#nerd skates

I first saw this plate in Armstrong, British Columbia. It was being worn by a skater named Blow-Bye. Her boyfriend, Dan Miller had designed and made it. I was intrigued by the design and saw it again in April of 2012 being worn by Quadzilla, at Flat Track Fever, a tournament my league hosts yearly. Production models were released this summer, and I saw a few skaters on them at Rollercon.

I got my pair last week. From my favourite skate shop, Nerd Skates.

Awesome packaging. A bit fancy. They did supply all the required tools to service the plates, which is good. A couple allen keys is all that is needed.

Axis pin (the big guy). This attaches the truck to the plate 

Axis pin sleeves (the two wide black bits with the holes). These are bushings to allow the truck to swing freely

Butterfly cushion (the green bit) 

Stabilization pins (the little screws).These lock the butterfly cushion in place.

The plate is manufactured out of 6000 series aluminum. The prototypes were 7000 series. There have been some minor design changes which likely allowed the use of the more cost effective alloy.

They are light. I haven't weighed them, but I will. 

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.