Engraved Skate Bearing Pendant

This is a very simple pendant I wear almost daily to express my passion for skating and technical stuff in general.

I've experienced that in all it's simpleness it is attractive for a lot of people and it has been a conversation starter many times.

I just recently engraved a text on the side of the bearing saying "In Skate We Trust" as a hint to the text on the side of coins. I found that it also happens to be the name of an Osprey cruiser.

Let's get started!

1

• A sharpie or other marker which will sign on metal
• A bearing. To be honest, this isn't a standard 608 skate-bearing but a bigger one, a 6001Z bearing which has a size of 12X28X8 mm. I used this one because a standard bearing was to tiny for my liking's and I happened top have these ones lying around from building my cnc-router. It is also a bit easier to engrave it by hand if it is bigger, off course.
• An engraving pen. I own a very cheap one on battery power but very useful for markings on metal and glass.
• A leather shoelace or other cord if you like.

Before I started with drawing on the bearing I first marked the bearing with a little line and rolled 360 degrees starting from that line to find the circumference, so I could estimate the spacing between the letters. Off course I could have easily calculated it by multiplying the diameter with pi, 28 x pi (I don't have an old Greek keyboard.....;-) ). And then draw the outcome (87.92) in a straight line. But hey, I'm not that kind of theoretic guy, and besides that Pi-day was a week a go...

After that I just wrote the letters out by hand on the side of the bearing with the sharpie and traced the letters with my engraving pen. I had thought about first making a digital design, printing it out and transferring it on the bearing but figured It would have the rough, punk'ish style which fits my oldskool skating style.....

I used a double fishersman's knot in the leather shoelace, which was a round 80 cm long. This knot is perfect for a necklace because you can slide the knots on the lace so you can make it larger or smaller and put it on and off easily that way.

last thing to do is taking the shoelace loop through the bearing and than back over the lace again and you are finished.

Wear your uber cool bearing proudly and show everyone you are a real "Lord Of The Bearing" now!