AfftonDad

At the advice of the guys at Blackstone and people on this thread, I have used the "set and forget" method for the back "pitch" knob on my X-12 holder with my X-01. That has worked well. However, I have been asked to do my first pair of goalie skates. I am assuming that "set and forget" doesn't apply to goalie skates. Does anyone have a rule of thumb for how much to adjust the back knob for goalie skates (the ones I am doing are around 0.15in thick). Alternatively, can anyone tell me how much one click raises the X-12 holder? Thanks.

EDITED... I take it back. That is EXACTLY what that chart is. I guess I had forgotten about it and never really thought of it in that way. All the shops around here still just have the "original" four, which forces everyone into that paradigm. I own 90/75, 95/75, 100/75, 90/50, 100/50 spinners. I think I'll need to get a 95/50 to "complete" (at least in terms of what I would care about) my set.

Yeah, that's not really what I mean. Even the guys at Blackstone admit that ROH comparisons aren't very helpful and they just did it because the market insisted they publish something. That's OK though. Bad idea I guess. Thanks.

I just sent the email below (what do you guys think, good idea or bad)?... ----- Have you guys ever considered changing up the FBV numbering system (and options that are available)available so that people could more easily understand it? I think people need essentially one number the is intuitively understood to bring it into the paradigm that they are currently used to (there would actually still be two numbers, but they wouldn't think of it that way). I was thinking that if you change the order of the numbers, i.e. put the edge depth first then you could say something like "First, choose your edge depth" and you could provide info about the tradeoffs between deeper edge and shallower edge (i.e. lasts longer, bites more, etc.) and then say something like "Then, dial in your bite". So you would end up with two scales 50 and 75 say (or you could have three or four scales if the shops were willing to buy that many spinners... Then you would have a chart something like below,,, Shallow Edge (50) Less Bite <- 94 - 96 - 98 - 100 - 102 - 104 -> More Bite Deep Edge (75) Less Bite <- 94 - 96 - 98 - 100 - 102 - 104 -> More Bite That way a guy could pick an edge depth (the coarse adjustment) and then tweak the flat width and therefore, edge angle (the fine adjustment) until they found what they like. Once they pick an edge depth, they just think of it in terms of a single value that represents "sharpness". Just a thought (perhaps you guys may have already thought of a reason why this wouldn't be a good idea).

It ain't rocket science. You need to understand what you are trying to accomplish, understand the equipment, care enough to pay attention to detail and in my opinion you need to have an edge checker. Before I started sharpening I used to wonder what the guys were doing when they would put that "little thing" on the top of the skate and I used to wonder why some guys/places did it and some didn't. Now that I know what that is all about, I can't imagine sharpening without an edge checker. I understand some people can supposedly do it with witness marks alone, but I'm not one of them.

I don't know where it stands now, but most of us on this thread have read the article (two years old now I think) that said that some 20+ NHL teams had added FBV capability to their arsenel. Since it is a relatively low cost impact to such a big organization I can't imagine that they don't all have the capability now. That of course doesn't speak to the question of how many of the players on each team are using it though. If Blackstone people are still monitoring this thread they could possibly comment on that.

I agree with JR and Rachel that going back to ROH once is a useful exercise for anyone that has used FBV for a while to (re)convince yourself. When I switched from ROH to FBV the performance difference was definately noticable and welcomed but it didn't seem HUGE. Since I have my own sharpener and they sent me a 1/2" spinner with it I decided to try 1/2" one day going to a stick and puck with my son. I didn't even want to stay for the entire session! I have used the same words Rachel did every time I tell someone about that experiment.... "It was like skating through mud". I don't know why it seemed to be a much greater change going from FBV to ROH than it did going from ROH to FBV, but the difference was huge. I am sure there is some psychology involved that accounts for the perceived difference. Regarding the ability to control the edging... It has always been my perception that (and I have said this to many people) I am more able to control the "amount" of edging with FBV than ROH. Having said all that, you really need to be able to trust that the guy doing the sharpening is getting very even edges or have some way of checking edge evenesss yourself. I think that it is probably a true statement that a botched FBV sharpening is worse than a botched ROH sharpening.

I wish I would have bought the X-02. I bought the X-01 for me and my son. I figured I would do a couple of others skates for free as well. Once word got out though it got to be a lot more pairs than I expected. I'm probably doing 20-30 pairs a month now. I had to start charging (albeit only $4) to cover my expenses and to keep people from giving them to me every time they see me. Anyway, my X-01 has been making some minor noises for several months now that I think is maybe a rough spot that forms on the bearings (or maybe some grit). The noise evenutally works itself out but I'm constantly wondering if it is going to shoot craps. Blackstone has assured me that replacing the motor is neither that difficult nor that expensive. But if/when it finally does go south, if they will sell me an X-02 without a holder I may go that route instead. BTW... I am not slighting the X-01 in any way. I'm using it more than it was intended for.

I have done down to youth size 12 with the X12 holder. Sometimes you have a little difficulty at the toe when the grinding wheel gets small. You can cut off the front corners of your holder and "cheat" the skate a little towards the heel to give yourself a little more clearance though.

You should go back and read the entire thread (yes I know that will take a while). But there is some useful info you can gleen from it. One thing I would want to caution you about before it's too late (and you can find info about it in the thread) is that you probably need to "loosen up" the spring washer that compresses against the spinner causing it to spin more slowly than the grinding wheel so that it is possible to dress the grinding wheel. As delivered, it tends to be (at least it used to) a little too tight and doesn't let the spinner spin enough. This can cause you to eat through the diamonds in one particular spot on the spinner (this happened to me) shortening the life of the spinner.

Question for all spinner users, but particularly those who work at shops and go through a lot of spinners... Would it be true that a spinner is done for as soon as you can see any metal spots on it? -OR- Would it be true that if there is only a small metal spot (for the sake of argument let's say less than 10% of the circumference) that the rotating action of the spinner is enough such that you can still effectively use the spinner longer? Thanks for your expertise.

I just noticed that the price of the X-01 went up around $100 and I noticed that it now comes with the X-12. They show a picture of the X-12 with the little ball shaped handles. Mine didn't come with the handles and I always assumed that it was just a different picture (perhaps of the U-12) that they used because they didn't have a picture of the X-12. But now that they actually show it that way on the X-01 page, I was wondering if any of you actually got X-12's with the handles on it? (I don't know that I really care because I have never really missed them... I'm just curious) Thanks.

The following is JUST MY OPINION... I sharpen several 8-9 year old kids skates on my X-01, including my son's. I talked to someone at Blackstone (or maybe it was No-Icing Sports, I can't remember) around a year ago and they said that in their opinion any kid under around 100lbs ought to probably be in 100/75. Their reasoning was because of the weight factor and because in the long run they would be better off getting used to having more edge early on anyway. The did say however, that if the kid is one that just can't stand "bite" then they would drop them down if they didn't like it. About 70% of the 10 or 15, squirts that I do use 100/75, with the rest using 100/50. My 8 year old, 82lb son has used 90/75, 100/50 and 100/75. He has used 100/75 for most of the last year. As an experiment, I recently switched him to 100/50 for around a month and he asked to go back to 100/75. Ditto for one of his teammates. I have used 90/75 and 100/50 myself and I have settled on 100/50 (and I weigh WAY more than an 8 year old).

Do you mean for the moaning noise or the other noise? The other (sort of vibrating noise) is definately not the wheel because it happens when the wheel is off (I took it off to make sure). I'm not that worried about the moaning noise. I think it is just due to a difference in the composition of the ruby wheel. I do a pretty substantial dress when I put on a brand new wheel, marking with a marker around the entire wheel so that I can be sure I dressed it completely.

No "extra" chatter marks. I always end up with a little fish scale until I do my final passes. I hear a bit of "moaning" as I go through the middle section of the blade but that is unrelated to the sound I am talking about and I had never heard that until yesterday either. I associated that moaning with being related to the ruby wheel because I also heard it for the first time yesterday but I suppose that could have been there for a while and masked by the vacuum as well. Except for in the very begining, when I know I didn't have either noise, I always ran it with the vacuum and couldn't hear anything. The noise sounds like a little vibration. I think it is either 1) Something has loosened up and is vibrating, 2) A bearing is going, 3) some grit has worked its way into the motor.

I've always believed that the edge on my skates are not as sharp (and I mean cut your finger sharp, not depth of hollow sharp) on my X-01 as what they are able to do at the LHS. I just got my first "ruby" wheel and unless I am imagining it, that was the difference. It feels much more "cut your finger" sharp to me. I don't know if that is going to turn out to be a good thing or a bad thing though (I don't want to have to do the old rub the skates on the plastic at the bench door trick again). Now, what to do with my extra orange wheels? On another topic, I'm starting to hear a new noise out of my sharpener (sort of an extra vibration that comes and goes). I hope it isn't a bearing going. Anyone else have such a sound? Do any of you do any regular maintenance on your X-01 other than just wiping down and vacuuming off?

That's interesting... Thats what FBV moves us closer to... a flat blade with a little burr (sort of) on the edge. That makes sense though. They don't need edge control and therefore don't need any edge angle or V, because they don't have to hockey stop and do transitions. So they just need little runners like the old metal sleds. Seems to me blackstone could enter the speed skate sharpening market as well (not that there is much money in it) by making some special shaped spinners, like this [ , to do the job for them as well.

BTW... I never answered the specific question that you asked (I made a spread sheet where I can just enter the FBV values and it will output the INCREASE/DECREASE stuff to make it easy on myself... I can send it to you if you would like) Going from 90/50 to 80/75 Glide due to flat bottom width DECREASE Glide due to edge depth DECREASE Pushing/Cornering ability due to edge depth INCREASE Pushing/Cornering ability due to edge angle SAME Transition to stop, mohawk, etc. due to edge depth HARDER Transition to stop, mohawk, etc. due to edge angle SAME Going from 90/50 to 85/75 Glide due to flat bottom width DECREASE Glide due to edge depth DECREASE Pushing/Cornering ability due to edge depth INCREASE Pushing/Cornering ability due to edge angle INCREASE Transition to stop, mohawk, etc. due to edge depth HARDER Transition to stop, mohawk, etc. due to edge angle HARDER Going from 90/50 to 95/75 Glide due to flat bottom width INCREASE Glide due to edge depth DECREASE Pushing/Cornering ability due to edge depth INCREASE Pushing/Cornering ability due to edge angle INCREASE Transition to stop, mohawk, etc. due to edge depth HARDER Transition to stop, mohawk, etc. due to edge angle HARDER Going from 90/75 to 80/75 Glide due to flat bottom width DECREASE Glide due to edge depth SAME Pushing/Cornering ability due to edge depth SAME Pushing/Cornering ability due to edge angle DECREASE Transition to stop, mohawk, etc. due to edge depth SAME Transition to stop, mohawk, etc. due to edge angle EASIER Going from 90/75 to 85/75 Glide due to flat bottom width DECREASE Glide due to edge depth SAME Pushing/Cornering ability due to edge depth SAME Pushing/Cornering ability due to edge angle DECREASE Transition to stop, mohawk, etc. due to edge depth SAME Transition to stop, mohawk, etc. due to edge angle EASIER Going from 90/75 to 95/75 Glide due to flat bottom width INCREASE Glide due to edge depth SAME Pushing/Cornering ability due to edge depth SAME Pushing/Cornering ability due to edge angle INCREASE Transition to stop, mohawk, etc. due to edge depth SAME Transition to stop, mohawk, etc. due to edge angle HARDER

Yeah... I know what you mean. I inentionally chose speed though. I associate glide with the absence of drag. I was actually using "speed" to differentiate (at least in my own mind) from the absence of drag. If you can glide really well, but can't get anything out of your stride, you would not be fast. A cross ground skate would have GREAT glide, but I doubt the player would be very fast. As I said in my last post, I am pretty certain that some of the factors are much less significant, but I wouldn't want to speculate on which ones without any data to back it up. I'm hoping blackstone will enlighten us with the university data. If Blackstone is really going to have that many FBV's, I was thinking... I could envision a computer program (I'm a software person) that Blackstone could make available to LHS's and us home sharpeners that would allow input of height, weight, position, age, some skating style aspects, skate model, desired attribute's, etc and the software would poop out a suggested FBV. That would be a VERY complicated physics model to pull off though. Incidentally, does anyone know how a speed skate works? I've always been told they were flat. How can they skate so fast if that is true?

The following IS NOT based on any first hand knowledge of those FBVs but rather just what changes are being made to the shape. Well lets see (and forgive me if I make a mistake, it's a lot to keep straight)... If you were at 90/75 you could move to one of four (assuming you had all of the choices in the chart and you were only going to move one position at a time). NOTE: For each item listed I don't mean one of them will happen, I mean ALL of them will happen If you went to 85/75 -You would increase drag due to the smaller flat bottom width -You would maintain the same drag due to the same edge depth in the ice -You would maintain the same pushing ability due to the same edge depth in the ice -You would decrease pushing ability due to the less sharp edge angle -You would maintain cornering ability due to the same edge depth in the ice -You would decrease cornering ability due to the less sharp edge angle -You would increase your ability to easily scrape ice (stop, mowhawks, etc.) due to less sharp edge angle. -You would maintain your ability to easily scrape ice (stop, mowhawks, etc.) due to less edge depth in the ice. If you went to 90/50 -You would maintain the same drag due to the same flat bottom width -You would decrease drag due to less edge depth in the ice -You would decrease pushing ability due to less edge in the ice -You would decrease pushing ability due to a less sharp edge angle -You would decrease your cornering ability due to less edge depth in the ice -You would decrease your cornering ability due to a less sharp edge angle -You would increase your ability to easily scrape ice (stops, mohawks, etc.) due to less sharp edge angle -You would increase your ability to easily scrape ice (stop, mowhawks, etc.) due to less edge depth in the ice. If you went to 95/75 -You would decrease drag due to a bigger flat bottom width -You would maintain the same drag due to the same edge depth in the ice -You would maintain the same pushing ability due to the same edge depth in the ice -You would increase pushing ability due to a sharper edge angle -You would maintain your cornering ability due to the same edge depth in the ice -You would increase your cornering ability due to a sharper edge angle -You would decrease your ability to easily scrape ice (stops, mohawks, etc.) due to sharper edge angle -You would maintain your ability to easily scrape ice (stop, mowhawks, etc.) due to the same edge depth in the ice. If you went to 90/100 -You would maintain the same drag due to the same flat bottom width -You would increase drag due to more edge depth in the ice -You would increase pushing ability due to more edge depth in the ice -You would increase pushing ability due to a sharper edge angle -You would increase your cornering ability due to more edge depth in the ice -You would increase your cornering ability due to a sharper edge angle -You would decrease your ability to easily scrape ice (stops, mohawks, etc.) due to sharper edge angle -You would decrease your ability to easily scrape ice (stop, mowhawks, etc.) due to more edge depth in the ice. So like I said before it's not that simple. I would think you definately wouldn't want to bother with 85/75 because it doesn't have any speed increasing attributes. As for the other three, unless one of them jumps out at you as "yeah that sounds like what I need" then I think it is going to be a trial and error proposition. Now some of those attributes are probably much less significant when compared to the others which would mean that you could ignore them. I don't have a clue which ones would fall into that category. I'm sure that is some of the things they are looking at in Blackstone's university study. Now when someone someday figures out how to dynamically vary blade width... that will be very sweet... think perfectly, individually optimized hollows...

This is the chart I'm putting on the wall by my sharpener...

In my opinion what most people would call bite comes predominantly from two things in FBV. 1) Edge angle and 2)Edge depth. How deep the blade is in the ice relates mostly to how well you can push. The edge angle relates greatly to how hard you can turn and how hard it is to go from pushing to scraping ice (hockey stopping, doing mohawk transitions, etc). You went from a depth of 0.75 to 0.50 and an edge angle of 85.7 to 87.1 (the way that blackstone is calculating edge angles in the "technical specs" doc means that bigger edge angle numbers are actually less bite, with 90 degrees being "no bite at all". So you decreased your "bite" in both of the changes you made, which is what you were trying to do (if you were trying to go faster). FBV doesn't eliminate the reality of the tradeoff between bite and glide. They just lessoned how much of one you have to give up to get more of the other. But that was one of the correct two to try if you were tryig to go faster while minimizing the change to bite. Speed is determined by Flat bottom width and Edge Depth "Grip" is determined by Edge Angle and Edge Depth. The interdependency comes from the fact that blade width is fixed and that you therefore can not change any single one of those (edge depth, edge angle, or flat bottom width) without changing one of the other two.

No I was referring to me and my tendency to get long winded. Going through life as an engineer is a curse brother... you have to analyze EVERYTHING!

OK... and now for an apology from me... I just realized that I ERRONEOUSLY thought that the chart was a product of the university study and came from empirically asking a group of skaters what ROH a particular FBV felt like. I now realize that the ROH values on the chart come simply from the trigonometric edge angle calculation in the "Technical Specs" document. So after this realization, I agree wholeheartedly that the ROH's in that chart relate in a large and meaningful way to "bite only" and that therefore the chart is a VERY useful tool to help pick which FBV to use. I have always believed that the edge angle is a major contributor (probably the largest contributor) to bite. I think the rest of my ramblings were valid though. Steve, JR and Jimmy, I'm on the same page now and I apologize.

Now if that is what the ROH comparison implies (i.e. BITE ONLY of 1/2 and NOT glide of 1/2) then that is a different thing entirely than I had thought the chart was trying to imply. That becomes a very useful piece of information and would make the selection process VERY easy for me. I would pick the FBV with the MOST glide and least (shallowest edge) that claims to compare to 1/2 inch (this would be 90/1.00 from the chart). I would be able to pick this because I have a sharpener and can sharpen whenever I need to AND will give the utmost care to edge eveness, etc. If it turns out that I can't even get through a single skate without catastrophically damaging that edge, then I would increase it to the next "more edge" that has the most glide and correlates to 1/2 inch (90/0.75). What I don't understand though is that after a lifetime of playing hockey, I did in fact settle on a 1/2 inch. So 90/0.75 should be the optimum for me (of the original four that were offered). This is not the case though. I have used 90/0.75 and 100/0.50 extensively and I like 100/0.50 better (because 90/0.75 does't feel like it has enough bite for me and 100/0.50 does, and if the ROH comparison IS truly a "bite only" comparison, the chart says they should feel like they have the same bite). As I stated before though, I don't think it is that simple. When empirically taking the statistics, if you ask skaters in a large randomized double blind study to try an FBV and "tell me which ROH BITE this FEELS like", I would contend you can't actually get a meaningful answer to that question. I don't think they would be able to separate the two interlated ROH components of bite vs glide. None of this really matters to me because as I said I have found a great FBV for me and I won't be buying different spinners at $65/per simply for purpose of trial and error to see if I can "squeeze a little more speed" out of it. It would be easier and cheaper to eat a few less donuts. I'm not knocking anyone or anything. I love FBV. After trying it first at the LHS I voted with my wallet and bought the sharpener, 10+ wheels and 9 mini-spinners (I've only used one spinner up... I do lots of friends skates and whenever I order something from Blackstone I want the free shipping so I order extras and I want to have them on hand right away when I do use them up.) I feel like I might be upsetting some people and confusing rather than enlightening, so I'll shut up now.