Oak Wheels: The Hand-Poured Urethane That Set the Standard
Ricardo Lopes started pouring fingerboard wheels in Porto — and made urethane that the rest of the scene measures against.
Hand-made urethane wheel brand (V1 launched 2009) by Ricardo Lopes in Porto; a reference urethane for pro setups.
Part of Pioneer Brands
- Founded
- 2009
- Country
- Portugal
- Focus
- Wheels
- Confidence
- Confirmed
Origin
Where it started
Oak Wheels began in Porto, Portugal, where Ricardo Lopes set out to make genuinely good urethane fingerboard wheels by hand. The V1 launched in 2009, and they're widely credited as the first really good urethane fingerboard wheels — a deceptively hard thing to get right at this scale.1
The push
What changed
Hand-made and obsessively iterated, Oak's wheels became a reference urethane for pro setups: the thing riders reach for when they want real grip and roll. The brand's small-batch, maker-led approach — one person, pouring wheels with, in their words, 'mucho feeling' — became a template for the boutique wheel makers that followed.1
Signature
What they pushed forward
Oak's whole story is one signature object, refined relentlessly.
Hand-poured urethane wheels (V1, 2009)
Oak's V1 launch in 2009 brought serious hand-poured urethane to fingerboarding and became a benchmark for feel — grip, roll, and consistency — that later wheel brands chased.1
Legacy
Why it still matters
Oak Wheels turned 'good urethane' from a wish into a standard. For a lot of riders, Oak is still the yardstick — and the proof that one maker in Porto could change what the whole scene expects from a wheel.1
Archive images
Setup-era context
References
Numbered references to the brand, retailer, and community pages that back this article. Confidence labels show how firmly each source is established.
- 1.Oak Wheels
Oak WheelsOfficial
Portuguese urethane wheel brand; V1 launched 2009; hand-made by Ricardo Lopes in Porto.
Back to citation ↩
Independence & sources