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Leif

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Everything posted by Leif

  1. I have custom Bauer 2S Pro skates with the Edge holders and LS5 black steel blades. I recently noticed the blades clicking when walking rink side. On inspection I can see the left blade moving up and down perhaps 2 mm at the front when pushed. The right blade moves but less so, maybe 1 mm. I can still do skating drills such as forwards three turns, crossovers and power pulls. I’m a decent skater but a low level rec player, only play drop in games and training sessions plus 3 public skating practices a week. I skate typically 6 hours a week, the boots are 3 and a half years old, with long skating breaks during covid lockdowns. I rarely change blades, these are the second or third set. I don’t remove the blades and sharpen them at home once a week on a Sparx machine. These blades are 6 to 12 months old, loads of steel still left. This issue wasn’t present when I first got these blades, or with the previous blades. As an aside, Sparx seems to prolong the blade life compared to the LHS sharpen. It seems from this thread that the movement will noticeably slow me down during sprints. I will try some PTFE tape, or copper tape, I assume the latter is best. Or should I get new holders? Fortunately my LHS is very good, and I trust Mark, the tech guy. I believe it’s a quick job to swap out holders since no new holes are needed. Amazing skates, not so great holders.
  2. That’s the one I have, but I paid much less for it.
  3. Agree with the edge checker. I have a cheapie ebay one from Canada, looks poop, works fine. I also had a ProSharp one, I sent it back in disgust as it was out, never did get a refund. The Sparx one is the mutts, but it costs a wodge. Don’t turn the skate round, agreed, but that doesn’t give even edges, it just flips the misalignment round. Love my Sparx, recently I was able to test 1/2”, and 7/16” hollows, and ended up moving to 7/16” from my regular 3/8”. My edge control has improved so much that I can use a shallower hollow. Probably go to 1/2” soon. So convenient. And perfect edges every time.
  4. You’re going from 10/16” to 12/16”, a difference of two steps. I always considered 2 passes okay for 7/16” to 8/16” and back. I guess if we knew how much metal was removed on one pass, we could calculate the precise minimum number of passes required.
  5. You’d just end up using up the 1.25” wheel, which has the same total number of passes as other wheels, and then you’d have to put the original hollow back on, which also takes lots of passes. It might work out more expensive than lots of passes with the correct hollow. At least that’s how I see it. It’s a shame Sparx don’t do a bulk buy deal, but sales of wheels is probably a good money earner for them.
  6. I agree that one sample doesn’t say much, but I was adding to the comment by PBH who does see lots. I handled them, and the tongue was very hard, I can see that would be a pain point for some. FWIW I’ve never heard complaints about other Bauer skates or True customs.
  7. I was chatting to someone who has a pair. They’ve been back to Bauer UK three times, he hates them. The holders were misaligned, the shells damage easily, and the sides of the tongues are hard and dig into his feet causing pain. Pretty much matches the comments by PBH.
  8. I’ve since done several sessions at a rink with good ice, and I was okay in full kit. The local rink wasn’t so bad last week too. I’m convinced the ice was ‘off’, very hard perhaps. I do like slightly soft ice. As an aside, anyone know what hollow Crosby is currently on? Someone told me a coach weened him onto a flatter hollow. I’m sure he was on 3/8”.
  9. I grew out of yellow laces in my early fifties. Standard white unwaxed for me. I also don’t have lights underneath my skates. Or large furry panda ears on the sides of my helmet.
  10. I recently went from 7/16” to 3/8”, I’m 5’10” and 11 stone 7 pounds (161 pounds), I much prefer it. So I might end up trying 5/16” after all. My local rink has hard (cold) ice.
  11. That’s a good idea. Thanks. Much mire convenient than actually wearing kit too.
  12. Thanks all, I’ve been learning four years, and this seems recent. This evening I was at a different rink, I was fine. All I did different was tie my laces with tongues flopped, then tuck them in. I also went to a deeper hollow, from 7/16” to 3/8” which I really like. I am starting to suspect the ice is the issue, it’s really bad ice at my local rink, goalies slide backwards due to the slope, there’s a 3” water filled rut around one edge which is quite dangerous. A team mate who used to be the ice maintenance engineer said it was very brittle last Friday. The slopes might also be to blame. I’m back there on Wednesday.
  13. It’s not doing crossovers that is the issue, that’s okay, it’s when doing something like forwards power pulls or forwards cross rolls, the balance is lacking. I will try wearing pads and shorts in a public session and see how it goes. They don’t like too much hockey kit, except for the little kids in full kit, who shoot around getting in everyone’s way. 🤣
  14. I’m a decent skater, I take weekly lessons and I practice a few hours each week in public skating sessions. So my forwards and backwards crossovers are pretty good, and hockey stops and tight turns are not a problem. I started doing some of my skating drills, such as forwards cross rolls, and forwards power pulls, during the warm up period at the start of our drop in scrimmages. Anyway, I find I struggle to do my basic drills. Is this because the weight of the hockey kit is throwing off my balance? In which case I need more practice in kit. Or is it the constriction of movement caused by the shin pads, socks and shorts? It could also be the restriction of movement of my ankle due to the shin pads, I have the pads over my skate tongues. I might try tongue flopping and see if that makes a difference. I suppose I could try public skating with shin pads on. Incidentally I’m in England, and hockey ice time is scarce, hence why I skate mainly in public sessions.
  15. I cut holes in my hockey socks and shirts to reduce weight. Of course Jewish and Muslim men have another weight advantage, but I won’t go into details here, let’s just say there are some weight reduction measures that I consider too extreme.
  16. Indeed. And then Bauer copied Step steel with higher runners, and improved steel. So back then noone noticed a difference going to heavier runners, and yet we are now told that weight is a significant factor. I’ll just stick to ordinary non carbon runners made from decent steel.
  17. Exactly. And how does that figure compare to traditional steel runners, which of course never break. (Irony alert.) I presume aluminium runners are a no go because they wouldn’t hold an edge. Has anyone ever taken a traditional runner, and milled away a significant portion of the metal? I imagine a lattice structure would preserve a lot of the mechanical properties whilst reducing weight. Perhaps it is too hard to do economically, as stainless steel is not an easy material to machine, especially the hard kind used in runners. For higher end players these light runners might decide a game, but for average UK rec players (no idea about US and Canada) they’d be better off getting power skating lessons, learning more hockey technique, going to the gym, and losing weight, as suggested earlier. Oh, and another point. I remember when Step steel became popular, in part due to the increased height. That of course meant more steel and more weight. People were saying Step was so much better than Bauer steel for example. Now it seems that weight is no longer good, it’s bad. I’m confused … Maybe what we are seeing here is the applied placebo effect.
  18. I’m not suggesting that a skiiled sharpener routinely or often makes mistakes, the ones I trusted were very good, but my suspicion is that a human cannot maintain a truly constant pressure across the entire length of the blade. Over the course of a year the very tiny differences in the amount of metal removed lead to a noticeable change in the profile. I might be wrong - I can’t manually sharpen skates, and I’ve seen no research studies. Sparx make similar claims, admittedly they’re not a disinterested party. It’d be interesting to know how NHL equipment managers sharpen blades. Do they run blades right down? Do they regularly reprofile them? Do they routinely check the profiles? Are they so good that the profiles don’t change?
  19. Even my good LHS never did a perfect sharpening. In my experience the Sparx does the closest you’ll ever get. The profile is preserved, the edges are level, what’s not to like? Before I got one I drove 25 miles to get a sharpening. 50 miles round trip, a morning written off, petrol and car to pay for, and sharpening to pay for. There’s almost no learning curve with a Sparx. But do buy the edge checker ie BAT gauge.
  20. My last blades before I bought a Sparx went from standard Step profile to flat after a year. Manual sharpeners do of course vary in the amount of metal they take off, and their uniformity, and hence the rate at which the profile changes. I don’t believe that any manual sharpener can preserve the profile despite what most claim. I believe Sparx’s claim that their machine does not alter the profile, at least not noticeably so. Anyway, whichever profile you have, you’ll lose it soon enough! If you don’t like the idea of a quad profile, flog the blades unused and unsharpened.
  21. Regarding the second kind of custom skate, it’s not quite a retail skate as you can have different lengths and widths on each foot. Also we don’t know what slack they have in the width, it’s possible they can go wider or narrower than stock. But as you say, they use heat and pressure to mould to a custom last. In principle there could be feet that don’t suit this process as they are so far from stock. I have custom Bauers, and I get minor pain on the side of my big toes where they rub against what I assume is the join between the quarter package and the toe cap. Or maybe the toe cap is a tad narrow. The discomfort goes after a few minutes skating, possibly because I go into a hockey stance and the feet pull back. The problem might be because I have flipper shaped feet. That said, the skates are amazing, the best I’ve ever worn by far. A friend has custom Trues, and his feet go numb. He has problem feet and says the Trues are the best skates he’s ever worn. I’ve had two Bauer scans, a few years apart, and the results were noticeably different. The second was for off the shelf inline skates. Of course with stock skates you can try on several pairs to check the scan. Would this make a difference with customs? No idea.
  22. Unfortunately they are hard to get in the UK. It looks like the Vapor should suit, I’ll wait for some clearance ones to appear.
  23. I agree with your comments that we need a proper comparison by a disinterested party. I assumed the ProSharp claim of 500 sharpenings meant cycles, but they say 2-3 cycles per sharpen, and 500 pairs of skates per wheel. Assuming 2 cycles per sharpen, that means 2 * 2 * 500 cycles per wheel ie 2000, which compares to 320 cycles per Sparx wheel ie roughly 6 times as many cycles per ProSharp wheel. If only ProSharp stated the number of cycles per wheel! Assuming my figures are right, here in the UK a Sparx wheel is about £75, so one ProSharp wheel compares to £113 for a ProSharp wheel. Six Sparx wheels cost £450, which would last me 9 years, and an extra £337 over ProSharp. So for me in the UK the ProSharp Home is about £800 more expensive than a Sparx, it would take me over 20 years to start saving with the ProSharp. For a team of 20 players, they would save in one year assuming all use the same wheel. In practice you might need 4 or 5 wheels, so it’d take maybe 5 years to save. I think you need less time in the US to save as prices are much lower eg no VAT at 20%. I worked out that the Sparx paid for itself in three years, and I paid £1200, as I save on car use to and from the LHS at £10, and the cost of the sharpen at £8. Added later: I found further details about ProSharp wheels in a PDF here: https://www.prosharp.eu/pub_docs/files/Engelska/SkatePal-EP-wheels.pdf This states that for fine wheels, which hockey players will use, each wheel gives 1,000 cycles, so roughly 3 times as many sharpens as a Sparx wheel assuming 2 cycles per skate. The 500 sharpens figure from ProSharp must assume 1 cycle per sharpen, which IMO is inadequate unless you sharpen before each skate. In any case, my earlier figures are wrong, it’d take me 40 years to start saving with the ProSharp.
  24. I find it hard to believe that the Prosharp Home works out cheaper after 3 or 4 wheel changes. In the UK it is a bit over £1600 including tax and shipping. The Sparx is £787 including shipping and tax. We pay £70 for a wheel, so the difference is more than ten wheels. And the Sparx is cheaper in the US due to lower shipping costs. I bought the original Sparx which cost me £1200 including shipping. One Sparx wheel lasts me 18 months, one two pass sharpen per week. The reason the Sparx is cheaper is because it’s made in China, the ProSharp is made in Sweden.
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