Product Blog: Abstract Wheels – 105A Conical Color Collisions
October 24, 2019 by MartinB. | 3:30 pm
Jordan, the owner of Redemption Fingerboards (and Handboards) sends a big fat super nice letter again including the latest fingerboarding goods from Redemption and Abstract Wheels.
Jordan and his brand and shop are located in Union City, MI, USA. The letter came up super fast and today we will take a look at the first item of this package. It´s a set of Abstract Wheels for fingerboards. Abstract is Jordan’s wheel company as an addition to Redemption Fingerboards as a label for decks and everything else.
Let´s have a look at these 105A Conical Color Collisions crazy swirl combo fingerboard wheels:
Shape:
About yesterday I´ve asked the audience on Instagram in the latest post “Guess the brand of these wheels”. Just a few seconds after posting the image, the Instagram community answered loud and clear: This must be Abstract/Redemption fingerboard wheels. This special and unique shape of the wheels was recognized within seconds by the users. And the shape is really unique. These wheels are backless, well, that’s nothing new. BUT you won´t find a shape like this at other companies. The wheels are not small as street wheels and not as big as bowl wheels. Normal bowl wheels are way more square-cut than these wheels are. It´s just a great mix between both worlds. I mean, just check out the images.
More:
Footage:
And one more:
These wheels are made from urethane. The hardness of the urethane material is about 105A. That means, the wheels are medium squeaky. That’s means these wheels are not the “loudest” wheels on the market. The sound is more soften on concrete and wood. 105A hardness seems to be hard. Hard like Arnold Schwarzeneggers muscles probably. Harder wheels have less grip than softer ones. Normal fingerboard wheels made from plastic just slide like ice on most surfaces. Reverts are quiet easy. With soft wheels made from urethane you need to ride clean. Land your reverts and everything clean or you will get a nice little squeak squeak squeak. But what happens if we have hard urethane wheels?!
Well, you will have grip. Not as much as with softer urethane wheels, but way more than plastic fingerboard wheels have. These wheels with this hardness are just between the really soft urethane wheels and the plastic fingerboard wheels. Probably this hardness is one of the most realistic ones and it should fit to the fingerboarding style of most of the fingerboard riders.
As a comparison from real life: if you have a car in Germany you need to switch tire’s in summer and winter. In the summer you will get a fresh pair of hard tires, perfect for dry and sunny roads. In winter you switch to softer tire´s. These are perfect for rain, snow and ice on the roads. If you don´t want to switch your tire´s because of the seasons, you can get a set of all-weather capable tire´s. These are a mix between the summer and winter tire´s.
And that’s what these wheels are. Just a mix between. As I said, best of both worlds.
While thinking about the best of both worlds, look at the color. These wheels are swirl colored wheels. Just to colors of urethane mixed togethervloaded with a lot of fanciness. This swirling around makes every wheelvunique. Like all humans. I really like the look of swirl wheels and you can combine great fingerboard setups with swirls.
The shape and the wheels are not the only important things on fingerboard wheels. One more thing is needed to make them just perfect. You need a good bearing with is just locked in the wheel. There are a lot of fingerboard wheels available with slipping around bearings. Let´s call it “slip-gate”. It just sucks when you are into a heavy session and then the urethane part of the wheels just slip on the hangar. Everybody hates this. Ones this happens the wheel is getting wider and wider and slip-gate will happen more and more and more.
Well, Jordan promises these wheels are fully locked. I´ve tried the wheels and the bearings in all 4 wheels are locked. Just to confirm this, I´ve read the comments on a lot of the pictures concerning these wheels on the Redemption insta page. I haven´t found a single comment about slip-gate. So the promise of locked bearings seems to be true. I don´t know how many people ride those wheels. Maybe there is slip-gate somewhere!? But my fundamental performance rating is no slip-gate.
Everything on the urethane of these wheels is made by a machine. The machine is called Jordan! He uses his hands to create those wheels. Jordan the machine with his hands as tools.
Enough about these wheels? You can get these wheels right offer at the Redemption webshop: Click! Other wheels are available as well. Just check out all the wheels right over here: Click!
Redemption Fingerboards are not new to the scene. The brand came up in early 2009. Jordan´s a goal was to create high quality miniature skateboards. Jordan is a skateboarder since 2000 so he knows what’s up. After a couple of more years in the fingerboard scene he released his Abstract wheels brand and a handboard line up. Handboarding was for me just horrible. I had a TD handboard over 10 years ago when they released them for the very first time with Tensor Trucks and stuff like that. The kingpin broke the first day and all I thought about this is just fucking loud. I personally thought, that there is no demand for handboard stuff, but, well, there is a real handboard scene. I really enjoy watching all these guys handboarding, but I will stick to fingerboarding. Jordan has done a great job for Handboarding. Redemption is the first brand to officially create a wooden handboard complete with bearing wheels, soft tape and single axle trucks. This project has taken many years but in 2017 complete handboards were finally available. Thats just awesome anjd the decks, trucks and wheels look perfect. Developing something like this is not easy at all!
By the way, Jordan is running a store in his town. You could go there and finger- or handboard. Stay updated while following the Redemption Instagram site: @redemptionfingerboards
The next product blog will foloow soon. Need to talk about one more set of wheels and about a super nice deck.
THX a lot for this package! I know your brand since day one and I really like your progression and mood. With these wheels you did a step forward. You guys should check out the whole Redemption website right over here: Click!
All images are hosted on my flickr: Click!
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