NFG Wheels Insight

NFG Manufacturing is a unique group of skaters from the San Francisco Bay Area that use their extensive science and engineering experience to create amazing wheels entirely in-house. NFG|MFG offers three different shapes of wheel: the Vee with a concave sidewall, the Square with a flat sidewall, and the Teardrop with a rounded sidewall. Besides sidewall shape, each model features a different lip radius and ride surface width, and these factors all contribute to how the wheel feels. This article will review the three basic shapes of NFG wheel so that you get the best wheel for your style of shredding.

The NFG Vee Wheel gets its name from the 'V'-shaped recesses on both the inside and outside faces of the wheel, creating a running surface that is wider than the core of the wheel where the bearings are seated. By having a concave sidewall, NFG has created a park wheel more like a traditional speed wheel that has pronounced edges. These edges provide extra grip and will bite into surfaces because of how the unsupported urethane of the lip flexes under pressure.

Vee wheels have the widest running surface and the largest available diameters of the three NFG shapes. These larger size profiles, coupled with those hard edges that dig in on push-offs and pumps, makes the Vee wheel stable and powerful. It will also feel the most familiar to skaters coming from other disciplines like derby or rink skating, where similar wheel designs are common.

NFG Teardrop Wheels are named for their rounded sidewalls that bubble out on both the inside and outside faces of the wheel. That soft rounding creates a lip with a large radius, meaning it hardly carries any edge at all. As a result, the Teardrop is the easiest and most effective NFG Wheel to engage in slides and transitions.

The Teardrop shares a 54mm size profile with both other designs, but it's the only one available in the smallest 52mm diameter. Given its relatively small size profile and the aforementioned lack of an edge, Teardrop wheels offer the least amount of clipping on rails and coping. We generally recommended these for experienced skaters who can exert control and balance on these precision wheels.

NFG Square Wheels earned their namesake by having vertical sidewalls that neither recess in like the Vee nor bubble out like the Teardrop. The tire's thickness is the same from its core to its outer edges and this consistency in material translates into consistency in ride, too. By splitting the difference between Vee and Teardrop designs, NFG created a balanced middle ground where grip and slide coexist in perfect harmony.

Square wheels do have a small ride surface and while they are easy to engage in slides but those slides are more easily controlled because there is still some edge to engage. They won't bite as hard as Vee wheels and they won't slide as readily as Teardrops, but its versatility and consistency is what makes the Square so popular.

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