dsizzle

@SkateWorksPNW Just saw one of your responses from 2016 here where you said "The LS3 has a fat toe and heel. It definitely needs some contouring for a power forward or someone looking for mobility." By "contouring" did you mean shaving the heel and toe? Did your opinion change on that since 2016 (since you listed a bunch of stuff other than changes the heel and toe)?

I'm actually trying a flatter hollow next -- haven't skated on them yet though. My first sharpening was 1/2", and there was sometimes chatter on stops. Stepped up to 5/8" next and that was better, but next I'm going for 3/4". My old skates were also V2's from the 90s, which had a thinner back 2/3rd (and I think that results in a flatter effective hollow). I tried skipping the top lace but it felt too wobbly. Not sure if it helped with the rapid starts or not. As mentioned elsewhere in thread, I did get them profiled (to 9') but didn't really notice a difference. My old skates were profiled too (not sure what radius), but pretty sure they had a neutral pitch.

Incidentally, for my new skates this is after I had the "toes shaved" (I don't remember doing that for my old skates), so the difference used to be even more severe. The shaving did make an improvement. I don't notice it as much on cross over acceleration as much as on cold starts. Didn't trip over my toes last game, so maybe I'm starting to get used to it.

Is this the link to what you were referring to? https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ae0f/714bb7dbdb3ea4c3f4a0f2ca6c9f8450f0e8.pdf

What kind of study? Do you have a link?

I'm not sure if I noticed a difference in "bite", as you say, with the larger toe. Is this to say you think you can skate faster and with less effort? The biggest difference I noticed was with quick starts and turns, which I felt was a disadvantage, but maybe there is an advantage to a bigger toe at full speed?

My old skates were profiled, but I don't know what the radius was. I'm pretty sure the pitch was neutral (there's a "radius sticker on the bottom with an 'O' on it). Wouldn't the pitch affect my skating at all times, not just on quick starts and turns? Skate size is 7. I'm 5' 10" 155lbs.

I can actually do a little better than that. I took pictures of both skates, aligned them and traced both in Photoshop. Here's my old skate with the new skate outline: https://imgur.com/WzqdwjY Here's my new skate with the new skate outline https://imgur.com/n45QiJ9 (By the way, how do you upload an image on this site? It seems neither option in the "Insert other media" link at the bottom of the post works.)

Yes, the new ones are removable, but not the old ones. Don't see how to do what boo10 described (laying the blades on top of one another and using a Sharpie) without them both being removable.

Not quite following your recommendation. I'm particularly focused on quick starts and tight turns. I agree you skate on the middle blade most of the time. When starting, I think I skate on the toe, like in this video When turning quickly, I go back on my heels like in this video

How do I experiment with boot flex? You mean like not tying the top lace holes or something like that?

These are old school skates without removable blades! I actually tried cutting a paper mask on the old blades and laying that over the new blades, but it didn't come out very well.

For the copy method, how would the profile on my old skates be read and transferred (aside from using the ProSharp)? When I took my skates to get profiled I brought my old skates and described how that's what I was used to, but the guy there didn't seem to have any way of reading the shape (other than eyeballing it), let alone transferring it to my new skates. Not familiar with ProSharp -- how do you specify the shape of the heel and toe? I get that it's a machine and therefore wouldn't be "by hand", but are there different settings for how it "blends the toe and heel"? Is there a list of facilities that have a ProSharp? (I'm probably not going to buy one myself, but I would consider going to a place that offered it as a service.)

The toe is used for quick starts, and the heel is used when making deep turns, and so the shape of the heel and toe presumably would affect these critical parts of hockey. But how does one even go about specifying the shape of the heel and toe? You would think this would be part of profiling, but profiling only affects the middle ~60% of the blade: https://wissota.com/skate-blade-profile-rocker-explained/. As seen in the picture of that link, the heel and toe in a stock blade deviate significantly from a typical 9' radius. Plus different models/manufacturers have different stock shapes at the heel and toe. There are discussions on "shaving" the heel and toe, so other people do also have issues with the shape of the heel and toe: Furthermore there are many opinions about shaving the heel and toe being bad without specifying what a good heel/toe shape is, or why one shape is better than another. I'm interested because I'm having a hard time adjusting to my new Supreme 2S Pros (w/ LS5 steel), after many years on Supreme 3000s (from the early 90s), which have a more rounded heel and toe. It's making it very hard to adjust. In particular, accelerating quickly, which I do on my toes, is more difficult (feels like I'm wearing skis) and I often trip, which I think happens when I hit the corner at the toe of my skate. It's also harder to make sharp turns. I had a 9' profile put on (vs the stock 10') but that made basically no difference, which is not surprising given that my issues come from the heel and toe. I guess I should ask to have my heel and toe shaved, but as far as I can tell it will just be freehand. It seems odd that there all sorts of precise specifications for the profile in the main part of the blade (radius, center offset, etc), while the heel and toe is like the wild west.