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In this day and age of developing technologies in skateboarding with everyone figuring how to make better skate decks, better trucks, better wheels it is no surprise that someone would come up with a way to make a better skate bearing. We recently visited a facility that makes a kick ass bearing.

The place is a really nondescript place called California Bearing & Supply in Chatsworth, California. We walked through the front door that looked like any other industrial office in the area and were met at the door by Ron Foster who is the co-owner of the company as well as a full on skater. He walked us deeper into the facility to see where all the bearings are.

The name of these bearings to the early believers of these bearings called them "RocknRon's" which was titled after his screen name on a few forums around, now the bearings are called "Rockets". As Ron led us around the place he showed us a vat of bearings that just got done fully degreasing in some sort of cleaner that costs hundreds of dollars a gallon. Ron has been a certified bearing engineer for the past 20 years and he warned us is that he could bore us to tears with so many technical details of the bearings and the process that he said that he would keep it light on that side. We really did not mind so we let him continue to get tech'y with us .... what did he say?

His facility is not just for skate bearings, he actually has many government contracts that he works on and while we were there he was working on repairing a helicopter rotor bearing that he said cost $1500 bucks. In fact, he only got into the skate bearing side when he put his technical knowledge and testing abilities to use on the skate side. He started to tear apart various brands of bearings on the skate market that "claimed" that they we an ABEC this or ABEC that. He soon found that bearings that were marked as ABEC 5 were barely an ABEC 1, if at all. Again he found that the cheap China bearing makers were putting out anything for anyone that wanted to be a "skate bearing" brand with the outside shields printed with whatever rating and name they wanted on them.

In another section he has a government certified clean room that is virtually dust free where bearings are assembled, oiled and packaged. Inside is all kinds of instruments that are used to test the tight tolerances of various bearings. Something that blew us away was that some of the very specialized greases that he has there for various uses cost hundreds of dollars for just a small tube. Toward the end of our tour Ron showed us a bearing that goes in a missile system that was maybe an 1/8th of an inch wide and it rolled!

Your editor and most of the staff here have used Bones Swiss for most of our life because we believed that they were the best. Bones/Powell certainly deserves props for all the great stuff they have produced over the years -heck who has not skated plenty of their decks over the years? We have rode the living hell out of the Rockets in parks and pools from Hawaii to Nevada and we have found that Rockn Ron's Rockets were faster and lasted longer due to the labyrinth inner ring and seal design, plus they cost less $10.00 cheaper compared to the Bones Swiss and Rockn Ron's Rockets Ceramics are $30.00 less than Bones Ceramics. Another thing that is cool about the Rockets is that they come with an extra set of seals so that you can easily freshen up your bearings without having to buy a new set -most bearing company's would rather you buy another set of bearings to help their profit margin. I guess our whole point with this piece is to point out that as a skater you should just never settle for what people tell you is the best, you need to find out for yourself. Below is a chart that was taken from RocknRon's website on the comparison. If a brand name is important to you than you may not be too interested in Rockn Ron's bearings, yet if you are just a skater and look for the best performance at the best price, than you may want to check out a set of these bearings and if they suck I bet Ron will buy them back from you and then give then for us to skate -Thanks in advance if you do this. From what we are seeing on many skate related forums around is that Ron's bearings, and how he points of the ABEC thing is causing alot of Sh*t out there. We have even heard that some people have even called Ron on the phone to threaten to kill him for pointing out their bogus ABEC claims and what he may do to the bearing market -his bearings may be so good that they may even cost him his life....man, we hope it does not happen.
For more information contact California Bearing & Supply

As a side note: Bones has even ordered some sets of Ron's bearings to test and has showed nothing but class and respect towards Ron.

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