Bones Bearings Skateboards at Warehouse Skateboards

Bones Bearings Skateboards

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Bones Bearings Skateboard Bearings

Bones Bearings Skateboard Bearings
Bones Bearings Skateboard DVDs

Bones Bearings Skateboard DVDs
Bones Bearings Skateboard Patches

Bones Bearings Skateboard Patches

Bones Bearings Construction Technology

The standard by which all other bearings are measured. Bones Swiss Skateboard Bearings have the best reputation in the skateboard industry, and have had this honor for the past 26 years because of their performance and quality. Everyone who rides Swiss knows how fast they are, and most also comment on how long they last, typically several times as long as low cost bearings. Skaters who use Bones Swiss do so because they want the very best equipment they can get and they know the difference between ordinary and exceptional. The Bones Team is a who’s who of top skaters and we are proud to be associated with each one of them. 

ABEC vs. Skate Rated : “What ABEC rating are your bearings?”
 
Bones Bearings component parts are engineered and tested to withstand the high impacts of hard landings, the high side loads of turning, and (to the extent possible) the dirt of skate environments. As a result, Bones roll faster and last longer than other bearings. To merely give Bones an ABEC rating would be to ignore all the improvements we have engineered into Bones and the resulting difference between Bones and standard ABEC rated bearings. Since there is no appropriate ABEC rating that will reflect the superior quality of Bones Bearings, we have given them their own rating, Skate Rating, to let you know that Bones Bearings are special and made just for skaters like you, not for electric motors. See full article: ABEC VS. SKATE RATED.


History of Bones Bearings

By George A. Powell

In the early 1980s, skateboarding was at a low ebb and it was difficult to find top quality bearings. American bearing companies like Fafnir had vacated the bearing market because the Japanese produced vast quantities of lower cost bearings and U.S. companies could not compete at the price Japanese bearings were selling for. The Japanese bearings were of good quality but were not very fast. German bearings were better, but many skaters wanted an even faster bearing to help them go higher on vert ramps or to roll farther with each push.

Seeing this need, I set out to find the best bearing I could that would still be affordable to skaters. I looked in America and in Europe. My search ended at a small, custom bearing manufacturer in Switzerland. Their bearings were faster than any we had ever tested before and, at the time, only a little more expensive than German bearings.

I worked with the Swiss manufacturer to optimize a bearing for skating. I changed from a standard stamped metal ball retainer to a high speed precision molded plastic one that could be removed by skaters to allow better cleaning of the bearing. We left one shield off so skaters could get to the inside of the bearing without any tools to clean and re-lubricate it. Next, we adjusted the tolerances and clearances to allow the bearing to take the combination side and vertical loads imposed by skating better than normal bearings do (which are mostly designed for electric motors). Finally, we replaced the usual lubricant with a special one we developed ourselves called Bones Speed Cream™.

Re-engineering this fine bearing for skating produced the fastest, most sought after, most competition successful bearing in the history of our sport. In fact, it is still the fastest bearing you can buy for skating even after all these years and after many other companies have packaged and hyped you to buy their ABEC-1, 3, 5, 7 or 9 “super bearings” with cartoon characters, racy names or whatever.

We test all these bearings with custom equipment we have made to compare the important qualities of bearings like drag and vibration at high speeds and extended roll at low and medium speeds. Then we have our team ride the bearings until the bearings “die” to see how long they will last and how they perform in actual skating environments. Some of the bearings you will see advertised or sold in shops are junk and some are pretty good, but no bearing we have ever tested has equaled the performance of Bones Swiss. See full article: Bones Bearings History
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