This is the first article in my post-mortem of my attempt to manufacture fingerboard wheels.
In 2022, I decided I wanted to make my own fingerboard wheels. The reasoning was simple: why buy wheels for $40 to $50 when I could make them myself and possibly earn a little money selling them if the product turned out well?
Very first prototype of Megaptera wheels
If you've ever looked into this topic, you've probably noticed something.
There are almost no public resources on how to make fingerboard wheels
Fingerskateboarding is a niche hobby, and everyone knows each other. When it comes to making fingerboard decks, we know how it's done: a hard mold, five veneer boards, and a press—the same principle as a full-size board.
For wheels, it's different. We immediately move on to an industrial and chemical process. Much less organic. Silicone molds, liquid resin, mechanical elements (bearings), and precision to 1/20 of a millimeter.
Prototype mid-2024, with numerous bubbles
So why keep it such a secret?
It's quite simple: because it takes a lot of work and investment.
Over the past three years, I've invested a crazy amount of time and money to achieve a final result that I'm happy with, but it's still not marketable! Fingerboard wheels are one dead end after another. Failure after failure. So when you finally get something that works... you don't really want to give the solution away to just anyone.
If we take the “health” aspect into account, where we are exposed to hazardous products (such as PU resin, 3D printing resin, or even PU microparticles when sanding the wheels) for prolonged periods of time, it's understandable that we're not eager to share our discoveries for free.
In short, wheel making is difficult, time-consuming, expensive, and requires a lot of determination.
Here are some figures from my three years of prototyping:
- 24 generations of prototypes, with variations, making a total of 96 prototypes.
- Between 6 and 10 hours of preparation work per generation (modeling, printing, molding)
- Over 200 molded wheels
- Between 15 and 30 minutes of work per wheel, approximately.
- 3 liters of polyurethane resin used!
- 1.5 liters of silicone used
- 2 resin printers (one of which was defective)
- Approximately 70 pairs of gloves
And finally, the final appearance of the Megaptera wheels:
