I don’t have much time maintaining this website anymore because of career change. I spend all of my skateboard time on LDP and this website being mainly about “street skating” I don’t have much material anyway.
This blog is not completly dead though, I might revive it next year after I move somewhere else but until then, it will be sleeping gently, entering hibernation.
François
If you have read some other post on my blog you know that my main problem is that I can’t really ollie. I can kind of ollie, stationary, or over a very very small twig. Most people learn the ollie pretty quickly, or without major problem. I don’t, it has been a long struggle and it is definitely not finished.
I watched millions of videos on Youtube, tried different trucks, wheels, decks, shoes. Practiced for hours on fake grass, on concrete, hanging to a gate. With different positions, the back foot either in the tail pocket or nearly hanging at the end of the skateboard. Same for the front foot. I tilted my balance in each and every directions. I tried to slide my front foot higher, lower, harder, softer, earlier, later.
And this is one of my best attempt:
Yeah, I lifted the four wheels, but it’s not really an ollie. My front foot slide is done with the sole of my shoe and so my board doesn’t really level and my back foot keeps hovering it. My back wheels don’t lift high enough to land farther than where the front wheels lifted from (so not really a “jump” as I wouldn’t even be able to ollie over a line). It looks ugly and awkward and as my back foot is not in contact with the board, I don’t have much control and usually land with my feet in wrong places.
Continue reading “The Ollie Challenge: Rebuilding Muscle Memory”
The first time I used a spacer on one of my skateboards was after I received my pair of Surf Rodz TKP. They provide four spacers as well as eight bearing with their set of trucks. I usually wouldn’t have used them but as there was no “speed rings” on the trucks I though they must have been designed to be used with spacers. As I felt that Surf Rodz know what they are doing I used them. And now I’m using spacers on each of my wheels, here is why.
Bearing spacers are simply little metal tubes that goes on the axles, between the two bearings. They exist in different sizes, but most are 8mm long on street wheels and 10mm long on longboard wheels. They have a very simple function: they prevent the bearing from being squeezed when the nut is tightened. If they are correctly sized, they allow the bearing to sit parallel one to another.
The best thing about it, in my opinion is that it is way easier to install wheels on my trucks. With no spacer, I’ll have to put the wheel and tighten the nut until the wheels doesn’t have enough space to wiggle but not too tight or the bearing won’t roll anymore. Sometime a wheel won’t be tight enough and then it will slide from side to side as you roll, or sometime it will be too tight and the wheel will be slowed down… With bearing spacers I don’t have to think, I put the wheel, tighten the nut and then It’s down. The wheel doesn’t wiggle at all and the bearing is rolling freely.
Continue reading “Bearing Spacers: Why I’m using them and why you should too.”
I spent days setting up this blog but for some good reasons. First I wanted to be independent and maintain control of my data, I had too many problems with services stopping and company closing. But I also wanted my blog to be SEO friendly and the fastest possible so I needed to have the most control possible on the software used to be able to tweak it like I want.
So instead of renting a web hosting service or to pay for a hosted blog I decided to use a VPS (virtual private server) and do everything on my own.
As I stated in previous posts, in my neighborhood the asphalt is really rough and like to use really soft wheels. Until now I was using cruiser wheels that worked well but where too big (60mm) and of an inadequate shape. Plus they are quite heavy, which doesn’t help with my ollies.
So i looked for wheels that were at the same time soft, small enough and preferably cheap. I know Bones makes some pretty nice old school wheels for rough terrain wisely called Rough Rider but I couldn’t find them at a good price. But I tried something different, I found wheels originally made for quad rollers that were only 58mm big and with a soft durometer (78a). As they were pretty cheap (around 15€ a set) I bought them, I dont risk much.
As you can see on the picture bellow, they look more like regular skateboard wheels than the Penny style wheels I used until now.
When I pressed this deck from maple veneer I had some problem with cross layers drinking a lot of glue and then swelling. I was scared that it would delaminate and I realized when I cut the deck that it did in some spots.
So I put some glue were it had delaminated and pressed it again, and it looked fixed for a while. But
with the heat and the usual abuse that a skateboard deck has to go trough some more delimitation showed up. I was not worried munch and continued using it. But last time I went skating, I landed hard with my foot on the nose while practicing ollies and I heard a crack…
I think I’m going to buy a deck instead of building it this time, industrial deck are lighter because they can apply more pressure than I do and so use less glue. But I still have board building projects like a LDP board and an old school pool deck.
Hello and welcome to my blog.
This is the first post and it is mostly there to advice you to read the About Me page so you know better about me and my blog.
See you soon !
