#aussie scotts

I know a guy who is a derby referee. He is a big dude. He is into tabletop games and hosts a podcast. When the snow started to fly up here in Calgary, he got me to swap his Royals onto his outdoor boots. You see, he skates to work and back when the weather permits. About 22 km round trip. Pretty cool.

Semi custom Bont Patriots with Snyder Royals. In behind are "The most comfortable things I have ever put on my feet" Custom Riedell 265s. They had a set of Rivals at the time. 

Royals mounted up. Those are my favourite wheels on there. My Aussie Scott 96A Super Enforcers. They look pretty small on these skates.

For comparison. My derby skates, same size wheel. 

A number of weeks ago, I received a package. Inside that package were these:

A set of brand new, just released Bont FXX wheels with a durometer rating of 93A and a set of Bont 167 bearings. I was VERY excited. I had heard they were releasing an aluminum hubbed wheel a while ago, and once I saw the design I knew it would be a good one. 

Utilising a large diameter hub with small spokes is a very effective way to get weight down. A "micro" bearing is another good way to get weight savings. A thin layer of good urethane will stick well and also promote good roll. The Bont FXX has all of these features.

So how light are they?

That's WITH a bearing. These are the lightest aluminum hubbed wheels available. they are lighter with a bearing than the next lightest wheels are without. See how they compare to my favourite wheels. Aussie Scotts:

WOW. 65gr. per wheel. What does that translate to on my skates?

255 gr. PER SKATE! That is more than half a pound of weight off each foot. Unreal.

What does this mean if you are a rink skater? Not much. You maybe don't get tired as quickly during session. As an athlete who competes in roller derby as a jammer on a regular basis, this is a big deal. My preferred wheels are heavy. That never used to bother me as I realised they maintained their speed better once they were rolling. Great. That means it's easier to keep speed. As my skill level increases, I play more skilled opponents. I need to change my game up. This means speed changes, direction changes. Techniques which require more foot movement. More foot movement means more possibility for fatigue. Removing half a pound of mass off my feet is a huge deal, especially if I can keep all the benefits of my preferred wheels.

Did I notice a difference when I started skating on these? Hell yes. I needed to make immediate changes to my technique to account for the drastically reduced weight. They were good changes. I felt much faster and much quicker during acceleration. In sport, feeling faster and quicker is just as important as being faster and quicker.

These wheels are lighter than my preferred wheels, but they are also narrower. I have done ALL of my competitive skating in the last two years on full width 44mm wheels. 44mm wheels have a larger contact patch and a wide lip. The wide lip allowed me to grip even without optimal foot position. Bigger, harder pushes were the norm with these wide wheels. The Bont FXX wheels did not work with this style of skating. I need to be more aware of where I'm pushing as well as the position of my feet while striding. I had a couple of falls first time out on these until I changed a couple of things about my skating. I believe I'm a little cleaner now. A little tighter.

How do they grip? Amazingly well on every surface I have skated them on. The gym my league practices on. The small school gym my MRDA team practices on. The gym the juniors practice on in the 70 yr old building downtown. The sport floor we practiced on twice. The freshly coated floor the travel team uses. The sport court in Futsal arena that was used for the Mens Roller Derby World Cup on March 13-16 2014. 

These are really great wheels.

I was able to get to the local rink, Lloyd's Recreation, a few weeks ago to roll some wheels and compare them. I've been meaning to do this since Rollercon, but I've apparently been busy.

Here are the wheels I rolled:

Radar Prestos 95A, Vanilla Backspin Deluxe 95A, Aussie Scott Super Enforcers 96A and Rollerbones Turbos 97A. 

For those who are curious, The Scotts have my usual no name industrial bearings in them. I do not remember when they last were cleaned. The Prestos got my mixed set of Fafnirs and others, the Vanillas ended up with my other set of Fafnir's and the RBT's shared bearings with the Vanillas. 

Here's how they compare physically:

Radar Prestos - 59.3mm X 37.6mm. I wanted to try a shorter wheel. They are available in the standard 61-62mm height. Two piece plastic hub that seems fairly stiff. 

Vanilla Backspins - 61.5mm X 41.5mm. Pretty standard height with a slightly narrower profile than I'm used to. Aluminum hub, which I like.

Rollerbones Turbos - 61.8mm X 37.6mm. Standard height, narrower than I normally roll. They have a really neat spiral shaped aluminum hub. 

Aussie Scotts - 62.2mm X 45.4mm. This is what I'm used to. Wide and tall. The only 2 piece wheel in this review. 

Ok, I have about 4 hours on these so far. Tried them out at the local rink, Lloyd's Recreation last Wednesday. I was very surprised by the weight of them. They are VERY light. First impressions were that I had to push very hard to get them to do anything, but they seemed very precise. Weird, but ANY movement when I first put them on the floor resulted in a change in direction. I'm sure this is due to the direct connection the plate has with the trucks. It took a few laps to find my balance point to allow me to glide straight, once I had that figured out, I decided to get some speed. 

They felt very odd at first, the faster I went, the more they would wobble, but they were very easy to adjust to that wobble. It eventually went away and I tried to get them to turn. Turning sharp required so much effort that I needed to take them off after 15 minutes of skating. My feet hurt that much. I had installed the softest butterfly cushions included in the box. The light blue ones. Hmm. Some fix would be required if I were to skate these for real.

Lacing on my derby skates I returned to the floor. Wow. My short forward Advantage plates with all yellow SG supers on full loose felt sluggish and slow to react.

I performed some modifications to the yellow butterfly cushions and installed them.

I skated about 2 hours at a derby practice on Monday night. Huge difference in how they act now. VERY easy to turn, yet very stable. Nearly no foot pain. Very nimble. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked them. They skate like a very precise DA45. Every tiny movement you make is immediately noticeable.  It was mentioned to me that the power transfer on these is better than a conventional plate. I will say that they definitely feel more solid than a conventional plate. Skating laps was very easy and energy did not feel wasted at all.

I let another skater try them and the first thing she mentioned was the weight. What do they weigh exactly? Derby ready?

This is very light for a derby ready skate. The boots pictured are a size 7. The wheels pictured are Roll Line Heliums. I don't normally run a narrow wheel, but I wanted my Bont/Advantage combo ready to skate if these weren't working for me. The Arius uses 8mm bearings, my Advantage use 7mm. 

Yes, they are very far forward. I like them like that.

The toe stops I had on did not work very well. The toe stop boss is nearly vertical and does not allow a standard toe stop to work where I like it, Up at the very top. You can see the angle here is no good for toe stop running. This issue was rectified by installing a set of the Bionic toe stops with the angle on them. They are about 35 gr. heavier than the toe stops pictured. Not a deal breaker. 

I really like this plate. I do not like the lack of adjustability with the cushions and action. I will need to work on it some more to get them exactly right for me. I will likely go stiffer or la bit less action in the front. I have yet to try my Aussie Scotts on these but I will put them on eventually. 

In this post, I will give my opinion on why these 4 sets of wheels grip and roll the way that they do. Um, I actually talk mostly about hubs. The main difference between these wheels is the design of the hubs.  The disparity between the hubs is why I think they exhibited what I consider to be drastically different characteristics while skating.

Aussie Scotts

Scott Corey, the maker of Aussie Scott wheels uses very good urethane for his wheels.  It grips well and doesn't seem to wear out very quickly at all.  I've owned the set of 96A Super Enforcers used in this test for almost 18 months and they still have most of their original grooves.  The same can be said for my 90A and 85A Enforcers which have seen up to  5 derby practices a week during this time frame.  The hubs are CNC machined one at a time and they are modelled after the old Fanjet hubs from days gone by.  He has changed the design somewhat to fix some of the issues that the originals have.  The aluminum hub is very rigid and allows for a very hard push and lots of floor feedback.

This is an Enforcer hub.  The tire is held on by the knurling and a snap ring. The back side of the tire is made up of quite a bit of urethane, which counts for most of the weight difference on these wheels (visible in the next photo). More info about Aussie Scott wheels can be found here:

www.coreyskates.com

Jukes and Skins

I was pretty impressed with the urethane on the Atom wheels.  I know why these are so popular.  Good grip with a lightweight plastic hub.  But I have a theory about that plastic hub.  Most Atom wheels use the same 6 spoke hub design.  Arranged in pairs, they act more like a 3 spoke. Check out the picture.  See what I mean?  I believe this hub design accounts for the rapid loss of speed and the lack of floor feedback while striding.  Having the wider spaces in between the three pairs of spokes seems like it would allow some amount of deformation when a skaters weight is on them.  The outer hub and urethane will flatten out as it's rolling on the floor.  To test this theory, I tried squeezing the backside of the wheels with my thumbs, a small amount of deformation was detected. The Jukes lost speed quicker than the Skins and I would imagine that this was due to the Jukes smaller diameter.  A thinner layer of urethane over the hub allowing for a bit more deformation while rolling. The Skins and Jukes both have a plastic "hub cap" on the outside of the wheel that the graphics go on. This would likely stiffen the hubs up a bit, but I would need to roll an open hubbed wheel like the Atom Omega or the Atom Snap back to back with the Skins or Jukes to see.  More info on Atom wheels can be found here:

http://www.atomwheels.com/

Radar Bullet

As with the Atom wheels, I was quite impressed with the urethane on the Bullets.  It actually gripped better than the Atom Wheels and the Scotts.  They had never been rolled before I put them on and required a bit of hard hockey stopping to get them so they would grip at all.  The Bullets utilise a 12 spoke hub design more akin to the spokes on a bike wheel.  I believe this is why they had a better roll and feel than the Atom wheels.  Better support all the way around the hub.  They did not have nearly the floor feedback of the Scotts, but it was better than the Skins and Jukes. The Bullets felt about the same weight as the Jukes.  More info on Radar Bullets can be found here:

Didn't have to wait that long, did you?

Ok.  I started the evening on the Scotts as they are my go to wheel for Lloyd's.  I haven't been there for a couple months so I wanted to use something familiar to get used to the floor.  About 10 laps and it was time to change.

First up, the Atom Lanzini Skins.  First thing I noticed is that these wheels are a fair bit lighter than the Scotts.  They have a plastic hub and they are 6mm narrower. Second thing I noticed is they had a soft ride. Not a lot of floor feedback, which was actually quite nice. The softness also translated into a harder push to get that feedback I was looking for while accelerating, and although they did allow me to accelerate slightly quicker than I'm used to, I really had to work to maintain speed. The Skins did have the perfect amount of grip on the floor, I could push to my heart's content without losing traction, but hockey stop and powerslide on demand. Nice.  This particular set of Skins does suffer from my biggest wheel pet peeve. They are way out of round.  Hmm, instead of out of round, I suspect the rolling surface of the wheel is not concentric to the bearing bore.  It felt like I was rolling over train tracks. Nothing a trip to the lathe wouldn't fix, but I really don't think I need to machine brand new wheels.

Next up, Atom Jukes.  This set is much better as far as concentricity goes.  Not perfect, but pretty darn close. These wheels get up to speed quickly, being 59mm tall, but man did I ever have to work to maintain speed. This wheel is very slow.  Any gain in acceleration you may get is kind of pointless if you need to work really hard to maintain.  They have good grip, and I was able to push without losing traction, and hockey stop and powerslide at will.  The short wheel also had me feeling more balanced?  I had wondered about that and was pleasantly surprised. Oh, these wheels are also very light.

Radar Bullets.  Very smooth wheel.  Had better free roll (when not striding) than the Skins and Jukes.  They had very good concentricity with just a bit of bumpy feel.  I'm pretty particular about this and I think it would go unnoticed by most skaters.  These wheels gripped better than the Jukes and Skins.  I could still hockey stop, but more effort was required.  I could get a great push, but the lack of lip and seemingly larger radius on the outside edge of the wheel felt really strange while crossing over. Good acceleration, and that same feeling of balance that the Jukes exhibited.  This wheel seemed to be the lightest of the 3.

I get pretty intense when I start talking about gear.  What I like, mostly what I don't like.  I have bought and sold many wheels since I started skating.  Over 25 different sets I think.  I recently had a discussion about some wheels and decided to do a review on some.  The local shop here in Calgary, Nerd Skates, has a wheel library.  

http://www.nerdskates.com/

What's a wheel library?  Well, it's a great big box of wheels that they let you try out before you decide to buy them.  I picked 3 sets of wheels I'd never tried before and compared them to my favourite wheels.  

I have done a few blog posts on wheels before.  Read them first.  I'm not going to rehash what I typed out before.

Anyway:

Here they all are.  From the top left working in derby direction (ccw): Radar Bullets, Atom Jukes, Atom Lanzini Skins, and my Aussie Scott Super Enforcers.  The Bullets and Jukes are both 59mm tall.  The Skins and Scotts are 62-63mm. All but the Scotts have plastic hubs.  All but the Scotts are the "standard derby width" of 38mm.  The Scotts are 96A and the rest are 95A. 

I didn't have 4 sets of the same bearings, so I used what I had.  The Bullets got Cube Pink 7mm, that were only rolled maybe 20 hours.  The Jukes got my set of no ABEC rating 18 month old commercial bearings that were just cleaned and oiled on the weekend.  The Skins got a set of Fafnir bearings that I also cleaned and oiled on the weekend.  I used them in a game on Saturday and they are really smooth.  The Scott's have my other set of commercial bearings that I cleaned and oiled two months ago before our league's annual tournament.

Here's where I roll when I'm not at a derby thing:

This is Lloyds Recreation. It is a great rink.  Maple rotunda floor and they re-coat it every spring.  Beautiful floor. Grippy.

Wheels.

Aussie Scott Enforcers

Aussie Scott Super Enforcers

These are my preferred wheel.  Custom CNC machined hubs and poured to order tires that are removable.  Awesome grip and roll.  I have a set of Enforcers with 85A tires for bad floors and a set of Super Enforcers with 96A tires for good floors.  You know what?  Scott Corey's urethane is SO good, they almost roll the same. I tried the 85's on a super sticky floor at a bout on the 2nd of July.  I thought they rolled great.  Put the 96's on after warm up and low and behold, same grip bit better roll, but I could REALLY feel the floor feedback.

I recommend these wheels to anyone who likes awesome wheels.  Order them from here:

http://www.coreyskates.com/