Nolliewheels Up-Rail Review by Danny Hynam
IntroductionSo I'd seen a few reviews, pictures and videos of those rails floating about on the internet. I wanted to find out what everyone has been wondering; Are these rails any good?
The few reviews that have been about have been from people somewhat biased to Nolliewheels as a company, I'm pretty much neutral on the situation etc.
ShippingShipping from Germany to the UK was pretty standard, it took about 4 days and arrived safely in a cardboard box with some stickers and extra tape. Shipping is completely out of Nolliewheels hands, and nothing went wrong so there's not really much to comment on here!
10/10First ImpressionsAt a first glance, the rail looks great. The metal feels smooth, it's joined up nice and firmly, and also comes with two sheets of non-slide, that look just like tiny sheets of tape. I guess adding them separately is a good thing since it allows the user to choose how they use them, or if they want to use them at all.
Whereas the rail looks nicely made at a first glance, a few issues stand out with a closer look. These problems are mainly aesthetic, although they are things that you would expect to be solved when paying full price for a product. The issues are things such as messy welding, rough edges of the metal and unpolished edges. Another thing that I noticed was that the rail had no identity, it didn't have the brand name written anywhere on the rail!
7/10PerformanceThis rail is odd, it's almost as though you can look at it, feel it, and everything seems great about it until you land on it. The metal feels as though it has a lot of resistance against the trucks and deck. It's still completely usable but it just doesn't feel as though it rides as smoothly as you'd expect it to, it sometimes ruins the flow of your tricks due to the resistance. Through using the rail, I also noticed that the rail was often falling over when I did flip tricks from the high end of the rail, after close inspection I noticed that the feet were bowed, and one of them was also not fully aligned with the table, so the rail wobbles from side to side and also tips when you reach the top because of the angled foot. The rail is nice for tricks such as tail and nose slides because it's flat, and also has a relatively wide surface to land on. The rail stands at 35mm in height at the low end, and 70mm at the high end. It also comes in at 267mm in length, very similar to the length of a Yellowood 3-Rail if anyone has one for comparison!
1)The bowed feet.
2)The slightly angled foot. (Not incredibly clear on the photo)
3)Length in comparison to the 3-Rail.
5/10CraftsmanshipI've talked about craftsmanship throughout, but I'll briefly go over it again. The rail wobbles, the joining isn't very clean, a lot of the rail looks and feels unfinished such as the unpolished edges and the edges of the feet which still have grooves from the saw blade. In all honesty this rail seems as though it's crafted by a low budget metalwork shop that have no idea what fingerboarding is, (I'm not saying they are, but that's what it seems like). It feels as though the choice of metal needs some reconsideration, and also a lot more quality control needs to take place.
5/10OverallThis rail has potential, but at the current stage I wouldn't recommend one simply because I believe that there is much better products on the market in the similar price range, for example the Yellowood 3-Rail is €15, I'm not sure on the price of the Nollie Rail however I'm pretty sure that it will exceed €15. The rail needs a lot of work if it's to be a major product, for example it needs to be finished to the high standards that the customer expects, and I just feel as though it lacks a lot of personality. There's nothing that sets it aside from any other rail on the market, it has no identity for it to be recognized, which just contributes to making it less of a competitor. The rail does have a few good points although the bad points cannot be ignored in this case.
In all, I think the rail could honestly be great, but it needs to be crafted with a much higher quality, and a lot more professionally too because at the moment it could easily be mistaken for a homemade rail!
6.75/10
