zebra_steve

Daoust Super National 501 - Loved them had several pairs and would still be using them if they were still made. - Custom boot Bauer Supreme 100 - with BLACK SLM blades... they seemed to hold an edge MUCH better than the white ones. - Stock boot Bauer Supreme Comps - Heavier than my 501's but comfortable. Daoust (and Lange) was bought by Canstar and they really cheapened the 501's before killing them - Custom boot Graf Supra 707 - Comfortable but fell apart way too soon. - Custom boot CCM Crazy Light - Most comfortable "modern boot" that I've had..... Custom boot. I'm old school and learned to skate on boots that allowed for forward ankle bend and foot\toe extension ant the end of the stride. Back then, we did everything we could to get them as laterally stiff as possible but still have the proper hinge.... If you've never worn a pair of stitched leather boots that were properly broken in to your feet then you have no idea what comfortable skares really are.

Well, Saw the Ortho today... She's not worried about the break, said it should heal just fine without a cast. That's a good thing 'cuz I was not looking forward to having a cast crotch to floor.... but she's more concerned about my ankle - said that my ankle injury is "sort of like a high ankle sprain, but worse"???? SOOOOOO, It's "RICE" and wait.....

I just wanna forget 2013... Started it with a med grade PCL tear, torn cartridge and meniscus right knee.. back on the ice August and now this.... Left leg just below my knee plus some sort of splinter fracture just above my ankle and a really badly twisted ankle... Seeing Otho doc tomorrow - at least it wasn't the spiral fracture of the tibia that I feared when I did it:

I broke my leg this morning,,,,

On the Ti Nitride coating... didn't ccm have this on their SLM blades back int the 1980's? ChrisMolnar, Just curious, did your dad do a rockwell C test? Polish and etch the samples to compare grain structure - photo-micrographs maybe? Maybe some sort of spectrometer test to determine the chemical composition of the samples? I'd be curious about the details as I've spent some time in a metallurgy lab myself.....

That's great to hear... In my players case, he got them sharpened but the edge was slightly off (not level) in the front half of both skates. I could see it when I looked after the game at the parents request. The player didn't notice it during the game.

Got a question for ya.... mainly because I had a kid with this issue tonight and I forgot my round and slip stones at home - lucky that they had no wait so it was not an issue. You have that hour plus back up and a kid comes off the ice early in the first period with a totally blown edge.... do ya grind his skates ASAP or tell him that it "sucks to be you" and you'll have them done in time for tomorrow afternoons game?

HAHAHA..... I had a similar situation before my last job.... One wanted to hire me but was worried I would bail after a month or two as I had a consulting firm wanting to bring me on for a bit more money (but the interview process would take a month or more) but I would have been traveling 75% of the time and had a 2 yr old at home. I needed to have cash coming in and didn't want to do that to the wife and kid so I took the more stable position and was there for 9 years.

Had three phone interviews today. One didn't work out, one possibly has me in the running for a position as a Global Network Admin (Contract to hire @ $39/hr). The third waived the face to face interview and is moving forward with tendering an offer on a 6 month contract position..... probably about $25/hr. Now I have to decide if I take an offer and get back to work after 17 months without a job or hope that I get offered the bigger $$ position.

Was long enough ago that I can't "prove" it was them.... not gonna make an issue of it. It was part of a package deal for some basic maintenance and a state inspection.... It all turned out OK.... Mechanic fixed that and a leaking power steering system, as well as cleaning all of the oil and power steering fluid out of the engine compartment for $60....

Went to meet the rest of the crew to carpool to a game Friday night. Oil pressure warning comes on as I reach the parking lot where we were meeting. No time to deal with it... worry about it after we get back. get back at midnight and there is a huge puddle of oil under the car.... UH OH! Have the drop me at home and call the garage first thing in the morning. He can't get it towed over until about 4pm so no car for the weekend.... Mechanic just called to tell me that the wrong oil filter was on the car and it was blowing past the seal - Last place to change the oil was a fricking DEALERSHIP! JEEEZE! At least it wasn't a main seal that would've required an engine rebuild.

BCS, I can feel your pain..... Been there, done that... every one new to the job hunt is in the same position.... It's not any easier on this side of the fence - Yeah, I have 9 years experience but no 4 year degree.... I've also been on the other side of the interview process and usually an HR pencil pusher is screening the resume's and figure that someone fresh out of school with a sheepskin is somehow better than someone with a decade of real world experience. Right now it's a buyers market... I've actually seen postings for entry level Helpdesk support positions that require a 4 year degree AND 5 years experience! Yeah right....

Cory, At least you HAVE a job... I've been unemployed and looking since September of 2009! And since we're venting..... All those companies and consulting agencies that tell you that you had a great interview and you'll be hearing about the "next step" in their interview process - and then you never hear from them again!

I have my own wheel and can put whatever ROH on it that I want. You would think that it would be easy.... I've tried to shallow up numerous times. The thing is, I'm refereeing games literally every other day and I cannot afford to skate on what feels like dull blades.... It's not fair to the players if my game is off because I feel like I'm sliding around too much. I would have to try to do it over the summer while playing - provided I could make the time to play twice a week. I have hardly ever been off the ice for more than two consecutive weeks in the past 20 years and have been skating 3\8 ROH for over 30 years. A whole bunch of muscle memory to overcome....

Ok so here's my question then.... I've tried a 100/75 but the edges were uneven so it was hard to tell if the bite was too much or sufficient... It was "grabby" but this could easily have been the unevenness of the edges. If it turns out that 100\75 does have just a bit more bite than I want, what other profile would you suggest? Like I said, I want to get a set of runners done 100/75 (again) and a second set a little tamer.... This is a lot easier to accomplish if you have taken a long time off v.s.when you are on the ice almost daily. If a deeper hollow is what you are used to (and especially if you keep good, fresh edges on your skates) then you have to be willing to go for quite a while skating on what "feels like" dull skates.

Thanks Chadd, I think that I've seen that before but never had a chance to save a copy..... Now I have a better idea of what to try. I'm gonna get a couple sets of spare runners and have someone grind them to a couple different FBV to play with them this spring....

With "super soft ice" you may as well be skating in mud... or running in deep dry sand with a 100 pound backpack..... There is a reason we switch to shallower "hollows" when going to really soft ice.... Go shallower and find a happy medium, or maybe get a couple sets of runners and have one set for each rink....The point is, experiment and find out what works for you. Coming from inline you probably feel like you are attached to rails on the ice with what you are skating on now. As to the "training wheel hollow"...... to each his own.... some folks will never be comfortable on shallow hollows regardless of their skating ability. You have to experiment and find out what works for you.

Here ya go: My HS Alumni game this year. My line (all five skaters) had 237 years of age on the ice.... And I thought you might like the view on these pics taken on the rink outside of Heinz Field a couple days before the Winter Classic:

Don't forget about the holes in the rubber matting in front of every door exposing the cement! If the drain is brass or bronze you might get away with it cuz your blade should be harder.... But still better off being careful.

Thanks Jimmy.... That answers a lot of questions in my mind.... Didn't realize that you were having runners shipped in for sharpening.... The volume and verification procedure makes much more sense now.

Ummmm Jimmy ...... I gotta play devils' advocate here and ask you if you are really saying that you sharpened ~41 pairs of skates every day for three years? Not saying that that volume is not possible or unusual 'cuz I've been there on an occasion or two, but that's one heck of a volume in my mind. If you do a pair every 6 minutes then you have 4 hours of grinding every day - for 3 years..... Thinking about it makes my back hurt! Rachael, I HATE THE CAG ONE - but my experience with them was nearly two decades ago! Maybe they've improved since then. I was thinking more like a marriage between a wheel, a spinner, and a CNC machine.... The real hard part would be to isolate the blade and wheel without something like this.

So how about a layman's solution.... pull the felt off and readjust the clamp back to center... no compression to deal with - at least from the felt.... The real issue with the inconsistencies would be going from one spinner to another (same size old to new), or one shop to another (if the spinners are on opposite ends of the tolerance)..... Same shop and same spinner then no big deal until they replace the spinner.... When I tried the FBV, I liked it enough to research the cost to retrofit my ROH sharpener with a magnetic base spinner ..... For now, I'm staying with ROH for economic reasons.... IMHO - I see the biggest issue with the spinner vs the ROH dressing diamond is that I only spend $25 on a new diamond vs $85 per spinner and I can adjust for the full range of hollows I want with one ROH diamond. To do the same with FBV I need to drop $85 per spinner and if the tolerance claim is to be believed I might get two differently labeled spinners that are nearly identical?

Chadd, My comment was not a shot at you or your comment and I understood what you were saying..... This could easily be a thread all to itself, - and probably has at some point. I have worked the retail side - albeit before the boom of internet sales - and do understand the issues that shop owners have these days. It's really hard to match internet prices so you have to make the folks want to do business with you. It may come down to the "services" that you offer and how a customer is treated when they are in your shop. IMHO There is a difference between trying to protect your business and being too focused on the all-mighty dollar. I have walked into a shop searching for information and assistance - with the understanding up front that I intended to do business with them if they still offered the services I was looking for. The owner told me that he no longer did that and since he couldn't profit from it he would not help me out with any information. That really turned me off and I will never set foot in that shop again. Unfortunately, I have run across many folks that will not help someone unless they can profit from it.... not quite the same as where I believe you are coming from. And yes, it has to be frustrating to have people constantly walking through looking at your inventory and say, "we're just looking".... Yeah, they want to decide between a couple different model gloves so they can go buy them from some internet store.... As for how a shop could go about fitting\trying on skates without being a fitting service for internet shops, I have a few ideas but don't want to hijack this thread any more than we have. And just to get back on topic a bit....I too have spent hours repairing some other rink\shops butchered work. As for amortizing the cost of the machine too, if you buy a $20,000 3 head unit and charge $10 per sharpening and average 3 sharpenings a day you will be very close to paying the unit off - including the consumables used - over a two year period - three or so might be more realistic. Where MnPucker might have been going was to try to induce a customer to try out an FBV grind from your brand new machine - and "since it is a bit different from ROH, I'll give you a sharpening at three different profiles for the cost of two or two and a half sharpenings" to 1)help to convince you to use this new technology 2)to show you that we know what we are doing in this shop and 3)to give you a reason to come back here to continue paying me to put the FBV on your skates and help to pay off my investment in this new technology...... Or, MnPucker meant that "it costs me the price of several sharpenings to figure out what I like and that's stopping me from trying it.....you should help defray my cost". If that's the case then I wholeheartedly agree with you... whether FBV or ROH, at some point you are experimenting to find your feel.... Same deal, just two different ways to look at it....

Lots of places have specials or sharpening cards that give you 10 cuts for the price of 9... pay for it up front and just present the card for stamp\punches... It shows the customer that you are not out to gouge them for their last penny and you still have one time grind fee for the passing customer. I see it as good customer relations.... And there are shop owners that are very professional and knowledgeable, but have shown through their actions that they intend to squeeze every last drop of blood from that stone.... they "nickle and dime" customers at every turn. I get the feeling that they would love to find a way to charge you to have a conversation because they have the knowledge and you don't. They get no business from me... they come across as just plain greedy and money hungry.... I look at things a bit differently than those places that have a "house cut" and charge extra if they have to dress the wheel. A wheel is what, $20-$25 and a dressing diamond for an ROH machine is another $20-$25.. a spinner is ~$90. So $50-$110 for the consumables... charging $10 per cut and you have the consumable paid for in 5 to 10 cuts and you get a whole lot more than 10 cuts out of a wheel (note I am not amortizing the cost of the unit, just the consumables as this is the excuse given to charge more). Sorry, dressing the wheel is integral to getting a good sharpening... I would RUN away from any place that balks at or wants to charge extra for dressing the wheel... It needs to be done anyway.... If you have 2 heads, you can set one up for 1"- 5/8" ROH and the other for 1/2" and deeper.... This will minimize wheel loss going from say 7/8" to 3/8" ROH dressing. I have seen a bunch of places that only allow one or two people to dress the wheel (actually have the diamond and the quill under lock and key) but have a whole barrel of semi-trained ...uhmmmm.... employees that run skates across the wheels. I have even seen a sign that said, "When you pay for a sharpening, we guarantee nothing more than you will have two edges. The edges may or may not be even." YES, There is a very big reason that no one else touches my blades unless it's an emergency. JR, Do you happen to know what the difference in height is? I just really don't care for how that consumer unit is put together..... I like the U-02 or maybe the U-12 better...

That perceived potential benefit is what has my wheels turning.... good thing I'm really low on capital or it would cost me money... I have a couple skate holders, wonder if I can get the x-01 cheaper w\o a holder?