Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Bolts.






Every so often efforts are made to reinvent mounting hardware. This frequently involved some type of joined bolts with a metal connector that went over top of the griptape, as was the case with U-Bolts and Bridgebolts. There was a Deadbolt version that ran the long way from the front to the back truck mounting hole. Saving on not having to use a screwdriver was a big selling point.

One other method to get rid of that pesky screwdriver was to design a bolt that was pounded into the top of your deck. This is what Thunderbolts were. I couldn't find an ad so I rummaged around in the garage and found the actual bolts to take a photo of. The bolts have two little nubs under the head that are supposed to hold the bolt in place. However, since skateboarding rattles around the trucks and loosens the hardware, this would become problematic when the bolts needed to be tightened. The little nubs would wear away at where they were sunk in and no longer do their intended job. Plus they theoretically weakened the board from the impact of pounding in the bolts. This idea pops up every now and again.

I'm assuming Skully Nuts were just regular bolts. I only scanned the ad because of the cool skeletons.

Skully Nuts: Thrasher - November 1989 Volume 9 Number 11

U-Bolt: Thrasher - December 1989 Volume 9 Number 12

Grind King Bridgebolt: Thrasher - September 1990 Volume 10 Number 9

5 comments:

chas one said...

I hope you've found some ads from that company that used to make metal boards with bits cut out. The ads had them all sitting around smoking cigars! I think it was in SLAP. Would live to know the background to that company.

Justin said...

Sorry, I didn't scan ads for any of those boards. I know what you are talking about. The guy was Lars Tetens. Have fun with the Google results on that. There were Aircraft metal skateboards, too. I intended to include a few things from the late 1990s, but I wound up sticking to 1988 - 1990 only. Finding all of this stuff turned out to be much more involved than the usual effort. I still need to scan a couple more things, too. I might end up taking a week off again once this two weeks is done.

Ben said...

You still had some T-bolts lying around?! Awesome! I put those in a Zorlac Metallica and had to get my dad to help me get them out when they stripped. I forgot the nuts they came with were capped. I had a friend who was sponsored by Thunder back in 1990 and they sent him U-bolts with his packages. He broke them all the time. Great memories!

Justin said...

Yup, still had 26 year old bolts in a drawer at my parents' garage.

I was wondering if U-Bolts were an early Deluxe thing.

Keith said...

haha.

Had u-bolts. Saw t-bolts at a shop and the dude was assembling a board with them and pounding the shit out of it with a hammer. Just seemed so wrong to do to a brand hew board.

Everything changed when flat bolts arrived. Got my first set from FTC when I visited in the summer of 1991. I think they called them basic bolts or something like that and Real also had Real Flat Bolts.

Exp-One came out with some boards in the late 90's early 2000's that required no hardware and the board had embedded t-nuts in them. Obviously didn't catch on.