Leif

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?

Even my good LHS never did a perfect sharpening. In my experience the Sparx does the closest you’ll ever get. The profile is preserved, the edges are level, what’s not to like? Before I got one I drove 25 miles to get a sharpening. 50 miles round trip, a morning written off, petrol and car to pay for, and sharpening to pay for. There’s almost no learning curve with a Sparx. But do buy the edge checker ie BAT gauge.

My last blades before I bought a Sparx went from standard Step profile to flat after a year. Manual sharpeners do of course vary in the amount of metal they take off, and their uniformity, and hence the rate at which the profile changes. I don’t believe that any manual sharpener can preserve the profile despite what most claim. I believe Sparx’s claim that their machine does not alter the profile, at least not noticeably so. Anyway, whichever profile you have, you’ll lose it soon enough! If you don’t like the idea of a quad profile, flog the blades unused and unsharpened.

Regarding the second kind of custom skate, it’s not quite a retail skate as you can have different lengths and widths on each foot. Also we don’t know what slack they have in the width, it’s possible they can go wider or narrower than stock. But as you say, they use heat and pressure to mould to a custom last. In principle there could be feet that don’t suit this process as they are so far from stock. I have custom Bauers, and I get minor pain on the side of my big toes where they rub against what I assume is the join between the quarter package and the toe cap. Or maybe the toe cap is a tad narrow. The discomfort goes after a few minutes skating, possibly because I go into a hockey stance and the feet pull back. The problem might be because I have flipper shaped feet. That said, the skates are amazing, the best I’ve ever worn by far. A friend has custom Trues, and his feet go numb. He has problem feet and says the Trues are the best skates he’s ever worn. I’ve had two Bauer scans, a few years apart, and the results were noticeably different. The second was for off the shelf inline skates. Of course with stock skates you can try on several pairs to check the scan. Would this make a difference with customs? No idea.

Unfortunately they are hard to get in the UK. It looks like the Vapor should suit, I’ll wait for some clearance ones to appear.

I agree with your comments that we need a proper comparison by a disinterested party. I assumed the ProSharp claim of 500 sharpenings meant cycles, but they say 2-3 cycles per sharpen, and 500 pairs of skates per wheel. Assuming 2 cycles per sharpen, that means 2 * 2 * 500 cycles per wheel ie 2000, which compares to 320 cycles per Sparx wheel ie roughly 6 times as many cycles per ProSharp wheel. If only ProSharp stated the number of cycles per wheel! Assuming my figures are right, here in the UK a Sparx wheel is about £75, so one ProSharp wheel compares to £113 for a ProSharp wheel. Six Sparx wheels cost £450, which would last me 9 years, and an extra £337 over ProSharp. So for me in the UK the ProSharp Home is about £800 more expensive than a Sparx, it would take me over 20 years to start saving with the ProSharp. For a team of 20 players, they would save in one year assuming all use the same wheel. In practice you might need 4 or 5 wheels, so it’d take maybe 5 years to save. I think you need less time in the US to save as prices are much lower eg no VAT at 20%. I worked out that the Sparx paid for itself in three years, and I paid £1200, as I save on car use to and from the LHS at £10, and the cost of the sharpen at £8. Added later: I found further details about ProSharp wheels in a PDF here: https://www.prosharp.eu/pub_docs/files/Engelska/SkatePal-EP-wheels.pdf This states that for fine wheels, which hockey players will use, each wheel gives 1,000 cycles, so roughly 3 times as many sharpens as a Sparx wheel assuming 2 cycles per skate. The 500 sharpens figure from ProSharp must assume 1 cycle per sharpen, which IMO is inadequate unless you sharpen before each skate. In any case, my earlier figures are wrong, it’d take me 40 years to start saving with the ProSharp.

I find it hard to believe that the Prosharp Home works out cheaper after 3 or 4 wheel changes. In the UK it is a bit over £1600 including tax and shipping. The Sparx is £787 including shipping and tax. We pay £70 for a wheel, so the difference is more than ten wheels. And the Sparx is cheaper in the US due to lower shipping costs. I bought the original Sparx which cost me £1200 including shipping. One Sparx wheel lasts me 18 months, one two pass sharpen per week. The reason the Sparx is cheaper is because it’s made in China, the ProSharp is made in Sweden.

They are even more spendy in the UK and Europe.

Are Vapor elbows lower volume than Supremes? I have Supreme 2S Pro elbows, small adult, and they slide down my arms. The next size down are too short ie leave exposed arms. I was able to tongue flop with my Supreme 2S Pro shins when I tried out tongue flopping, though I don’t normally do so.

Haven’t you read all of the posts in this thread? Please do so. 🤣 Being serious, I second Mark’s comments apart from the Wissota polisher remarks as I haven’t tried it. I have the original machine, and I do two passes each week to refresh the hollows, skating about 7 hours a week. Wheels are pricey, the starter pack might be worth trying, although in my case I skate on 7/16” and 5/8” included in the starter pack is too shallow. Your Black Friday holiday is coming soon, perhaps they’ll have a Black Friday deal. Then again, it might be best to just buy now given the distance of your sharpener from your home. I was given some wheels including two 5/16”, I don’t see myself trying those ones.

It’s steel bonded to carbon fibre, presumably with glue, and I think many of us are sceptical that the join can hold. Some years ago I bought an Apple Watch. The crystal is glued to the case. After one year the crystal fell off. The watch was replaced under warranty. 18 months later, same again. The third one I sold on ebay, unused. Just over two years ago I bought some glasses with temples (side arms) glued to the Zeiss lenses. One year later the glue fails. After two years, new prescription, new Zeiss lenses. This time I didn’t wear the glasses while inline skating, or ice skating, just in case I have sweat like the creature from the Alien film. After two months two joints failed. These so called high performance glues are not as good as claimed. As for these runners, I’ll let others beta test them.

I thought about a traditional eyelet but slot shaped then realised it would buckle, a ring having much more strength. Perhaps a one piece moulding is the only way to create slot shaped eyelets. I may well go the traditional route next time round, just to compare.

The skates could look like a pair of turds (1), as long as they perform that’s what counts. I would want feedback from others before buying into them, although realistically it won’t be many years before my current skates wear out anyway. (1) I hope I don’t give Bauer ideas. It’s not meant literally. But the way the designs are going, you never know. Turdlite. It’s kinda catchy.

They’ve significantly changed the injected facing, compared to my 2s pros. The additional round holes at the top have gone, to be replaced with deep notches to improve (I assume) forward flex. The injected facing is fantastic as it locks the laces in place. Does injected facing have any disadvantages other than reduced durability?