Coffee Table Book of: Roller Hockey (Hardcover)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Roller Hockey is a large format book of roller hockey, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: inline skates and their wheels, sticks, pucks and the hard plastic ball, outdoor rinks of smooth tiles and concrete inside low boards, the kit being made and cared for, the early days of the game on wheels, and a few skaters seen far off in plain dark clothing.

The kit is laid out plain: a hockey skate with its four wheels in one straight line and no heel brake, four wheels in a row, eight steel bearings, a bare aluminium frame, a hex key beside a wheel and its axle bolt, a stick seen from above and the curved blade of another, a puck with its small raised nubs, an orange plastic ball, a roll of cloth tape, a helmet with a wire cage, padded gloves, shin guards, the goal mask and a pair of tall leg pads, a kit bag with two sticks across it, and a skate drying on a towel with its insole drawn out.

The making and care follow grey floor tiles stacked on a pallet and clipped together across a bare slab, boards of plywood rising on timber posts, plastic pellets for pucks, rolls of carbon fibre cloth for sticks, a rink swept of grit and leaves and skates hung up by their laces to dry. The past runs from an old roller rink hall with a maple floor and a long wooden rink building in a field to quad skates on wooden wheels, worn wooden wheels in a row, an old wooden stick with a straight blade, an old hard ball, an old wooden goal with a rope net and a rink left to the weeds.

Short notes run through the book, on the rules and how the game is played, the skates, sticks and pucks and how they are made, and the history of hockey on wheels: hockey skates have no heel brake, so skaters stop by turning their wheels sharply across their path, wheels are cast from urethane: softer ones grip a smooth indoor floor, harder ones last longer outdoors, each wheel turns on two small steel bearings, so a pair of skates rolls on sixteen, and shin guards with hard knee caps shield the legs from sticks, pucks and falls.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a hardcover with the art printed on the case.