Skate608.com is here

As a life long ‘roller skater’ (primarily inline but my life started on quads) and a mechanical engineer I’ve always had an interest in the mechanical aspects of skating. Skate bearings become an obsession for a while as it was frustrating to me that marketers in the mid to late 90’s were pushing various concepts to claim why their bearings were better than others. The big discussion was ABEC ratings back in the day but there was also talk of magical lubricants and use of ‘micro bearings’ like the 688 size.

As a result, Skate608.com is a project I’ve had in my head for a long time. So long ago I actually had the domain for about 10+ years starting back in the mid to late 2000’s. Even though I still wanted to do the project my attention was elsewhere and I let go of the domain thinking I would never get to it.

Some of that discussion about skate bearings has waned but people still ask questions about bearings and skate bearing companies still stamp ABEC and other ratings on the side of their bearings. There is always discussion on what lubricant to use and some bearing marketers continue to try and convince skaters there is some other size of bearing that is significantly better than the 608 bearing (or 627 for many quad skaters).

Since I still had an interest the domain was reregistered and it sat as a holding page for a while as I messed around with another project. That project was, quite frankly, a little silly, so I dropped it and focused on launching Skate608 along with another project I am excited about (and will launch soon).

For now Skate608 is in somewhat of a soft launch mode while I figure out what to prioritize for it. There is some key information there but I do want to get into more depth on skate bearings and challenge the marketers in the skate industry to do better. Follow along at home if you’re interested… Bookmark skate608.com