Leaderboard

My Sparx is just over 5 years old. It shipped Jul 2016. My two boys were in minor hockey at the time and they now play Jr A and NCAA. I play beer league a couple times a week. I've never had a single problem with the Sparx in that time. I routinely do 2 passes every couple of games/practices to keep our edges always 'like new'. I very rarely do more than 2. I've sharpened everything from Step Steel to stock steel and the Sparx handled them all equally well. When coming home from Jr A seasons my boys' steel was usually destroyed from a profile perspective because of their team equipment managers sharpening on BladeMaster machines. The toe and heels were significantly rounded off from the manual machines. Sharpening on the Sparx (which I have done for my own skates exclusively) has never affected the profile on my steel, so my blades last a lot longer than theirs do. But then again they are on the ice practically ever day vs. twice a week for me. I don't have any experience with the ProSharp unit so I can't offer any comparison head to head. Yes, it would be great if Sparx wheels were cheaper but honestly at the current prices and the way I use my machine, it's simply incredible value to me and our family and has been since the first day it arrived. Russ owns the company so yes take his words with a grain of salt as everyone has their own biases, but Russ is an engineer not a business or marketing guy. Everything I have read or watched (lots of great Sparx history on youtube) from Russ was logical, fair, balanced and very much what you would expect from an engineer with a background in industrial design. I was in on the Kickstarter like many others here, and for that first year or so when timelines kept slipping I'm sure we all wondered whether Sparx was ever going to deliver on their promise of a revolutionary home skate sharpening machine... well 5 years later after their first launch I can say from my own experiences with the product that they exceeded my expectations, and pretty much nailed it right from the first revision of the machine. For a small company like Sparx, that's pretty impressive when you consider what went into getting the first units out the door.