AfftonDad

Good point that I hadn't thought about. Thanks!

Thanks Chief 17. Regarding the cover, I like having the cover on because I always have a shop vac hooked up to it and I think the vacuum will work better with the top on. However, I had already decided that when it gets close to the end I'll take it off to get a little more out of the wheel. I was actually talking about removing some of the metal that is on the top front face of the sharpener that comes in contact with the cover and prevents it (along with the slotted holes) from moving further back (mine actually looks like it has a couple of pieces of metal welded onto it to restrict the cover even a little more). I hadn't thought about the base of the holder being the limiting factor. I'll take a look at it when I get home. Incidentally, I was at a shop this morning and I asked the question about the black area on the wheel and whether or not I should remove all of it. The guy refused to give me his opinion. He was practically indignant that I would have gone out and bought a sharpener on my own! He insisted that I am going to do a crappy job because I haven't had the extensive training that he has. Oh well. Thanks again. -Mike

Three questions (the first two are newbie questions for those with experience sharpening)... 1. You typically end up with a darker region on the wheel after sharpening. When you go to redress the wheel, do you feel that you need to make the darker region go away COMPLETELY to have properly redressed the stone? 2. How many passes (approximately) do you think you get before you need to redress the stone? 3. Has anyone considered trimming away some of the metal on the X-01 and lengthing the slots on the top cover so that you could get longer life out of the stones by being able to move the top cover farther back? Thanks, Mike

JR... Actually, I just re-read your post and saw that you mention a Pro-Square for correcting the misalignment (I don't have a Pro-Square... I have a Edge-Pro which is a cheaper knock off... has holes drilled in it instead of lines and I have a BatGauge). I think you might have misunderstood my question. The picture I referenced illustrates that you can have the Pro-Square or the Edge-Pro or the BatGauge indicating that you have your edges perfectly at the same height but still have everything else jacked up. Edges at the same height do not mean skate blade is perpendicular to cutting plane. Skate blade not perpendicular to cutting plane means your flat will not be at the proper angle, your edges will not have equivalent angles and that the edges will not have the same depth, even if they are "at the same height". Now if you were to say that after eyeballing it to "flat and level" to the middle of the flat on the wheel, the errors that arise from making adjustments with ONLY the front two knobs cause insignificant errors in the things that I mentioned, I could probably believe that (I still might want to do the math though). As I said before, I'm an engineer. Please forgive my affliction.

That's what I have been doing, looking at it. I can't see 1/1000 of inches though. I guess my eyes aren't as good as yours! No seriously, my son has a medical situation which causes his ankles to be significantly pronated when he skates. You can even see the pronation when he just stands in bare feet. So I don't want to compound the problem by having the flat part of the skate biased in the wrong direction, causing him to pronate even further.

If anyone is interested... The pictures that Blackstone puts on their site are of course not drawn to scale and exagerated to illustrate the effect. I was curious what the actual edge to flat relationship looked like. So I drew up each of the 4 common FBVs to scale (atlhough greatly enlarged) in the linked pdf file. I also included for reference each of the "corresponding" radial hollows and then finally overlaid them on top of each other for comparision. If you download the link and open it, you should zoom in qute a bit to avoid seeing the aliasing (jaggies or stairstepping) on the edges. When you look at them on top of each other, the difference is really substantial. Here is the pdf (Click Here for pdf) -Mike

Long time listener, first time caller OK, so I got my X-01 a few weeks ago, plus a 90/75 spinner and 100/75 spinner and the accessory kit. I have since bought an Edge-Pro edge checker to "supplement" my BatGauge. I have played hockey all my life and I am an engineer so I understand ROH and FBV. I recently upgraded the X-10 holder to an X-12 holder (apparently the same as the U-12 holder, but sized for the X-01) but I have not received it yet. I am new to sharpening but I practiced on some used steel and have now sharpened my skates and my 7 year old son's skates several times with the X-01 (90/75 for me and 100/75 for him) and it feels fine to me and he tells me his feel fine. However, what I don't understand are the statements that I have read on here and from Blackstone that you can just leave the pitch wheel alone. Firstly, I don't think it would be there if it didn't have a purpose. And secondly it just doesn't make sense to me. In this picture(click here) in Figure 1 I show a dressed wheel (albeit the apex of the dressing is not at the midline of the wheel, just as would be typical in real life) and a blade that is parallel to the wheel and correctly adjusted for height. This would produce a correctly sharpened blade. Figure 2 shows a parallel blade that is adjusted too high and Figure 3 shows a parallel blade that is adjusted too low. Both of these would produce undesirable results. Now, if I follow the premise that the pitch wheel should be left alone (and let's assume that the toe and heel of the blade are at the same height), then if my state was that of Figure 2, I would adjust both the left and right wheels down by the same amount . I would eventually get to the position shown in Figure 4 where I have "even edges" in that both edges would be the same "height" as read by an edge checker, however, as shown in the picture the "flat" part of the FBV would not be at a right angle to the blade AND the triangles on each side (i.e., the edges) would have different sizes and angles. Can somebody explain to me what I am missing here? I think there needs to be a procedure for getting the blade parallel to the wheel (or perpendicular to the cutting plane of the wheel). Has anyone come up with such a procedure? Thanks -Mike