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So it's official, the machine is a Fleming Gray, it's from the 1950's... I got lucky and called the guys over at Fleming Gray about what stone size I needed. I told them I wasn't sure what make my machine was And "Doug" I believe was his name asked if I could send him pictures... He said "Yup that's one of our old machines" who would have thought they would still support and help a guy with a machine that's almost 70 years old. They got me new stones for it. Extremely excited they knew what this machine was... I am absolutely blown away with the help I've gotten from you guys and from them..

Yeah, years ago, I started in the lowest level, because I couldn't find a team that would pick me up that was any higher, so I joined them. Skating-wise, I could skate two levels higher, play-wise, maybe one level higher. Anyway, as a strong skater, you might be on defense instead of winger or center.

I took it all apart, sand blasted everything (except for the machine finish on the table) then painted, replaced the old on/off switch with a pull to start, push to stop switch.. cleaned up the bearing and out fresh grease.. Now I'll wait on my new grinding wheel.. will also do like Salemskates said and look at getting a new holder for the skates.

While I'm not familiar with the US league system, I've experienced fast skaters across a few beginner leagues. My advise to them usually is: be aware of your potential speed, and use it when it makes sense. Imagine a TV camera catching your game, all players should always be in the same frame - a pass to a person half-ice up shouldn't be attempted. So don't sprint "away" from your team, don't go full speed all the time. Come back to your hashmarks, assist your puck-carrier, it is _your_ job to be open for passes as the man without the puck. Use your speed by _changing_ your speed - you always can go faster, while your opponents might not, if you use this as a deception this can be your greatest weapon. When you get the puck, use your speed to buy a few seconds to find open players, read the game. Being fast is a great base, but once you move up and others are as fast as you, but they are stronger on the basics (stick, positioning, etc) it gets very hard not to get frustrated. Use the novice league for gaining skill, so that you can be the type of player that assists you on those 1-3 C-D level pickups for the people in the novice league. This will further your skills and understanding way more. Side-note: Imho games don't build skills. Practice does. In a game you have <10 shots, in a practice you have that within a few minutes. Same for almost any other skill 🙂

I have followed this topic with curiosity and see that you have done a good job in cleaning up the machine. A will send a few comments which may help. Looking at the pictures from the front, it looks like the wheel is quite thick. The Fleming Gray wheels from this vintage machine should be 6" diameter x 1/4" thick x 3/4" arbor hole. If your wheel is thicker, you will get an off center dress. Fleming Gray does sell several wheels of this size. https://fleminggrayskatesharpeners.com Trying to get the hollow setting may be tricky, but it can be measured. Use a ruler or something similar to make a straight line along the center of the pivot point on the arm dresser to the front of the diamond dresser. (You probably will want to do this with the wheel cover removed.) The distance from the line to the tip of the diamond will be the ROH. If that is measured accurately, you can then mark the dresser for the various hollows. The skate clamp is critical to getting good results and must be properly adjusted to the right height for even edges. The holder that I saw at the beginning has a very old ramp style adjustment, which is hard to set up accurately and make minor adjustments. You might consider updating this to a newer/better type.

Ok I spoke to "the experts"... my 9yo son likes them, likes the colors and thinks the design on the reverse side is cool (has no idea who Beiber is). My 12yo daughter thinks they're lame (she's 12 and is VERY opinionated so this was an emphatic "lame!" 🤣), she has heard of Justin Beiber but doesn't know who he is or why he's famous. I mean maybe it's more aimed at local Toronto kids so maybe the rest of us are out of the loop but if it's aimed at kids I think more colorful and fun designs might be better (looking at you Dallas Stars with the obnoxious green on black that I absolutely hated at first but have come to realize it actually really works well... of course both of my kids loved it from the get go lol, I clearly wasn't the target demographic there either).

FWIW, hockey monkey doesn’t care about all the small shops they have run out of business. I wouldn’t feel the least bit bad milking every possible thing out of them without a second thought. These giant stores can’t undercut local shops and fall back on “just capitalism bro, nothing personal,” and then cry foul when consumers do the same thing to them. Fuck ‘em.

Not necessarily, when hockey is played like tennis it can be very frustrating for anyone! Somehow almost every kid feels compelled to whack the pack as soon as they get in contact with it sending in a random direction. Work in progress…

Hey Everyone! I organized all the reviews into a table with the links to each person's post. This way, you can easily see how they transitioned through each profile and read through the review chronologically. It was a little difficult to organize because people were usually getting back several runners in batches, but I tried my best. I wanted to share a direct link to the spreadsheet, but wasn't sure how to do that anonymously, so the data has just been pasted in several posts below. I have it sorted via the following ways: 1) Username, 2) Runner Size, and 3) Hollow. I wanted to somehow sort by hockey experience as well, but it was difficult to standardize everyone's experience. I just took snippets from the info they provided. Table Legend Highlighted in green are the final profiles the user decided on. In yellow are either their 2nd place picks, ties for 1st/2nd place, or the profile that they liked out of the ones they tried, but it didn't seem like they finished their profiling "journey". (Personally, I never finished mine because I kept getting injured on/off for the whole year, then I found I needed new skates, and then COVID happened.) My Observations It took people an average of +4 profiles from stock (so technically 5 total) to figure out which one they liked. Of the 7 users who distinctly stated their favorite profile, 6/7 picked a Quad. 2/7 picked a Triple (Hudson V). Of the ones users would have been happy with (yellow) if they hadn't tried out their favorite profile, most were tied on triples and quads. This leads me to believe that the majority of people would benefit from trying out a triple or quad profile, but in this region, the differences start to become smaller, so you get into diminishing returns. Honorable Mention: @gevorkya's journey was interesting to read because they ended up trying several different hollows on the same profile to land on their favorite. (Read their Quad 1 review for reference.) Hopefully this helps people out a bit if they want to try out profiling! Last I checked, most places didn't offer profiles, but it seems like even big retailers are starting to offer it. Edit//Link to Excel version of spreadsheet.

Just sketched this up. Nothing revolutionary, but it's pretty true to the original.

Agreed, or chase the coach or anything where there are unexpected changes of direction, acceleration, etc. I think my son may have gotten better at public skate with friends as much as anything formal. Keep it fun and they won't even know they are learning!

To keep busy while in covid confinement, I learned to use Shotcut video editor and made a video of "myselves". There's even a small hockey reference in it.

"BEST DESIGN FLAW EVER!!!!!!!!!!"

Those blades and holders in the pictures are garbage and should be replaced? Why bother fixing junk? I said this was happening 3 years ago and everyone said I was on Crack. Guess it was good stuff!

Every edge holder I have seen that was clicking, when I put it in the carriage to sharpen the boot flopped. Put 200lbs of force into the boot as you push half way thru your stride and that sideways flex is only going to get worse. Whilst you can skate like this, its the loss of speed and edge control that is the worry. Testing players from standing starts (using electronic timers) and then I repair the holder (using teflon tape and pressing the blade into the holder for a secure fit) and they are all quicker in the next set of tests. You raise an interesting point, how will Marsblade deal with this? It's one thing to have it feel good as you turn and glide but if you suffer any loss of speed during acceleration then it's not going to work.

Problem with sloppy fit is that every stride the steel bangs the plastic parts inside the holder and wears them out at a progressively higher rate. It is like a bad ball joint in the suspension, once it starts clicking, it just getting worse and worse and eventually falls apart

he ain't nuts ....the older /more ice time they get ..the more they move around . i am aware ...cause whenever possible , I separate steel from the boot to achieve a more precise sharpening!! the trigger feature to remove steel is cool and a marketing gimmick ...but for 20 seconds of labour more, you get real screws to really tighten the steel and eliminate any free play !!