Wednesday, November 17, 2010

The Owner's Guide to Setting Your Toe Stops

tightening your toe stops

To take your toe stop off or put it back on, you have to loosen or tighten that toe stop nut; you grab the toe stop with one hand and work your toe stop wrench with the other hand. Always remember, righty tighty lefty loosey. Though it's worth mentioning, that's looking up, as it were, at your toe stop from the bottom of your skate. Not looking down from your head to your toes, like I am in the picture. I'm actually righty looseying there. If the way you're turning doesn't work, turn the other way. That's good advice for life and toe stops.

To set your toe stop to your desired height, you wind the nut down the toe stop screw, drop on the washer, and screw the toe stop into your skate however high you want. Then keep the toe stop in that position and tighten the nut with your wrench.

[ETA 4/16/11: Steve from Lombard highly urges me to tell folks that you should put a drop of, say, bearing oil, on the threads of a new toe stop before you screw it in. If you screw it in dry, you could strip the threads.]

checking your toe stop height

I thought it was crazy to set toe stops as low as the Countrymans from the Fleetwood speed team told us to. Your back wheels should be no more than two inches off the floor, when your toe stop touches down. But I am obedient, and it was instantly fabulous: the lower the toe stops, the lower the angle that your feet are off the ground for better balance. You can lower them gradually to get used to them so low, or you can maybe bite it a few times and get it all over with a bold swoop.