Leif

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.

It looks like they have discontinued the Home sharpener, that is not a surprise. A LHS near me has one of your ProSharp machines, it is a nice compromise between a Sparx and a manual sharpener, presumably it is not much effort to train staff to sharpen skates.

Yes. I could with my hand move the front of the blade up and down by 2mm easily. Well I had the holders replaced, and the difference is significant. The blades feel much sharper, and my edge control when for example doing power pulls is noticeably better. So, do loose blades impact skating? Very definitely.

Does the up and down movement matter? I’m reluctant to spend over £100 if it is not needed. And I suppose the other issue is how long the skates will last!

I have custom Bauer 2S Pro skates with the Edge holders and LS5 black steel blades. I recently noticed the blades clicking when walking rink side. On inspection I can see the left blade moving up and down perhaps 2 mm at the front when pushed. The right blade moves but less so, maybe 1 mm. I can still do skating drills such as forwards three turns, crossovers and power pulls. I’m a decent skater but a low level rec player, only play drop in games and training sessions plus 3 public skating practices a week. I skate typically 6 hours a week, the boots are 3 and a half years old, with long skating breaks during covid lockdowns. I rarely change blades, these are the second or third set. I don’t remove the blades and sharpen them at home once a week on a Sparx machine. These blades are 6 to 12 months old, loads of steel still left. This issue wasn’t present when I first got these blades, or with the previous blades. As an aside, Sparx seems to prolong the blade life compared to the LHS sharpen. It seems from this thread that the movement will noticeably slow me down during sprints. I will try some PTFE tape, or copper tape, I assume the latter is best. Or should I get new holders? Fortunately my LHS is very good, and I trust Mark, the tech guy. I believe it’s a quick job to swap out holders since no new holes are needed. Amazing skates, not so great holders.

That’s the one I have, but I paid much less for it.

Agree with the edge checker. I have a cheapie ebay one from Canada, looks poop, works fine. I also had a ProSharp one, I sent it back in disgust as it was out, never did get a refund. The Sparx one is the mutts, but it costs a wodge. Don’t turn the skate round, agreed, but that doesn’t give even edges, it just flips the misalignment round. Love my Sparx, recently I was able to test 1/2”, and 7/16” hollows, and ended up moving to 7/16” from my regular 3/8”. My edge control has improved so much that I can use a shallower hollow. Probably go to 1/2” soon. So convenient. And perfect edges every time.

You’re going from 10/16” to 12/16”, a difference of two steps. I always considered 2 passes okay for 7/16” to 8/16” and back. I guess if we knew how much metal was removed on one pass, we could calculate the precise minimum number of passes required.

You’d just end up using up the 1.25” wheel, which has the same total number of passes as other wheels, and then you’d have to put the original hollow back on, which also takes lots of passes. It might work out more expensive than lots of passes with the correct hollow. At least that’s how I see it. It’s a shame Sparx don’t do a bulk buy deal, but sales of wheels is probably a good money earner for them.

I agree that one sample doesn’t say much, but I was adding to the comment by PBH who does see lots. I handled them, and the tongue was very hard, I can see that would be a pain point for some. FWIW I’ve never heard complaints about other Bauer skates or True customs.

I was chatting to someone who has a pair. They’ve been back to Bauer UK three times, he hates them. The holders were misaligned, the shells damage easily, and the sides of the tongues are hard and dig into his feet causing pain. Pretty much matches the comments by PBH.

Thanks.

I’ve since done several sessions at a rink with good ice, and I was okay in full kit. The local rink wasn’t so bad last week too. I’m convinced the ice was ‘off’, very hard perhaps. I do like slightly soft ice. As an aside, anyone know what hollow Crosby is currently on? Someone told me a coach weened him onto a flatter hollow. I’m sure he was on 3/8”.

I grew out of yellow laces in my early fifties. Standard white unwaxed for me. I also don’t have lights underneath my skates. Or large furry panda ears on the sides of my helmet.

I recently went from 7/16” to 3/8”, I’m 5’10” and 11 stone 7 pounds (161 pounds), I much prefer it. So I might end up trying 5/16” after all. My local rink has hard (cold) ice.

That’s a good idea. Thanks. Much mire convenient than actually wearing kit too.

Thanks all, I’ve been learning four years, and this seems recent. This evening I was at a different rink, I was fine. All I did different was tie my laces with tongues flopped, then tuck them in. I also went to a deeper hollow, from 7/16” to 3/8” which I really like. I am starting to suspect the ice is the issue, it’s really bad ice at my local rink, goalies slide backwards due to the slope, there’s a 3” water filled rut around one edge which is quite dangerous. A team mate who used to be the ice maintenance engineer said it was very brittle last Friday. The slopes might also be to blame. I’m back there on Wednesday.

It’s not doing crossovers that is the issue, that’s okay, it’s when doing something like forwards power pulls or forwards cross rolls, the balance is lacking. I will try wearing pads and shorts in a public session and see how it goes. They don’t like too much hockey kit, except for the little kids in full kit, who shoot around getting in everyone’s way. 🤣

I’m a decent skater, I take weekly lessons and I practice a few hours each week in public skating sessions. So my forwards and backwards crossovers are pretty good, and hockey stops and tight turns are not a problem. I started doing some of my skating drills, such as forwards cross rolls, and forwards power pulls, during the warm up period at the start of our drop in scrimmages. Anyway, I find I struggle to do my basic drills. Is this because the weight of the hockey kit is throwing off my balance? In which case I need more practice in kit. Or is it the constriction of movement caused by the shin pads, socks and shorts? It could also be the restriction of movement of my ankle due to the shin pads, I have the pads over my skate tongues. I might try tongue flopping and see if that makes a difference. I suppose I could try public skating with shin pads on. Incidentally I’m in England, and hockey ice time is scarce, hence why I skate mainly in public sessions.

I cut holes in my hockey socks and shirts to reduce weight. Of course Jewish and Muslim men have another weight advantage, but I won’t go into details here, let’s just say there are some weight reduction measures that I consider too extreme.

Indeed. And then Bauer copied Step steel with higher runners, and improved steel. So back then noone noticed a difference going to heavier runners, and yet we are now told that weight is a significant factor. I’ll just stick to ordinary non carbon runners made from decent steel.

Exactly. And how does that figure compare to traditional steel runners, which of course never break. (Irony alert.) I presume aluminium runners are a no go because they wouldn’t hold an edge. Has anyone ever taken a traditional runner, and milled away a significant portion of the metal? I imagine a lattice structure would preserve a lot of the mechanical properties whilst reducing weight. Perhaps it is too hard to do economically, as stainless steel is not an easy material to machine, especially the hard kind used in runners. For higher end players these light runners might decide a game, but for average UK rec players (no idea about US and Canada) they’d be better off getting power skating lessons, learning more hockey technique, going to the gym, and losing weight, as suggested earlier. Oh, and another point. I remember when Step steel became popular, in part due to the increased height. That of course meant more steel and more weight. People were saying Step was so much better than Bauer steel for example. Now it seems that weight is no longer good, it’s bad. I’m confused … Maybe what we are seeing here is the applied placebo effect.

I’m not suggesting that a skiiled sharpener routinely or often makes mistakes, the ones I trusted were very good, but my suspicion is that a human cannot maintain a truly constant pressure across the entire length of the blade. Over the course of a year the very tiny differences in the amount of metal removed lead to a noticeable change in the profile. I might be wrong - I can’t manually sharpen skates, and I’ve seen no research studies. Sparx make similar claims, admittedly they’re not a disinterested party. It’d be interesting to know how NHL equipment managers sharpen blades. Do they run blades right down? Do they regularly reprofile them? Do they routinely check the profiles? Are they so good that the profiles don’t change?