Vet88

Don't keep your right hand up, get it level with the stick hand and let your arms move in motion with your body. If you keep your right hand up you are skating in a position that is totally different to when you want to hold the stick in 2 hands, this is why you skate with the hands relatively level to each other when you are skating with one hand on the stick. A transition to 2 hands on the stick means the top hand comes up a little and the bottom hand drops down a little but your shoulders, torso and balance are still consistent to your one hand on stick stance.

It's great seeing how much you have improved. My thought is that you are now beginning to repeat / reinforce bad skating technique. Looking at the way you are skating you are too much on your inside edge and are using the sides of the boot to accelerate with, turn etc. To correct it it doesn't matter how much I or anyone else talks to you about this, this can only be learned by muscle memory experience. The approach I use is to get players to start lacing 1 eyelet down, practice like this then just as you start to feel comfortable, drop another eyelet. Keep going until you get to 4 down (the top 4 eyelets not laced). At this stage your ankles have no support from the boot, they have to hold you upright and you have to be skating on top of the blade or your foot will collapse. Game time you lace back up to where you are comfortable with but every non game skate you drop eyelets. If you really want to see how much impact this has on your skating, next time you have access to a goal on the rink undo 2 or 3 eyelets and then try and push the goal across the rink. If you have good technique you will be fine, if you use the sides of your boot in any way at all as leverage during the push your foot will collapse inwards and you have no power in the push. ps - and on those turns really focus on getting the inside foot more forward. Try stepping into the turn / pushing forward with the inside foot, not just gliding into it.

The sad part here is that you had someone at the LHS say it was fine......

You can use them but you need to cut the lugs off and epoxy them in place to stop them turning. I also ground a slot in the top of the nut so I could use a screwdriver to help with installation / removal.

"Because the base layer is protected the abrasive" - I'm kind of struggling to understand this sentence. Lets assume it was meant to be "Because the base layer is protected by the abrasive" then it isn't really talking about the abrasive at all. It's talking about the base layer. I'd expect the base layer to retain its shape, it's the profile of the abrasive after 200 passes that I would be interested in. But on the other hand lets assume somehow the sentence is about the abrasive and it's profile is always "PERFECT". As an engineer who has spent a lot of years working with abrasives I find this particularly hard to swallow. You have a product that by the very nature of its work wears away every time it is used. Let alone the fact that the entire surface of the profile of the grinding wheel is not in contact with the skate blade (the outer edges do not contact, do these just mysteriously evaporate away?) you have minute variations in the shape of the hollow of the blade that causes + / - grind resistance as the wheel does it work. And if you ever changed your hollow then this would only magnify the issue. Otherwise what they are saying is they have invented an abrasive that never changes shape during it's life span, its wear is even and consistent REGARDLESS of the shape of the surface it is in contact with. If this is the case then they are wasting their time making skate sharpeners, I can think of a dozen better applications they could put this technology to use with...

How do you check the grinding ring for accuracy of hollow after x sharpenings? Using other sharpening systems one would dress the wheel before sharpening the blades (either to change hollow or to ensure the wheel was still true at it's setting) so how does sparx retain the accuracy of the hollow on the grinding ring?

This might cause a volume issue but as a test it could help to prove your arch issue. If you have any old footbeds lying around, cut the arch out of them and slip them into your boot. this will give your foot a lift or around 1mm - 2mm (depending on the thickness of the footbed) and relieve any pressure on your arch due to the boot pushing up into it. If you can skate pain free in the arch this way then keep working away at getting that arch lower, if you still have pain then you may need to rethink what the cause is.

Some machines have a clamp that runs the length of the blade (eg Incredible Edger machine) and I haven't seen a blade yet that these can't straighten for the sharpen. When you take them out of the clamp then that's another matter, they are still bent and as hard as I have tried, I haven't found a way to reliably straighten them. I was told if you retemper them whilst clamped in a shaping jig then you can have some success but that seems a lot of work for a $50 blade. Better of spending your time and money on a quality blade like Step etc.

And I don't disagree with you, I think they have created a very good product that fills a niche at the bottom to good end of the sharpening spectrum and the "I just want to sharpen skates at home" market. IMHO there are a lot of rinks and shops out there that could benefit from having one of these, by removing the barely trained operator from the equation they could give consistent results. I've had these kinds of people sharpen and butcher my blades so I know exactly what you are talking about. However I was lucky enough to meet one the better sharpeners in the business and have spent the last few years learning from him, it is worth it when you find a good sharpener but that hunt can be a difficult and frustrating process.

Yep, there ain't no machine that will tell you the stone doesn't sound right as the blade runs over it or the pass just doesn't feel right. A machine solution will give you a sharpen but a good experienced operator will give you a great sharpen and there is night and day difference between the 2.

Really? And here you are squeezing the sides in to a visible dent to try and get a better fit? Your a consumer dealing with one or a couple of experiences with a graf skate, if it works for you then well done and of course you may have nothing negative to say about it. That is your experience. Yet there are a number of comments here from members that deal with skates at the coal face, ie those customers who come back with QC problems. And of those customers, my experience was that there were disproportionately more Graf customers than any other skate brand. Note that I'm still not saying the skate is rubbish, when the issues were put right customers loved the skate but dealing with these issues was a constant pita. If Graf ever want to get the support of retailers back again to sell their product then this is the kind of thing they need to overcome.

Even more true after watching the NA vs Finland game, NA playing with out and out pace with transitions happening immediately at flat out speed and a huge dollop of skill. Brings to mind a conversation I had with a pro inline player a few years ago when he told me he was retiring from the game at the age of 26, his comment as to why was because all these young bucks at the ages of 16 and younger were starting to skate rings around him. The game is a changing.

That doesn't say much for Sweden after Europe took them to the cleaners the other day, but I thought it was 2 potentially good teams playing a very average game. Agreed that NA is the dark horse and I hope they get out of group play, up front all the skill in the world but their defence is a worry.

Commenting on just the scanning, I've seen and worked on a number of applications that use this type of technology. If it's similar the scan is pretty good, it uses algorithms (not to far removed from facial and fingerprint scanning) to determine the image and placement and everything inside the image borders are rendered reasonably accurately. Whilst a dedicated, fixed work area using multiple lasers or cameras will give a highly accurate rendering, it's expensive and difficult to distribute and maintain in a retail sales environment. It can only get better if they continue to develop the software. An alternative process is to use a camera to take pictures of your foot then upload the pictures for them to be rendered into a 3d image, I've seen a company working on this (real estate company builds a 3d image of your home which you can use VR to walk through) and the results are damn good. I wish VH would follow this path, a near perfect last (use a 3D printer) to build a boot (eventually using a 3D printer for this) regardless of where you live in the world. Here is an example of using 123D catch (free software even) to build a last from photos: http://www.123dapp.com/123C-3D-Model/Foot/866435 I'd even pen this as an open letter to VH, if you could work with software like this to create lasts in your factory from photos taken locally, I could personally send around 150 skaters your way overnight..... And yes, this kind of technology turns the distribution market on its head but I suspect its only a matter of when before someone tools up for this.

Live stream or tv: DATE TEAMS TIME (ET) HOW TO WATCH Thu., Sept. 8 Sweden vs. Finland noon ESPN3 Czech Rep. vs. Russia 12:30 p.m. ESPN3 North America vs. Europe 8 p.m. ESPN2 Fri., Sept. 9 Canada vs. USA 7 p.m. ESPNU Sat., Sept. 10 Russia vs. Czech Rep. 10:30 a.m. ESPN3 Finland vs. Sweden noon ESPN3 USA vs. Canada 7 p.m. ESPN3 Sun., Sept. 11 Europe vs. North America 6 p.m. ESPN3 Tue., Sept. 13 Finland vs. USA 7 p.m. ESPN Wed., Sept. 14 Czech Rep. vs. North America 3:30 p.m. ESPN3 Sweden vs. Europe 7 p.m. ESPN3 Russia vs. Canada 7:30 p.m. ESPN2

I loved my graf skates for fit but only after: - I hammered down all of the staple ends in the footbed - added step steel to fix the stock steel that was bent and started to rust just at the thought of moisture - loctited the blade holder in place to stop the blade clicking and moving - added patches to the liner to stop early and rapid wear - then finally replaced the holders with tucks (because the blade would not sit straight in cobra 5000 holder because the holder is just poorly made) And then ended up doing similar work of varying degrees to just about every other graf skate in our local leagues (28 at last count). All had an issue of one kind or another, all fixable but just really poor QC. Fit and comfort is what Graf are really known for, if Vaughan can fix the rest at the right price point then they might be able to start a resurrection amongst retailers and players bit it's going to take a lot effort and they are going to have to front up with some really good customer service initiatives.

Personally I'd be disappointed with a length fit like this for custom skates unless you specified that length (I know players who do have their toes around 1cm off the toe cap to help prevent broken toes from pucks). Your toes look to sit around 1cm off the toe cap and that is one size too long. However length may not be as important with customs if the rest of the boot fits perfectly and your heel, ankle and rest of the foot are locked in securely.

and length comparison to 1x / apx2's?

Put some lipstick on your bone and then foot in the boot, the lipstick will transfer to the boot and give a mark as to where to punch. Then get the boot punched out and you will be fine. Or do it yourself, it's not hard with about $10 - $15 of parts. this is one of the easiest punches you can do. As you were in apx2's, how would you compare them in the heel area for width and overall length? Would you say they are narrower in the heel?

Bake then punch unless you over punch. Every time you bake the boot material has a tendency to return to its original state hence you lose some of the punch.

Hate to diasgree but there are literally hundreds of examples out there where toe starts are exactly where you use that part of the blade. For example have a look at this at the 1 minute mark as he hits the ice in his 1st, 2nd and 3rd stride:

Assuming your first release to market has the product pitched as an after market kit to replace existing frames on a boot, are you going to supply a mounting kit (say t-nuts and bolts or graf style mounts)? My one big wish for this frame is that you would add a small lug to the outside and inside of each mounting hole. This would allow a user to cross drill a slot in the frame (unless this was done at manufacturing) allowing the frame to be repositioned on the boot after fitting (aka speed skating style of mounting or the holder on the MLX ice skate).

Couple of questions: If one is not based in the US or Canada, will there be any online shops stocking them? What parts will be available? Warranty? One assumes the axles are set up for 608 bearings? Are the mounting holes set up to match any other existing frames eg hilo or labeda spacings?

Forsberg pads work really well, I skated with them for many years until I moved to a different solution. Pipe insulation also works well as material for the forsberg pad. Alternatively try a lace extender (which is what I now use), either make your own or buy them from http://www.greatsaves.org/ This thread will give you lots of detail as to how they work

What size were you in compared to the NXG's?