marka

Howdy, Huh. My wife was having tons of issues with her elbow pads sliding down. I basically made that there, just using skate lace and some punched holes to tie the elbows to her shoulder pads. 🙂 Mark

Howdy, What I did was to drill from the back of the tendon guard with a normal right hand drill bit going forward. Mark

Howdy, So have you ever gone back to these friends and told them to suck it? 🙂 Mark

Howdy, This is one of those things that can be easy or hard, depending on the situation. If the screw just broke and isn't seized (which is most likely), then you can just use a drill bit that's a smaller diameter than the screw (so like a 1/16" should be fine) and drill in the center of the screw. There's a really good chance that just the friction from drilling the screw will wind the broken bit of the screw out, without you drilling all the way through the screw itself. Try pretty hard to drill in the center of the broken off bit of screw btw. Ideally you'd use a center punch to punch a divot in the center to help keep the drill where you want it to be. From there, it gets harder. 🙂 If the screw is actually seized in there and just the friction from drilling doesn't get it out, your best bet is to drill it with a #29 drill (which is the tap drill for an 8/32 thread). You have to be pretty close to the center of the broken off bolt for this though, since you'll wipe out the threads if you're off center or not drilling parallel to the hole/screw. If you can drill it, then chances are that you can use a pick or an 8/32 tap or maybe even another screw to clean the remaining metal out of the threads. But if you're doing that, chances are that you're going to end up wiping out the threads in the plastic tendon guard... If that happens, you could just use a longer version of that 8/32 flathead screw and use a locknut on the back of your skate. It would end up sticking out of course. Or maybe you could tap the tendon guard to the next size up from the hole you had to drill. In all of the situations where the bit of screw doesn't come out just from the friction of drilling, the easier fix is to just replace the tendon guard. Note that in my case, the screw came out with the friction from drilling. The rest of what I wrote up there is just educated guesses from "I've had to deal with broken off screws / bolts before". Good luck! Mark

Howdy, How were your old blades setup in terms of profile and hollow? The profile is the shape along the length of the blade/runner and the hollow is the shape ground across the couple mm width of the blade. Something has likely changed here and either can affect how "stuck" you feel to the ice. Assuming that you don't know either of those for your old runners or maybe even your new ones... First, makes sure that the edges are level. A really bad sharpening that had the inside edge way higher than the outside edge could cause a feeling like that. Next, figure out what hollow you have on the new blades. The easiest thing to get a "less sharp" blade is to use a bigger radius hollow. So if you're at 1/2" and you feel super stuck to the ice, move to a 5/8". 1/2" tends to be "the standard" in terms of hollows that are ground into blades, but who knows what your local shop does. If you don't have any idea, go to a reputable shop and ask them to evaluate the current condition of your blades (edge levelness and a guess on the hollow) and see what they recommend. My suggestion if you don't have any idea where you're starting out given what you've said would be to sharpen with a 5/8" cut with level edges (if your sharpener isn't checking your edge heights after they sharpen, find a different sharpener), then evaluate from that known starting point. Mark

Howdy, I paid $100+ for the Sparx edge checker because even though I could make one for about $10 in materials I have better shit to do with my time. YMMV. Mark

Howdy, The animation was pretty slick, I thought. No talking / "human analysis" meant that I wasn't all that interested. And I'm an old guy that isn't much into stats / metrics / whatever the hell. But in terms of presentation, it was quite good. Mark

Howdy, https://tenor.com/0Rj6.gif 🙂 Mark

Howdy, I 2nd the "get an edge checker so you know what's going on". Did you use the 5/8 Fire with your friend's Sparx as well? Same skates? Just trying to consider other options. Mark

Howdy, I'm pretty sure you're just shrinking. 🙂 Mark

Howdy, Dear internet hockey people... Does anyone else have trouble with their backhand with the retail P90TM curve? I seem to recall a time when my backhand, while not challenging Crosby by any stretch, at least wasn't horrifically bad. These days, with the P90TM curve, unless I'm REALLY concentrating / making an effort / whatever, it seems like I essentially can't get the puck off the ice on my backhand. Its almost like the puck is coming off the stick / bade too soon, leading to the puck staying on the ice and having no velocity. Now, keep in mind that I'm a terrible hockey player and I expect that I'm causing this.... But I don't remember having similar issues in the past before I was using this curve. I used to use a W88 / P88 / MC, among others. Mark

Howdy, I went through some pretty bad arch area foot pain when I started skating. In hindsight, I think really only about half of that was due to the skates. The other half I think was likely me clenching up my foot muscles all the time because I was unsteady on my feet, etc. So that said... If you just wear the skates around your house walking around on carpet / whatever (use soakers on the skates to protect your carpet), do you also get pain? edit: So I actually re-read and see that you tried this and are not getting pain... To me, that says that you're clenching your foot muscles up out on the ice and either causing or exacerbating the issue. I don't have a fix for this necessarily, outside of "get more comfortable so that you don't feel like you have to have your foot clenched up". Possibly when you tried your buddie's skates, they were big enough that you were moving your foot around inside them and that prevented the cramping, etc? And then unrelated to all of that... If the issue is that the actual floor of the skate boot has a bump in it, you could always try a cheap store foot insole and cut away the insole in the area of the bump. See if that relieves the pressure in that area. If it does, then you can look into shaving down the skate insoles in the bump area with a sander or whatever to relieve some of the pressure. Mark

Howdy, I'm with @puckpilot. When you conflate stick length and flex together you end up with weird crap like folks not understanding that a 75 flex stick that had an uncut length of 63" and a 75 flex stick that had an uncut length of 60" _will feel the same when they are both cut to the same length_ (all else, equal, blah blah). That's an important misconception to correct. And using "flex" to represent the stiffness of the stick and "leverage" to represent what that means when its in your hands makes a hell of a lot more sense to me than expecting people to magically understand that this time you're using "flex" to mean "what the stick feels like" and that next time you're using "flex" to mean "the stiffness of the shaft over a set length". Mark

Howdy, So, I actually did do this... Its been a handful of skates now and honestly I don't think that if I hadn't done the sharpening myself I'd have know I went from 3/4 Fire to 5/8 Fire. Does anyone know what the actual profile differences are between the Fire rings? As I understand it, the Fire profile is just a normal ROH, with the floor of the U shape filled in. I'm wondering if that's right at all first. Second, if that's correct, is the "floor height" relative to the tips of the edges the same for all the Fire profiles? Again, I feel essentially no difference between the 5/8 Fire and the 3/4 Fire on the ice. I'm far from the world's best skater and this wasn't a back to back thing, however. Mark

Howdy, Congrats, I assume? What's next? Mark

Howdy, I read this all the time, but its never made sense to me. If the laces end up tight, how can it matter which way that happens (outside of yanking on them causing a spike in load) in terms of the eyelets staying put in the composite? Just curious if this is a wives' tale or if I'm missing something. Mark

Howdy, Thanks. That's what I found as well. The way I read that is that if there's contact there must be a penalty. So, for instance, scramble in the net and the goalie can't get to the puck because there's a defensive player in the way, the only two options are that its a good goal (if a defensive player knocked the offensive player into the goalie) or no goal and a penalty for interference. It seems like in real life I've seen there just be no goal, no penalty, and a faceoff in the neutral zone. But perhaps that's not actually in the rules. Mark

Howdy, Yet another dumb refereeing question for the group... Where in the USAH book is the language around goalie interference and when that rises to penalty level vs. just "faceoff in the neutral zone"? edit: Because the way I'm reading the book, even incidental contact with the goalie is supposed to be penalized. But in real life I know that I've seen there be no penalty, just a faceoff outside the zone. Mark

Howdy, Ah, apologies. I missed the spreadsheet link. Well, that makes me feel more encouraged about thinking I might try going back to 5/8 Fire. Mark

Howdy, I think you're misreading that. I think what they're saying is that a 5/8" Fire has the bite of ~3/4" and the glide of ~7/8". For me, testing them back to back I found 1/2" Fire and 5/8" ROH to be nearly indistinguishable. I've also used 5/8 Fire and now am using 3/4 Fire, but I've not done ROH above 5/8", so I can't compare the shallower Fire cuts to shallower ROHs. Mark

Howdy, Honestly, this is by far the best reason to get a Sparx. Or really "your own sharpener", but I think the Sparx is the most accessible way for a home user to do their own sharpening. Being able to sharpen whenever you want without leaving the house is freaking awesome. Mark

Howdy, Here or on the FB group, I can't recall someone really recommending the Pro base. And there are lots of comments about "shouldn't have gotten it". YMMV. As for your actual question re: oiling/waxing the blade prior to a last pass... I've never seen anyone recommend that. AFAIK, that's only done with a traditional grinding wheel vs. the diamond grit (?) ones that Sparx uses. I can say that it would be a bit of a pain as well. No question that for me I would use (and do use) a Speed Skate rather than that. The only thing I don't like all that much about the speed skate is that it rubs at the finish on my Shift Onyx blades. But I think that's more an issue with a fairly non-durable coating vs. the speed skate itself. Mark

Howdy, One of these helps #3. https://wissota.com/product/speed-skate/ Mark

Howdy, Still a $250 stick though. Hard to swallow. Wasn't the FT3 like $150? Mark

Howdy, Another 7.5 Mako person here that is now using 6.5 TF7. I was using a 7.5D Mako that almost certainly should have been a 7.5EE but still seemed to work for me. The 6.5D TF7 definitely fits 'wider' and with more volume. And yes, they're also a LOT stiffer than my used Mako M8s. I never compared them to new M8's of course. YMMV, but I've been really happy with my TF7 skates. I've also got a pair of TF9's in the same size, but haven't gotten around to baking them / putting them into the rotation yet. Mark