marka

Howdy, I _think_ this is a pretty good deal for Mako folks? CXN holder w/runner for $30, plus 25% off at HockeyMonkey. http://www.hockeymonkey.com/catalog/product/view/id/140459 Mark

Howdy, My time at the local rink tonight would have made a great advertisement for Sparx. :-) Local rink guy I'm friendly with (and remain so) sharpened my skates but edges were _way_ off. Like, very easily visible to the eye. He didn't see it before he gave them back. Not adversarial and he was kinda embarrassed when I pointed it out. Then he tried to cut them again, without much better results. During this whole process, it was clear that he could do the job when everything worked right, but didn't have enough experience to recognize/fix other problems. He's a nice guy (I'd say "kid", but he's probably in his 30's, so that mostly shows that I'm old I think... :-) and wanted to do the right thing, but just didn't have the experience / knowledge. My guess is that something was wonky with the holder but ?? Anyway, making a long story short, my skates are still up there and the old guy that knows more will cut them tomorrow. On most levels, no harm, no foul. Sure a little steel is gonna be gone that really shouldn't be, but hey whatever. But I'm still wishing I had my own sharpener (absent that whole $900 to buy one thing :-). Mark

Howdy, Anyone used either of these? I wouldn't mind owning an edge height checker, but $100 for a BR100 seems a little silly after having used one at the local rink. Mark

Howdy, Kicked in the head by a student in the classroom? WTH? Mark

Howdy, I don't have the experience lots of you guys do, but I really like the Warrior Pro bag I ended up with after going through a couple cheap used bags. The only thing I'd change on it would be to change the straight zipper through the middle to a "flap" style top opening. Mark

Howdy, Is there a reason the skate clamp can't be wider, if mildly bent blades are a common problem? Mark

Howdy, Interesting. I'll give it a shot. I tried one of these at my last old guy hockey: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GF28UFO/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 It "worked" in the sense that I had way less sweat issues but after having it on for a while it felt like someone was driving an icepick into my head. Just too much pressure. I may try adjusting my helmet even bigger (I put it out another notch-ish) and give it another go, but I think the real answer is contacts. Mark

Howdy, Re: bent blades, wouldn't a sufficiently stiff clamp fix this, at least in terms of keeping the center of the stone in the center of the blade? My only real experience with this was buying some used skates for my son. The monkey at the Play it Again store "sharpened" them before I talked with him (he wouldn't have had the chance after I talked with him, given that he didn't have any idea what radius of hollow he was using or anything else beyond "my manager sets the machine up every now and then and tells us not to adjust anything". lol!) Anyway, in addition to other issues, the blade was bent a bit and that made the poor sharpening even worse. To fix this, I removed the steel and then basically just played with various shims and pressure on the blade on the bench until it was "more straight" (I would be quite surprised if it were _actually_ straight to the thousandth or whatever). Then I got my local rink guy to sharpen it and it came out looking & skating reasonable. Anyway, through that I learned that at least those blades moved fairly easily. I would assume that most subtle bends could fairly easily be eliminated _during the sharpening process_ by a sufficiently stiff blade clamp. And that should produce good edges, even if when you remove it from the blade clamp the bend comes right back. Somewhat related assumption, my guess is that as long as the edges are consistent, a minor bend in a blade isn't going to be noticeable when you're skating. Curious about your thoughts though! Mark

Howdy, LOL. Don't be. There's every chance that I don't mind the sharpenings I get because I suck enough not to notice any issues.... :-) Seriously, I've had a couple bad sharpenings and yeah that sucked. So I'm a little more careful about who sharpens my stuff and I eyeball it some when I pick it up to look for really bad problems. I also use standard sharpenings vs. FBV or whatever... If I wanted to use FBV / Fire then a Sparx would make more sense for my situation. Mark

Howdy, For me, the Sparx machine seems like a great thing for those who need or want it, but I have to assume there are a hell of a lot of folks like me out there and I'm pretty firmly in the camp of "I'm reasonably happy with most sharpenings I get and I can pay for a hell of a lot of $6 sharpenings before I get to the cost to buy and maintain a Sparx machine". Mark

Howdy, Yeah, I do the shampoo thing now and that for sure helps with fogging. But I think it works by causing the fog to condense. Add in some sweat and there's frequently a layer of "liquid-y" stuff that still fucks with vision (but not quite as bad as actual fog. I tried a forehead sweatband thing, and it added way too much pressure to my forehead. How do you use the tennis sweatbands? Mark

Howdy, Speaking of sticks btw, I'm going to try out one of these "two year old top end" sticks... Had a $40 credit at HockeyMonkey, coupled with Warrior QR1's being on sale for $140 and 25% off... Ended up being ~$65 out of pocket and I couldn't say no. :-) Should be here next week. Mark

Howdy, So, haven't done one of these in a while... The executive summary of my current issue with hockey is "Look, _then_ pass". My skills are still increasing, most notably I handle the puck better now than before. Shots are still pretty "meh". Getting better at receiving imperfect passes with my skates. Getting a little stronger in terms of skating. Etc. But my Achilles heel right now is that I'll get the puck / go get the puck and then make some stupid "pass to where I apparently think someone should be", without actually looking well. And of course, 95% of the time, that ends up being a turnover. Which sucks for everyone. So now, before I go out on a shift my mantra is going to be "Look, then pass". My son's hockey is going reasonably well. He's in a house league about 30 minutes away at another rink (the local rink only has travel hockey and they didn't have room for a goalie. The house league seems a little better in intensity as well. I'm helping coach. That's been going ok. The head coach is a good guy and I think I've been helping. My son has been having fun too, it seems like. He doesn't like it as much as soccer, but he still says he has fun. Lately he's been wanting to skate out vs. being in goal, but this week he'll be back to getting into the net. He may have his first game every next weekend if it gets put together and he'll be in goal. That could be interesting. Hopefully he'll have fun with it. The house league itself has been interesting due to the mix of players. Being a house league, the ages are way more mixed than normal kid hockey... There are four or so Squirts (10 and under), 5 or 6 PeeWees (12 and under), and 5 or 6 Bantams (14 and under). I think I've got those names right btw. USA Hockey smartly is going to names like 10U, 12U, 14U, etc. to account for this "WTF? I haven't been doing this for 100 years" issue, but its not there yet. Anyway, before the first practice I'm standing there with my son (in his goalie stuff) getting ready to head out on the ice with the rest of the kids and one of the older kids is standing next to me. And he's my height, with a stick as tall as the one I use. And I realize that this kid with the same leverage as me is going to possibly be shooting pucks at my 9 year old and I'm like "Uh.... I'm not so sure about this!" :-) Luckily, being a house league none of these kids really seem able to fire rockets. Probably I shouldn't have worried though... Yesterday at a local practice with him I ended up glancing a shot off his head. :-) He was fine. Mostly just surprised both of us, no damage. Equipment wise for me, coming up on a year doing this I think the biggest surprise is just how consumable stuff is. My gloves are starting to get holes in the palm of my top hand. The skates I used since Jan of last year until just recently were wore holes into the top of the inside liner. The stick I've liked the best for the last while I noticed today has the toe split. Etc. Couple that with me getting used to what I like and I don't think I'm still using _any_ equipment I started with. My next piece of equipment is going to be contact lenses. Playing with glasses sucks. And contacts are essentially free with vision insurance, vs. surgery which is like $3.5k or whatever. So, going to try contacts when I'm playing hockey. Not expecting them to work well with computer screens (I tried this once before like 20+ years ago) due to my astigmatism, but we'll see. Anyway, turns out vision matters and blurred vision due to sweat on glasses / glasses falling down your head inside your helmet is not a benefit. Anyway, that's way long enough. So yeah... Still hockey-ing. Mark

Howdy, Replacement steel for these... I was bored and looking around online... I don't have a need yet for new steel, but is it available? It seems like the CXN holders/runners are Mako only, and I'm not finding the size 7/7.5 steel anywhere... Should I be looking for this and stocking up, or is it readily available and I'm just not looking in the right places? Mark

Howdy, So, been in these M8's for the last four times out or so... I occasionally seem to be falling back on my heels at times. Anyone know what the radius and pitch (and whatever else) is between the M8's and CCM Ribcors? I'm just curious. I'm sure I'll adapt and its not like its a huge issue, just wondering how much is due to skate differences. Mark

Howdy, Those look to be the things you use to replace the skate lock with normal eyelets? Mark

Howdy, Huh. I'm actually not finding any anywhere. I've seen some "out of stock" things and google shows a deleted listing on hockey monkey. Anyone know where they're available today? Mark

Howdy, Did you just get the lace lock parts from the reebok skates and screw them into one of the eyelets? Mark

Howdy, Used these last night for the first time. I did get up to the local rink and do a bake there. They were a little softer than the bake I did at home, but still not "play dough". Maybe really old / hard play dough. :-) I preheated the oven to 197, then put them in for just a touch over ten minutes (temp dropped to 188 when I opened the door, so I went a touch longer). Also left one in while I was lacing up the first one, so that one got another minute or two. Fairly old Blade Master oven, not sure what model. I baked with regular athletic socks on. Anyway... played in them last night, with Bauer skate socks. No pain! That's a significant improvement over every other skate I've used in my extremely short time... I miss the lace locks from the Ribcors though. Boot loosened up a bit so I re-tied about 1/2 hour in and my ankles got a bit of that "in concrete" feel. Going to try a lace locking pattern per someone's post above at 4 eyelets down from the top to see if that will help before I look into putting actual lace locks into the skates though. For anyone else out there going from Ribcors to these... I was in an 8D in the CCM Ribcor and went to a 7.5D in the Mako M8. The Mako is a touch shorter (which I needed) in length and I would say the overall width is similar, though the shape is different (perhaps because of the molding to my foot more than anything else?)... Seems like less volume on the M8 as compared to the Ribcor as well and I fail the pencil test in them, but no issues with lace bite last night. My mostly uneducated guess is that the plastic tongue guard / very thick tongue is helping there. Figured I'd just post an update. Thanks to JR in particular who helped me with the size! Mark

Howdy, Thanks folks. I think I'll take them up to the local rink and do a bake there. They didn't feel any more pliable than any of the other skates I've done. Is there anything to the "Easton oven" thing, or do they just mean "a real skate oven, not your house oven"? I'm withholding judgement for now. I'd like to make sure they get a good bake on them, then I'll wear them around the house for a half hour or whatever the next day, then decide if I'm going to sharpen them and give them a go (which means I can't return them for credit). Mark

Howdy, Ok, got my M8's today, threw them in the oven (regular oven, set to 205 deg, brought to temp, shut off, put skates in for 10 min), and baked them. Everyone talks about how crazy pliable / "play dough" like they are... Is that an exaggeration? Because while they were a little more pliable, they weren't what I'd call really pliable or soft. Anyway, we'll see. Sitting there for 20 minutes or so after I put them on for the bake, nothing hurt or anything. They seem to fail the pencil test pretty hard, but not sure that'll matter all that much with the plastic tongue guard? The comfort just sitting there was pretty well "eh, whatever" vs. "OMG these rock! Appreciate any input from folks that have baked these and know what they feel like coming out of the oven! I do have the option to go to my local rink and bake them in the "normal skate oven" there (the box talks about a specific Easton oven... and only putting them in a non-easton oven for 10 min? Not sure what's up with that). Mark

Howdy, And, with some advice from @JR Boucicaut, I dropped the size down to a 7.5D, since my current 8D Ribcor 46k's seem a touch too long. Nothing like starting over with skates. Sigh. :-) Mark

Howdy, Well, I guess I'm going to find out. Just ordered some M8's in an 8D size. Certainly can't argue with the price, so hopefully if they don't work for me I can flip them. Mark

Howdy, That reminds me of a question I had... Why is adjusting the height necessary? Are the various steels/runners not the same thickness? I'd have thought that once you adjusted the holder to hit the center of the wheel with an 1/8" steel, any 1/8" steel would also hit the center? The holders clamp directly to the steels, right? Mark

Howdy, Boy, I keep looking at these Mako M8's for such a great price.... Can anyone comment on how they compare size-wise to CCM Ribcors? Curious about all facets.... Length, width, and volume. I currently wear an 8D CCM Ribcor. My toes don't brush the endcap, and Easton's chart has a general recommendation for a size 9.5 shoe (what I typically wear in sneakers) to use an 8.0 skate. Width-wise, my foot seems to be sorta wide in front and narrow in the back... I have to pump up the Ribcors a decent bit (maybe 10+ pumps?) to lock in my heel but the side of my foot just behind the little toe and the big toe rub the boot hard enough that I've got bumps forming there. Volume on the Ribcors seems fine. I use Superfeet Yellows. Regular white athletic socks. About a year ago I had a set of entry level Easton Stealth in a 7.5D and my feet hurt a lot, under the arch of my foot. I then went to a set of entry level CCM Tacks in an 8D and initially had foot pain, but it got better over time, particularly when I switched to skating barefoot. Appreciate any advice on how the fits for the Makos would compare! Mark