Long before AI was a problem
People were making up pretty random stuff to try and sell skate bearings.
Behind closed doors we refer to this as nano-psychedelic AI bullsh*t.
Fact is, most skate bearings in the world come out of the same few factories in China - not Bones Swiss, obviously.
You can tweak the spec, but a bearings a bearing. The fastest bearing is a new bearing. The slowest is a dirty, rusty one like in the main image above.
We've always tried to educate about this with our pages:
And now we've finally managed to get Rich in front of a camera to try and condense all that info down into the very basics that make a bearing spin faster and last longer:
And for your amusement, here are a few of our favourite lines from some overzealous (no pun intended) marketeers to look out for:
Someone tell NASA!
(It's the same grease from the same factory as everyone else's)
You're purposefully lowering tolerances, allowing the bearing to wobble side-to-side whilst carving, and expecting that to help them last longer..?
Sounds great - until you shove it into an imperfectly formed wheel core made of plastic mounted on bent cast trucks and roll it over some dodgy British asphalt.
For most of us, dust, dirt and water getting into the bearing is what's going to kill them and is inescapable even if you only skate on sunny days.
The best way to stop that is with a labyrinth shield:
That extra groove for the shield to sit in makes it that much harder for anything to get in. Voila, a bearing that will last significantly longer without needing any maintenance.
The other option is to simply not care at all, and go skate. You may get away with this for quite some time, but the final consequence can be pretty dodgy - no prizes for guessing how I know!
Four days into skating 1,000 miles and this resulted in a pretty sketchy dismount somewhere near Fort William.
So please, do as I say, not as I do. Look after your bearings, or treat yourself to some that don't need as much looking after.
Until next time,
Matt @ Vandem
Young Matt post bearing explosion.
I don't remember feeling that upset at the time - apparently I was.
Or perhaps that was the chafing.
New bearing in, onwards and upwards...