Kgbeast

I am under impression that the Injection process in skates is the typical plastic injection-molding such as used in making household items. Difference however is that instead of injecting one kind of plastic in the mold, in skates they can, lay in fibers such as aramid for reinforcement and inject a few different composites of different stiffness in the different areas of the mold to make skates stuff where they need to be and soft where they need to be more flexible.

You should be able to replace tongues on any skates with use of a little bit of repositionable adhesive to positioned in properly first, then use stitching awl to stitch it in. This usually does not require great deal of skill, but you do need to be somewhat handy.

Not sure how shimming up both side at the front will compensate for turns. When you tilt the holder while keeping its front to back plane, you will see that only one side of the front mounting flange will remain in contact. Other side of the front flange will lift, and both sides of the rear flange will lift off ( in case of pronation, the inner side will lift more that outer, but both will be up nevertheless). This is because the front mounting flange is much wider that the rear. So you might want to insert properly sized spacers to fill both of the sides at the heel (medial side spacer will be thicker in case of pronation), as well as one on the medial side of the front. Perhaps it was the reference to that you thinking of. I am not sure if this is a must, or it is ok to be less anal and live with slight misalignment caused by one sided shimming. Likely, In most shops, you'd get just heel shimmed on one side.

Yes, it is a weird pic, but the skate in the picture does have heel shim as well, probably a thicker one at that. He shows that the toe is also shimmed, which is a good practice IMO.

Edit: I should have put this in Gear Sighting thread. Sorry.

60% is pretty generous and hardly worth frustration.... I was selling a set of wheels once for $450 and got an offer of $150. Obviously a short "no" was the answer, but I guess "you can't blame a girl for trying".

... from what I read, JetSpeed FT1 is not made of CF... But nevertheless, it is the same construction as SuperTacks or Mako with one piece quarter/outsole + added toebox. If it is not CF, I am wondering what is it. I never thought that CF is an optimal skate base material. Of course one CF is different from another, but I always thought nylons based materials are more suitable for hockey related abuse.

Check this thread about the holders. Keep in mind that VH has been acquired by True Hockey and perhaps communications are not as used to.Try True Hockey and inquire about your skates from them. This also means that the joint venture between Step and VH with holders may or may not have been cut short, you should contact Stepsteel about the holders and runners availability.

According to CCM, the forward pitch of sb+4 holder itself is the same as tuuk. If you to believe that, switching sb+4 to Edge holders on SuperTacks should produce no change in feel. JR, please confirm above as you are SuperTacks with Edge holder, assuming you ever tried the skates with SBs. Other than that, boot cut forward lean is the factor. I do not know how FT1 and SuperTacks are cut, but Graf boots are similar if not the same as JetSpeed forward lean. Perhaps FT1 will replace your Graf+Edge combo nicely.

According to CCM, SB+4 is the same forward pitch as Tuuk holders. The CCM boots however are angled forward more than bauer boots (especially RibCor) creating the feel of more aggressive forward pitch. I am pretty sure that VH can make the boot with the pitch of Tacks or say Nexus. You'd just need to mention this during the ordering process I guess. Therefore, you can get whichever holder you prefer. On additional note, I believe that Bauer instead of making their holders 4mm taller to match SB4+, went with idea of making taller steel (LS4 which is 3mm taller) giving the choice to the skater to have taller skate or not. So I am not sure what you want here. VH also can put Step holders, but you need to keep in mind that it would be only the less available Step steel from there on for you which may or may not be a desired thing. I am sure once you start your communications with VH many of these concerns will be cleared up for you.

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Graf goalie skates do not look like this, but these do share color scheme with peakspeed players. Does the description suggests that it is foe carbonfiber? It is pretty lame if it does. Why make it look like carbonfiber if it is not?

Yes, wheel plays quite a bit into sparks. Pink is a figure skating stone which is probably designed for high carbon steels.

The surface speed of full-size machine is about 25% faster, so it removes more material faster... probably doubles the spark output.

Sorry then. Thanks for pointing out as I did not even know. Oops...

T-blades are allowed in NHL, otherwise Dennis Seidenberg of Islanders would not be wearing them.

Happy New Year!

FBV was a thing in NHL back about 8 years ago. Half of the league was trying this on. It looks like it was a club decision not individual players. I think at the end, they forego on it and went back to ROH. NHLers have their blades sharpened every time before they step on ice. At that rate it is probably prety tideous to keep track of spinners and stones. EQMs have their hands full as os. Perhaps also the benefits of FBV vs ROH was not enough to continue. Other things like getting used to skating on that could have been obstacle as well.

If that did not work, next time try heating the skates up the same way and use large c-lamp or a large squeeze-clamp. You'd do that with your foot in the skate so you can feel how much to clamp and where. You probably would want over-clamp a little as the boot most likely will come back a little.

Note, when I suggested the file, I was talking about an example when one would change from rivets to t-nuts only, and open the round rivet holes into the larger round holes for tnuts in the desored direction. I do not believe that you can pull the t-nuts out, then oval the holes in the sole of the boot and then reassemble. IMO, this will not work unless you fill the unused by the nut volume of the oval hole with something like epoxy. Ovaling holes in the sole of the boot can ruin the boot and should be avoided. Carbon fiber is especially inappropriate material to do this to.

It is more of because the front flange is almost twice wider than the rear one. So then you roll the holder, the front flange side would come-up more than the rear. In actuality, if you are super anal about this, you would shim both rear sides and one front side because when you roll the holder trying to maintain the original back-to-front profile of the blade exactly, both sides of the rear will come up. If you shim only one side of both posts, your heel will end up a little lower than it was prior to shimming, but that is pretty small amount and would not worth the extra work. MLX style of adjustment is more proper. When you go from rivets to Graf style nut, you will need to open up the holes in the sole, if instead of drilling them wider, you use round needle file and open them up in the direction of offset, you might be able to get enough offset (probably 1.5mm) for some amount of pronation (or supination if moved the other way). Note that ovaling the holes in the soles should be avoided.

Alan, I think Mimizk's suggested fix is pretty awesome. On VH thread the same method but using bont spacer is suggested by SMU. I think the best way to do this is to get Graf nuts/screws set from something line hockeymonkey.com. The screws are correct sizes for the holders and are rated for this application. Plus because instead of lugs, they have shallow wings, you can press them into the sole of the boot without compromising the fragile carbon-fiber. You might have to file or grind them shorter in case if the sole too thin, but I do not think it will be a problem. Note that if you buy Graf nuts and screws, they come in two sizes as the rear post hardware is longer on Graf (not sure about what you have), but I am sure you can measure all this and figure out what you need. While it is possible to calculate the angle that you need to offset the holder by, but it is probably much easier to use trial and error method and figure out what works using some washers. Do not tight the crap out of those while trying/error, just snag them up. Obviously, you do not need to skate in that, just stand carefully and see if blades are getting perpendicular. Once you figure the thickness of the spacer, you can get a proper material and fabricate the final spacers.

Can you use Graf screws and nuts. I have seeing them for sale somewhere on hockey gear websites. They do not have lugs like that, but just 2 wings to grab the outsole. Obviously, I am not sure what you are doing, 3/8 nuts and bolts are pretty huge...

If it is a metal ring coated with a thin diamond dust layer, it can do a couple of hundred passes before the diamond layer looses its cutting ability. You can buy convex diamond coated grinding wheels that can fit in an ordinary grinder. They are typically intended for cnc grinders that make things like chain sprockets.

You can email to support@grafskates.ch. They answer emails pretty fast. Also, since Graf has a distribution/manufacturing/rnd agreement with Vaughn Hockey, try mvaughn@vaughnhockey.com. He is responding to his emails pretty good as well. Vaughn, probably can make the skates already as they have all Graf machines and were working on putting them on-line for a couple of month now.