Bones

Bones doesn’t make decks. It makes wheels and bearings, and since the late 1970s it has been the yardstick the rest of the industry gets measured against. The man behind it is George Powell, a Stanford-trained engineer out of the aerospace world. Laid off around 1976-77, he moved from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara and started pouring opaque white urethane wheels he named “Bones” (1977). Two years later, in 1978, he co-founded Powell-Peralta with Stacy Peralta, and he has run the Bones brands under Skate One, headquartered in Goleta, California, ever since.

History

Powell’s road into skateboarding ran through aerospace. A Stanford-trained engineer, he was laid off around 1976-77, left Los Angeles for Santa Barbara and began pouring his opaque white urethane wheels there, selling the first “Bones” in 1977. In 1978 he co-founded Powell-Peralta with Stacy Peralta, and he has run the Bones brands under Skate One, based in Goleta, California, ever since.

The bearings arm came a few years later. Bones Bearings started as a brand in 1983 and marked its 25th anniversary in 2008. In 1997 came REDS, and the brand celebrated “25 Years of REDS” in 2022, while Swiss Ceramics and the Bones HardCore bushings followed in 1999. More recently, Skate One moved its factory to Ventura, California, around 2020, where the urethane is poured today.

Where the name comes from

In the late 1970s the market was full of translucent urethane wheels. Powell’s came out an off-white, opaque “bone” color that stood out on the shop wall, and that is exactly where the name came from. Powell reportedly tinkered with urethane formulas at home before patenting his double-radius wheel design, and he turned that one visual detail into a brand that is still going.

Urethane poured in the USA

What sets Bones apart is that every formula is developed and poured at its own plant in Ventura, California. It remains one of the very few major wheel companies still making all of its product in the United States rather than outsourcing it overseas. The range says the rest: the STF (Street Tech Formula) is the flagship street wheel, built to resist flat spots; the SPF (Skatepark Formula) is tuned for smooth, fast transition and park surfaces; the ATF (All-Terrain Formula) softs, including the Rough Riders, handle rough ground and cruising. Below all that, the Original Formula 100s bring the heritage formula back at a more accessible level.

Bones Swiss and the bearings

For the bearings, Powell searched worldwide before settling on a small custom Swiss manufacturer whose bearings outperformed the German bearings then considered the best; the result, Bones Swiss, is genuinely made in Switzerland and set the high-end benchmark for decades. REDS is probably skateboarding’s best-selling value bearing, built to Bones’ spec by a Chinese manufacturer. Swiss Ceramics sit at the top of the range, and the Bones HardCore bushings round out the hardware.

The team, then and now

The current Bones Wheels roster mixes icons from every era: Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, Bucky Lasek and Elliot Sloan alongside today’s contest generation in Rayssa Leal, Sky Brown, Aurelien Giraud, Chris Joslin and Paul Rodriguez. Lizzie Armanto, Aaron “Jaws” Homoki, David Gravette, Torey Pudwill and PJ Ladd round it out, a lineup that covers street, vert and park in equal measure.

Bones is one part of a setup, not the whole board. If you’re building from scratch, compare deck models and finish the setup with wheels and bearings you already know will roll.