Leif

I occasionally sweep out the inside of my machine, and remove and clean the filter. The latter gets filthy with steel dust, but cleans up nicely with a paint brush, and gentle knocks against the frame. The machine is four years old, and is used once a week, no issues.

I tested it on a blade against ones from Blademaster, Sparx and the ebay one. The latter three all agreed with each other. The Prosharp was out by about two thou.

In Europe we have to pay about $400. Guess why so few of us own a Sparx edge checker? I have the cheesy ebay one, and it works fine. It is better than the Prosharp one I had, which was out by a few thou. When I sent it back to Prosharp, they claimed it was within spec. I never did get my money back or a replacement. Scumbags.

An edge checker is always good, but you can lay a large metal coin on the upturned blade to get a rough idea, any really bad imbalance will be visible.

Thanks all, it sounds like they have a year or so left in them, maybe with a repair to the tongues.

No, but I do pull the tongue when the skate is on, maybe that’s an issue.

How long do top end skates last, or to put it another way, what are common signs of impending failure? I have Bauer Custom 2S Pro skates, and I had to have the holders replaced a few months ago. They are about four years old, I skate five hours a week, including two hours hockey, and three hours practice (three turns, tight turns, power pulls etc), I’m casual beer league, a good skater but not powerful, and I only weigh 160 pounds. We had maybe 8 months of no hockey due to lockdowns. The tongues are coming lose where they are sewn onto the toe cap, the sides of the tongues are heavily worn but useable and it looks like the small gap between the toe cap and the shell of the boot has increased to about 2mm. That last point worries me as it suggests impending failure. They have lots of cuts, but all superficial, and the carbon fibre shell is solid. I don’t want to find that they fail suddenly, and I am then stuck with my tatty old and uncomfortable Supreme 160S skates while I wait for new customs. And money is an issue, otherwise I’d just buy new now with a current price of about £1,000. I’m not considering mid range, I have mid range inlines, and they are uncomfortable.

Thank you, that’s even better than I expected.

I don’t suppose anyone has some reliable information as to the typical life span of the original Sparx? Mine is over three years old, and running sweetly, one sharpen a week with long breaks during lockdowns! Also, is it easy to open it up to clean? I’d rather leave it be unless it is a risk free task.

This sounds like it taught you to feel your edges, in the same way that conventional skating drills do. Perhaps it creates better edge control.

I thought about it, but ruled it out due to cost, and preferring ice.

Thank you, I didn’t know that but it makes sense. When I go back to inlines, it feels like I need to push from the heel.

Since you wrote the above I have had weekly lessons with a figure skating coach and I now have good edge control. Regarding your first statement, I get a lot of feedback from my skates, I can feel the edges very clearly, and for example I know if my forwards/backwards crossovers are wrong because the edges feel wrong. I adjust my technique until the edges feel right. Similarly, if I’m doing a forwards power pull, it’s all about the edge, to minimise the friction and ride the edge. People at public skating tell me that my ankles move about a lot in the skates, I’ve had people ask if my skates are special because of this. I wear Bauer 2S Pro custom skates, and they don’t restrict my ankles at all despite having a stiff shell. Years of basic drills have corrected my (bad) posture, and improved the basic stride and technique, to gain good edge control. After three years of teaching myself, my skating was awful, bad posture, bad technique. I doubt it would have improved much after another three years, I would probably have continued fighting against awful technique and made small gains, limited by the fact that the basics were dreadful. I practiced regularly but all that did was reinforce bad practices. I don’t know if skating with laces undone would have helped someone so utterly inept as me. As an aside, I’ve met quite a few adults who from the first session were learning phenomenally fast eg doing crossovers and spread eagle (mohawk) on the second session. They learnt at least ten times faster than most of us. In every single case the person was an athlete: a professional dancer, a tennis coach, a skier, a boxer, a black belt in a martial art etc. My belief is that thanks to regular exercise they have strength and flexibility, and thanks to years of training in their chosen discipline they have learnt how to control their body, and they have learnt how to learn new tricks. I assume that is a stage we all pass through when first learning to do a physical discipline.

I normally ice skate, and I have very good edge control. For example my outside forwards three turns and power pulls are good. I use Bauer 2S Pro custom skates. I sometimes inline skate, in Bauer Vapor X2.9 skates. My problem is that I can’t do simple edge drills in inlines ie skate on one leg in a wide arc. For one thing I can feel something bend, I assume it is the wheels. Should I be able to do such drills on inlines? Crossovers are okay in inlines, not as good as on ice though. I skate on a flat asphalt tennis court. Also I notice that when I try this, the wheels are not vertical, they are tilted slightly. On ice my blades are pretty much upright. In fact it always seems as if my inline wheels are maybe 10 degrees off vertical, with my feet tilted slightly outwards. I am 11 stone 10 pounds (164 pounds) so not heavy.

Several years ago I changed out my blades for some new ones, and when I compared the profiles I discovered that the old blades were almost flat. That was before I had skating lessons, so my skating was poor anyway. These were Step blades, which take a lot of sharpens before replacement is needed, and manually sharpened. That LHS is one of the few locally that can get even edges, and yet they can’t maintain the stock profile. No doubt this was due to uneven pressure. I mentioned this here, so maybe you remember my post. That is one reason I now own a Sparx. This does not explain the ProSharp issue above, I assume that machine uses a spring to apply even pressure.