Skates, various, ice hockey, inline (various)

[Neil]

Re: Backups for my favourite ST90s

Little bit of an update - been trying to create a suitable backup pair - I guess more for my travels - for my favourites:-

Which so far has taken shape in the form of these:-

Which originally came to me like this:-

A new set of spangly FSK 237 frames were mounted, and I washed the original liners (on the left in the next pic):-

But as they were slightly larger boots than I'd normally get, I decided to get a new set of liners, that are a bit more padded to fill out the space (the liners on the right in the above pic).

Problem with that is that the stock buckles are modestly sized, and with a liner that's so chunky around that point, the buckles aren't really long enough. If you look at the picture, the boot at the rear, where you can see where the buckle passes through the ratchet, there's barely enough to properly close them without actually wearing them.

Forunately, in my spares, I have several new sets of Salomon (and the odd other make) of buckle. New buckle kits, though, have bolts and tee nut receivers, where as the original / stock buckles are practically always riveted:-

Time to crack out the generic, Maplins-very-own, Dremel-wannabe-rotary-tool-in-a-kit-with-about-5000-different-attachments. Cue the power ballad.

Some minutes later, old rivets and buckles removed, then new, solid, alu Salomon buckles mounted:-

Buckles big enough for a sasquatch.

The boot could still do with some cleaning up / polishing (thanks, WD Pro for all the tips on refurbing plastic) which I'll probably tackle next. I guess what I won't want to do, though, is make them too good, because they're really only playing stuntman or canon fodder for my ST90s.

I've got some new wheels to go on - which is never quite so straightforward with these particular frames, as they make you use two different sizes, because the front two axles are mounted slightly lower than the rears, so max wheelsize 76mm, difference at the front should be -4mm, so ideally (to create a full rocker), a worn 72mm in the front, new 72mm in position 2, new 76mm in 3 and worn 76mm or new 72mm in 4 - so next it's wheels and bearings.

 

[Elysarian]

My other passion...

I'm a quad skater myself (hang out at Wigan Roller rink when I'm in town)

My collection:

Bauer Turbo's (my original skates that I bought in 1986)

Converted Bauer RX-05's (bought a couple of years ago)

My current skates - Bont Quad Racer Carbon with Sure-Grip Avenger plates and Australian remakes of the old-skool Fanjet wheels & Bones Red bearings (bought these last year - they cost about twice what the parts for my current bike have cost me)

 

[Elysarian]

For the OP: those Bauers you mentioned...
If they were all black then they were Turbo's (still quite common but people will pay for pairs in good condition)
If they were blue with a grey back part then they were Bravo's (quite rare and worth money now)
If they were black with a grey back they were Panthers (Super rare now and worth even more)

the above assumes good condition of course & may not cover all models from the 80's, just the ones I'm aware of

 

[Raging_Bulls]

No collection yet and no plans to really start one, but I bought these Fila Master Waves today. Alu chassis, 264mm wheelbase, 80mm wheels (chassis will support 84mm), Abec 7 bearings ... whatever all that means. Paid 80 EUR (£68-ish) for them.

Basically it was a bit of an impulse buy, although I had 90 minutes to think it over.
I went to work by bus because they predicted rain in the afternoon. However when I left work we still had lots of sunshine and I would have to wait an hour for the bus home. No way I was going to do that.
I figured I might as well burn some calories to lose some of the 40lbs of excess fat I'm carrying, so I walked 5 miles to the nearest Decathlon, bought the skates and skated 9 miles to get home. That was an afternoon well spent.

Slight detail : the last time I skated was 20 years ago, and I had completely forgotten everything.
It took me all of a quarter mile to get the basics worked out again and to feel confident with regards to balance while rolling, but I'm still struggling with all the rest. Especially uneven surfaces have me stomped. No matter how slow I try, I'm basically struggling to stay upright whenever I need to cross a street. the few mm height difference between sidewalk, gutter and road is a huge hurdle to overcome right now.
I'm also not comfortable at speeds above 6-7 MPH, but that might be down to the state of the cycle path I had to use. It's the same stretch of road that made my old Bulls so jumpy at the back that I ended up switching to a full suspension MTB for road use, so it was probably way beyond my (unexistant) skill level anyway.
Mind you, I did manage to stay upright every single time I got in trouble, but I had a few really close calls.

Now I need a few days to recover, because it appears that skating does require you to use certain back muscles which don't get used much while walking or cycling.
Then it's off to a car park to learn all the techniques all over again. Proper cornering, stopping, etc.

 

[Neil]

For the OP: those Bauers you mentioned...
If they were all black then they were Turbo's (still quite common but people will pay for pairs in good condition)
If they were blue with a grey back part then they were Bravo's (quite rare and worth money now)
If they were black with a grey back they were Panthers (Super rare now and worth even more)

the above assumes good condition of course & may not cover all models from the 80's, just the ones I'm aware of

Pro-form and Select were all black, too, but looked a fair bit different from Turbos. Select would have had a plastic-y / rubbery tongue cover / guard too. I think I vaguely remember Panthers - but there were probably several Bauer models that used, in effect, the same boot as Turbos.

I actually think they were a pair of Pro-form, but it's well over 20 years, so there's not a cat-in-hell's-chance I'm going to truly remember for sure, I just remember I never owned any Turbos, and BITD, the most notable plastic, hinged hockey skates from Bauer that I remember, apart from Turbos, were Select and Pro-form - although both were notably better and more expensive than Turbos - the boots looked different - they were a different design, and laced differently - some sort of plastic hooks or something. Pro-form being the poorer cousin to Select, and I think it's those that I had as quad hockeys.

From what I can remember, there were variants with Turbos (all looked essentially the same boot, perhaps with, say, a different colour cuff) - possibly some variance in frame / blade / runner too - but essentially, all the Turbos and variants I ever saw (much like the early Roces inline skates) were essentially the same boot, perhaps with some colour variance. Pro-form and Select boots were quite different from Turbos (although still were plastic hinged boots), were an obviously different boot and design, and wouldn't have even been casually confused.

No collection yet and no plans to really start one, but I bought these Fila Master Waves today. Alu chassis, 264mm wheelbase, 80mm wheels (chassis will support 84mm), Abec 7 bearings ... whatever all that means. Paid 80 EUR (£68-ish) for them.

They look decent enough rec skates - look good for the money. Fila make fairly decent skates - perhaps not quite a popular as some of the bigger, well known brands, but I suspect more popular in Europe. The have a freeskate / slalom range, too which are reasonably well thought of. If you compare them to their rec / fitness line up, they seem similar, but the boot is probably firmer / tougher and more supportive, plus the frame whilst still having reasonably big wheels, and being alu, tends towards a shorter wheelbase and be more compact, than a rec / fitness frame, which tends to make them more manoeuvrable - plus a bit more robust.

I have a pair of Fila skates, too - rec skates too these are they:-

The frames on those are noticeably longer / bigger wheelbase, than the frames on my freeskates - even my Powerslide Cell IIs which have a bigger / longer frame than some Salomon FSK frames (notably the ones I have - FSK 237s - where 237 refers to the wheelbase) - to allow for bigger wheels and rockering, whilst still being slightly more compact than your average rec / fitness frames.

If you look closely, lower down at my picture of my Powerslide Cell IIs, you can see where I robbed the front and rear Fila wheels from, to create rocker, so I didn't have to rocker the stock 84mm wheels on my Powerslides - because I've got a lot less 84mm wheels as spares.

Basically it was a bit of an impulse buy, although I had 90 minutes to think it over.
I went to work by bus because they predicted rain in the afternoon. However when I left work we still had lots of sunshine and I would have to wait an hour for the bus home. No way I was going to do that.
I figured I might as well burn some calories to lose some of the 40lbs of excess fat I'm carrying, so I walked 5 miles to the nearest Decathlon, bought the skates and skated 9 miles to get home. That was an afternoon well spent.

Slight detail : the last time I skated was 20 years ago, and I had completely forgotten everything.
It took me all of a quarter mile to get the basics worked out again and to feel confident with regards to balance while rolling, but I'm still struggling with all the rest.

I feel your pain - when I first stepped foot on / in inlines, it had been a good 10 years (more so in terms of regular skating) since I'd last skated, and that was on ice. And I'd picked a pair of inlines, running aggressive wheels (small and really hard).

It doesn't take long to get back some of it - but what type of skates / skating did you do previously? Was that inline, or was it ice? It can be quite a transition - on ice you have grip on the edges (so basically when the skate is leaning), on inlines it's practically the reverse - more grip when the skate is upright, very much less when the skate is leaning - and that's how you get inlines to slide, you have to lean / angle them, have a consistent surface, and have bottle.

Whilst rec / fitness skates don't tend to be as long, or as bigger wheelbase as say speed frames, depending on what you've previously skated on, this can hint at why I tend towards recommending freeskates / slalom skates for general skating, because they're built very robustly, and the frames whilst still allowing rec / fitness wheel sizes, tend to be more compact, helping manoeuvrability which may be a factor, depending on what people have previously been used to / skated on. The only downside, tends to be they normally run a little dearer than rec / fitness skates, and things like heel brakes tend to be an afterthought, if they are available.

Especially uneven surfaces have me stomped. No matter how slow I try, I'm basically struggling to stay upright whenever I need to cross a street. the few mm height difference between sidewalk, gutter and road is a huge hurdle to overcome right now.

Well it will improve - and the wheels on your skates are probably most suited for this - they're probably a reasonable size, and not too hard, so small bumps will be tolerated to a certain degree.

Depending on what you skated on previously, the transition may be a bit more involved - I came from years skating on ice in hockey skates (ignoring a few months of street hockey on quads) to skating on inlines. And I still struggle a lot without any rocker in the wheels - it's just how my skating evolved from many years on ice hockey skates. So I personally don't enjoy skating without any rocker (ie front (and optionally - or not so in my case) rear wheels either smaller or slightly higher, to emulate the curve of an ice hockey blade). It also takes some time to transition to where the grip is - on ice, when you're skates are leaning, on inlines, pretty much when they're upright (although it tends not to be all or nothing - but a wet surface can have a HUGE bearing on that).

I'm also not comfortable at speeds above 6-7 MPH, but that might be down to the state of the cycle path I had to use. It's the same stretch of road that made my old Bulls so jumpy at the back that I ended up switching to a full suspension MTB for road use, so it was probably way beyond my (unexistant) skill level anyway.
Mind you, I did manage to stay upright every single time I got in trouble, but I had a few really close calls.

Now I need a few days to recover, because it appears that skating does require you to use certain back muscles which don't get used much while walking or cycling.
Then it's off to a car park to learn all the techniques all over again. Proper cornering, stopping, etc.

I think the most important advice to a skater - even those who've had past experience, is to bend your knees. Then bend them some more. Many skaters don't bend their knees enough - I know I have to focus on it - I suspect it's partly due to having skated so many years when I was younger, and feeling I'm quite happy on skates tootling around, that I can be relaxed and have the balance thing sorted.

All the same, I know I need to, and I make more effort to, now - in really focusing on trying to get a good amount of knee bend when I'm skating.

As to my own skates, I've got a new addition - although I've got a few pairs of Salomon skates, I've never actually had a pair of Salomon FSKs - just the frames that I've mated to aggressive boots. I now have a pair of Salomon Deemax 3s - which have the same FSK 237 frames (albeit anodised in a rather less bling, black) as on my awesome ST90s, and my potentially awesome ST10s.

So, here they are - Salomon FSK Deemax 3, and as I was saying before, clearly the early Powerslide Cell IIs (in the 2nd pic) were at least heavily influenced by these, if not more close facsimile:-

Powerslide's frame is different - it's still extruded aluminium and it's still UFS, but designed differently and can take bigger wheels, has no enforced (pseudo) hi-lo thing going on, and has rocker washers on each axle (so each wheel can be rockered in one of four directions). Stock wheels are 84mm, whereas the Salomon FSK frames can take a maximum of 80mm wheels in the rear two axles, and 76mm in the front two axles (not quite the same when mated with my aggressive ST90s and ST10s - the wheel size is further reduced, there, without doing some work / surgery to the bottom of the boot / soul plate, to create some hollowed out recesses that the FSK skates / boots have, therefore allowing slightly bigger wheels - ie the limitations when mated with an aggressive boot are the proximity of the axles to the bottom of the boot / soul plate, when the frames are on a true FSK boot, the limit of the wheel size is the frame capacity - effectively a function of the construction of the frames and space between axles).

 

[Raging_Bulls]

I have been skiing since I was 5, so Ice skating was logical. Still only managed to skate occasionally (once every 2 months or so) because it was so expensive. I never had skates of my own, my parents used to rent figure skates whenever we went skating. I wasn't too happy about that because the hockey skates looked so much cooler.
Then in the early 90s inline skates were the new big thing, so I made the transition when I was 14. No idea what brand or model I had BITD, but they were cheap and plastic and had 3 straps (2 on the lower part of the boot, one near the ankle).
I used them for recreational use (rolling around on the local playground a bit), but a year later one of the boots developed a crack and I simply never bought new skates. I forgot about them really. Over here the inline skate craze was over anyway.

Back to the present day ...

My kitchen floor is (nearly) flush with the door sill and the living room floor is 1" lower. Seeing as it was raining outside, I removed the kitchen door, put my skates on and used that height difference to work out how to deal with kerbs and stuff. Excellent idea, if I may say so myself.
Figuring out (once more) how to stop was a nice added bonus. I never was a fan of the T-stop, BTW, I much prefer the spin stop because it was much kinder on the wheels.

Now I just need to work out the whole crossover thing again. That should be easy enough. Considering how fast the rest is coming back to me, I reckon 10 minutes in a parking lot will suffice.
The rest of the skills will probably come back to me as I start racking up some miles, as will the confidence in my balance.
There's a club nearby that organizes skate trips (for both inline and quad skates). They have an instructor which is said to be very good. I might go that route to freshen things up a bit faster.

 

[Neil]

I have been skiing since I was 5, so Ice skating was logical. Still only managed to skate occasionally (once every 2 months or so) because it was so expensive. I never had skates of my own, my parents used to rent figure skates whenever we went skating. I wasn't too happy about that because the hockey skates looked so much cooler.
Then in the early 90s inline skates were the new big thing, so I made the transition when I was 14. No idea what brand or model I had BITD, but they were cheap and plastic and had 3 straps (2 on the lower part of the boot, one near the ankle).
I used them for recreational use (rolling around on the local playground a bit), but a year later one of the boots developed a crack and I simply never bought new skates. I forgot about them really. Over here the inline skate craze was over anyway.

Ah, understand now - just wanted to clarify if rocker could be something you need - but if you've never skated on hockey skates you won't need / crave it, I wouldn't have thought. Your wheels will wear into a natural rocker anyway.

In terms of it's popularity and rise and fall, I saw parallels with mountain biking - something becomes very popular, diversifies into lots of variants and everybody thinking they've created something new and unique, then the lack of cohesion and passing fancy, passes, and it returns to probably it's natural level.

Back to the present day ...

My kitchen floor is (nearly) flush with the door sill and the living room floor is 1" lower. Seeing as it was raining outside, I removed the kitchen door, put my skates on and used that height difference to work out how to deal with kerbs and stuff. Excellent idea, if I may say so myself.
Figuring out (once more) how to stop was a nice added bonus. I never was a fan of the T-stop, BTW, I much prefer the spin stop because it was much kinder on the wheels.

T-stop is quite versatile - and snow plough can be used reasonably effectively - even at higher speeds - but stopping at any sort of speed, really, needs skill and bottle. You have a heel brake - many, myself included, never got into that, but if nothing else - they do work.

Now I just need to work out the whole crossover thing again. That should be easy enough. Considering how fast the rest is coming back to me, I reckon 10 minutes in a parking lot will suffice.

Bend your knees. Then bend them some more. Lean towards your direction of travel, and put your weight towards the hip that's in the direction you're going in. Also practice skating / gliding on one foot. But if nothing else, bend your knees - that will almost encourage you to do it better and easier.

The rest of the skills will probably come back to me as I start racking up some miles, as will the confidence in my balance.
There's a club nearby that organizes skate trips (for both inline and quad skates). They have an instructor which is said to be very good. I might go that route to freshen things up a bit faster.

Time and practice / familiarity and very important. Getting some lessons with an instructor is most likely what many should do more of.

For myself, the thorn in my side is being a bit sporadic and variable in how often I skate. Plus I should just spend a good few sessions in one set of skates, but after a first foray for a while, I tend to just take a different pair each time, and that doesn't help me, really.

 

[przem ek]

Hello, I'm new on this site and I'm writing here only because I found on google picture one of nice custom fsk skates (deshi on fsk PS frame) on one of post in this topic.

If any one will be curious of Salomon FSK models I invite you to my page fsknews.pl

Topic with all from 2001 to 2006 Salo's FSK skates:
http://freeskatenews.pl/showthread.php?tid=1494


Topic with Salo's ST:
http://freeskatenews.pl/showthread.php?tid=1094
(I'm not entirely sure this statement)

Greetings from Poland !

 

[njgoldby]

One of my biggest regrets was selling my imaculate bauer malibu white quads for £100. I kept my wrecked k2 fatties insted. I should have kept it retro rather than being so ruthless.
They were un scratched and un faded. Fitted with pacer trucks, hyper mad dogs, and some of the moment cooper hockey socks. Worth a fair bit now by all accounts.
Oh the memories.
I hope my nipper gets into skating. It will give me an excuse.
Anyone know any rinks local to Northampton?

 

[drcarlos]

Got a couple of pairs of Quads myself, used to have a set of Roces Ventronics in the 90's, used them loads and upgraded to cloud cushions, green Hyper Rollo wheels and NMB bearings. When I got them out of the loft 18 months ago they lasted one disco before falling apart (the plastic just went brittle) so I invested in some new boots (keeping the Hyper Rollo wheels and NMB bearings that are still perfect) and got some Ventro Turbos. I used these for a bit until I decided I needed some Bauer's. It was between these and Graf's and it seems that the Graf all did the same as the Roces and broke up. So I paid decent money on eBay for a lightly used final 90's version of the Turbo and added some re-issued Sims Street Snake Wheels and Bones Reds along with some soft cushions. They make a decent boot and are comfortable for a couple of hours use at a time. These I use purely indoors at the local leisure centre and at the Guildford Discos. The Ventros are rarely used any more but will be used outdoors if I ever get around to skating outdoors again.
I tried the inline thing a year ago with the Roces ASP100's and brain just couldn't get it (after 25 years skating quads it's hardly surprising really) so sold them at a massive loss.
I skate indoors nearly every weekend and am friendly with the couple that run the local events and also the Guildford Spectrum disco organisers. The wife also has here original set of 90's Bauer Turbo's I bought her for her birthday in '93 with NMB bearings and Krypto Cruise wheels. My boys also skate too and my eldest is a bit of a fiend at the disco's and will soon surpass his old man in ability.

Carl.