Bont Vaypor 2006 3 Mount Skate with S-Frame

I first read about the new Bont Vaypor and S-Frame 3 point mounting system on the Bont message board, and was immediately captivated.  This seemed like a big step forward in speedskate technology to me, enough that I was prepared to put money down whilst the skate was still only pre-production and in testing.  As soon as I had the money I got in contact with Vincent Henry of Checker Sports, and arranged a moulding.

Pretty good service from Vinnie, he charged me an incredibly small fee to drive down to London from Birmingham and do the foot moulding.  Essentially this is a casting process with a fibreglass resin sock much like for a broken bone.  These moulds then get sent off to Australia for Bont to make the boots too.  Thanks to Vinnie for a quality moulding, and also to Glenn Koshi of Bont USA for his help with my understanding of the moulding process.  Lots of experienced tips to make sure I got the moulding I wanted, particularly the stand on a towel tip to shape the bottom of the skate to my feet.

I chose a couple of additional options, extra toebox room since I spend a lot of time in skates when your feet can swell, and thicker tongues to help against lace bite.

Vaypor Boot

It took me some time and effort to decide on the colour of these boots, and I'm really chuffed with how nice they look, thanks to greazer for his help.  The boots are very well moulded and fit my feet comfortably right from the start.  In fact I felt so comfortable in them I taught a big group lesson in these skates on the day I received them, very pleased with that!

I stuck with the stock pitch of 7mm (height difference between ball and heel of foot).  Normal boots traditionally have 10-12mm, so this feels lower, and is more suited to marathon distances.  The 7mm pitch is great, feels very comfortable and easy to use.  I did notice that my mate Quentin had a couple of nearly fall over backwards moments the first time he tried my skates, no doubt because his usual FSK skates have even more default pitch.

The boots are beautifully made and look very high quality.  Weight 420g per boot for my roughly UK sized 9 foot.

Fastenings and other

Fastenings are laces, a buckle, and a very clever velcro strap fastener at the top.  The velcro strap is unusual in that it's three-fold.  One strap goes across the gap, through a loop, and folds back.  This fold then has velcro on the top also, and a second strap folds onto this, making for a very strong hold.

Bont S-Frame

This is an amazing frame!  I got the 13.00" length in 4 x 100mm wheels, and think it's a good compromise, not too long to handle easily, and yet still plenty fast enough.  I found that my previous 5x84mm frames in 13.4" felt a lot longer and harder to handle.  Taking the frames out of the box was fairly amazing, they are incredibly light and are 93% magnesium.  Best not scratch/ignite these then.  Weight of each frame on my Swiss digital kitchen scale was 143 grams, not including axles or frame mounting bolts.

I love the 3 point mounting system, it's hard, precise, and if one frame bolt comes loose as often seems to happen to one or more skaters in a race, chances are the other two bolts will hold it for you until you can tighten/replace the other bolt.  Not happened to me yet, but then I use loctite on bolts and axles, and I'm always careful to check my equipment.

The S-Frame was designed to be stronger and lighter than conventional 195 mountings, whilst making it easy to find a frame/boot combination that gives the lowest possible height.  All of those goals are possible with 195 boots and frames, but generally only with a fair amount of research effort and making sure the boot manufacturer builds the boots to your frames.  The Bont system makes it easy and simple to get a strong, light, and low 100mm setup.

Minor niggles

One minor niggle is that the tongues of the boots both did weird things.  The left one would slip sideways and go down the left side of my boot, and the right tongue would tend to slip down and crush my toes.  In fairness this didn't happen when I used the supplied lace loops at the top of the tongue, but these loops didn't last long as they tore, in my opinion too easily.  No matter though, I easily fixed the problem by superglueing some velcro to the tongue and to the inside of the boot around the 3rd and 4th lace eyelets from the top of the boot.  This fix works very well and I'm having no more problems.  Credit to Gav for showing me how his Wordsworth boots have this arrangement.

The second minor issue was that a couple of times I've struck one boot with the other, quite hard.  Bad technique on my part I know, but the result has been a little damage to the 3D material and patent leather.

Again, both these items are very minor and don't detract from the boot quality in my opinion.  Even knowing about them in advance wouldn't change my decision to go Bont in the slightest.

Delivery Time

My skates took some time to deliver, almost four months, but remember I did order them long before they were even in production, as well as sending off my boot mouldings just as Bont started their Christmas break period.  Because of this I had no expectations of fast delivery.  I'm told usual delivery time for custom boots is between 4-8 weeks after receiving moulds and payments.

In spite of this I felt I had excellent service, I was kept informed all the way along, and once the boots and frames were ready my skates arrived just days after being shipped.  Both Vincent and Bont are quality businesses that have looked after me very well in numerous transactions.

Ride Comfort and Control

The skates feel incredibly precise and very direct.  Of course part of this is due to the change from stock to custom boots (my Bont Zeros were stock), but clearly the very hard, direct, and no-flex connection between the boot and the frames is helping a lot here.  As a result you get more road vibration through the skates, but to me that's a more than acceptable trade-off, and exactly how I'd like my boots anyway.  No problems on the recent London to Brighton skate, the skates stayed comfortable though my feet did go numb once or twice on the roughest sections of country lane which were quite evil.  They soon recovered when we were back on smoother tarmac.

There's a fair amount of pro testimony on this topic on the Bont message board, and I would say those comments are justified based on my own experiences.

Conclusion

I can't say enough how pleased I am with these skates, they are easily the best pair I've yet owned.  Beautifully built, they are wonderful to skate on, easy to control, and are much better and faster than I am.  I like the balance between ride comfort (minimal) and control and power transfer, they are definitely at the performance end of the scale.

I should also point out that I've received a fair discount from Bont on my skates, though I feel I've been frank and honest in my opinion on these skates.  YMMV of course!

Links

Bont home page

Bont message board (probably the best speedskating message board around, IMO)

Checker Sports UK.

Inline skating lessons :: About us :: Disclaimer :: Press Page

All material on this website is © Copyright 2000-2007 LondonSkaters.com, contributors, and associates. Please do not reproduce anything without permission.  If you wish to use photos or other material from this website, please contact me first.