boards, a skate is equipped with 1" or 0.875" screws.
For a street skateboard, in all cases, you can mount the same size screw as long as it is not modified.
The 0.875" screws stick out just enough from truck to be able to attach the nut, it's"all in".
The 1" screws offer a small gap that allows you to anticipate a possible change (addition of pad, thicker plate).
What size screws for my longboard?
All the other sizes are useful to use trucks raised, and thus equipped with pads.
Here, to know the size of the screws needed, you need to know the thickness of the pad and the platter.
In general, on classic chainrings equipped with shockpads (1 mm), the 1.125" size is sufficient for a standard or drop-through assembly. We often opt for 1.25" in order to keep a small margin for the future or to fit 1/4" pads.
If you need to mount a 1/2" pad, a 1.5" screw pack will be required.
The fact that the screws protrude a little beyond the nuts has no particular impact.
Special assemblies
All sizes larger than 1.5" are to be reserved for special mounts.
Either you want to use special size pads (up to 1.5"), or you mount special trucks like Surfskate trucks for example.
In these cases, you will have to measure the total gap by adding the thickness of the board, truck and pad.
Round head or flat head?
In skateboard, we never use round heads. Indeed, we try to make sure that the screw heads sink into the deck and do not protrude so that we can rub our feet on the grip without any obstacle. Skate = flat head.
In longboard, depending on the board, we use screws with round heads. On Drop-Through mounts, round heads are mandatory. In addition, on a top-mount, round heads can provide extra grip at the foot, which is very useful for high speed.
Often you can't mount flat screws because the board isn't drilled the right way for the heads to sink into the wood.
On an already equipped board, take the same thing you already have.
On a new board, you have to check that the screw heads will disappear inside the board once tightened, otherwise they will stick out.
Phillips or Allen?
Screws with heads that can be tightened with a Phillips screwdriver are called Phillips.
Allen screws, on the other hand, require an Allen wrench.
There is no better technology that would be more suitable for skateboarding use. There are just as many screw packs of one as there are of the other.
If you already have the tools for Allen screws, you might as well continue with this kind of head.
Note that the tools offered on the site can mount any screw pack, regardless of the heads.