AfftonDad
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Posts posted by AfftonDad
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Yes and yes.
Would you mind pointing me to that info (unless it is just the anecdotal stuff that was in this thread a few months ago)? Thanks.
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I checked for size 5 runners and can't find any in stock. I've been using step steel but the cxns are pretty good too.
maybe when they drop the mako name there will be a new holder and runner?
Do you have info that they are discontinuing the Mako line? If so, do you know if the concepts will be carried through to another skate?
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Does any know why CXN runners have become so hard to find? All the usual suspects are out of the size that I need (280mm). I would rather not go to Step due to the fact that I would have to have them profiled to get them the same pitch (from what I hear).
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- I read somewhere that you need less hollow on those skates, is that really true, I mean can you really feel it ? I'm currently using 1/2 but I was already thinking of going shallower anyway (toward 3/8) as ice is often soft here and I like straightaway speed.
I had to go shallower when I switched to VH. I mention this to Scott Van Horne. His reply is in the post below:
http://modsquadhockey.com/forums/index.php/topic/63437-vh-footwear/?p=1009034
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I agree that the logo was a little big and could probably due with a little redesign, but I'd like a logo on the side somewhere.
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The logo is gone in all the recent pictures (pro and others). Is that how they come by default now or is everyone ordering them without the logo? I would miss not having the logo on my next pair. I'm not a fan of the big black space that looks like something is supposed to go there.
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A friend of mine spotted Chris Butler of the Blues wearing VH skates in a game last night.
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Well, the shots are already hard enough to hurt at 10 in the wrong spots. A AAA kid dropped him like a sack of potatoes in a 3v3 tournament with a slapshot that hit him on the hip and missed the pads. It hasn't happened on the foot yet, but the time will come............. I wouldn't be surprised if he started taking some that hurt on the foot this year.
If I recall, isn't your son the one that "over pronates" and he's in Makos? Do you get the blade aligned? or has he grown out of it?
He has grown out of it (at least in his skating stride) for the most part. He is pretty strong so that probably helps a lot. To be honest I think the Mako's probably lessen the over pronation. They fit so snuggly that I think they support better than his U+CLs, EQ-50s and RS's did. I think he was never able to tie those ski boot like skates tight enough to get good enough wrap to give good support. I would consider getting him VHs if he wasn't out growing skates so fast. I swear i can see him get taller week by week. He is around 5'9" now and he is supposed to end up around 6'4". VHs will probably be out of the question until he is 18 or so, at which time I hope he is buying his own skates!
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I had no rust until the summer this year. I always put my equipment on a drying tree with forced air but it is in my garage and the summers can get very humid in St. Louis. Especially this year.
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My defenseman son wears Mako's and he is 13 so the shots are starting to get hard enough to hurt. I mentioned to him that he might have to switch out of the Mako's when shots start making it to him that are hard enough to hurt. He said "no way!" but I know that's just because he has yet to feel a really hard shot to the foot in any skate much less a Mako. Anyway, I said to him that we could get skate fenders if he didn't want to switch. He has seen me wear them on my Makos (all the time) and on my VHs (when my foot was injured). I could see the uneasy look on his face when I said that because he knows that if I say he's wearing them he IS going to wear them. However, I think he's old enough now that I'll just let him learn the hard way.
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It's a shame about my eyelets rusting after just under a year. I used to be happy to pass my skates around to anyone who was interested in looking at them. Now because of the rusted eyelets, I'm a little less eager to do so. I still of course love the skates and will get another pair when these are used up, but I wish he would have used the same eyelets other skate manufacturers do (or do other skates eyelets rust too and I just have forgotten?)
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One of my sons wants to move out of the Mako skate and is considering going back to Bauer Supreme which is a good fit for him other than the lack of pitch. Would the VH skate be a better option especially if we threw on a CXN holder to keep the pitch similar?
When I switched from Mako to VH I had mine made with CXN holders. The pitch feels identical to the Mako (in my opinion). However, I did have to go to a shallower hollow due to the more responsive boot (Scott Van Horne says a lot of the Jets had to do the same).
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Disregard what I said about being able to balance the arbor. It's been a while since I have looked at it but I think Chiefs17 pointed out my error in thinking. I was thinking that both the arbor and the grinding wheel were attached to the same shaft. But I think the arbor is attached to the motor shaft and then the wheel is attached to an "arbor shaft". That would mean that if the arbor is off center then the arbor shaft is off center and then the grinding wheel is off center. This would be able to be "dressed out" to correct the "out of roundess" of the grinding wheel that would occur, but would not get rid of vibration due to the imbalance of the mass of the arbor. I don't think mine is as bad as Chiefs17 was or perhaps HockeyDad3's is.
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If you had some way to add mass to the arbor, you could potentially balance it, similar to how you balance a ceiling fan or a car wheel/tire.
I guess you could try to balance the arbor by putting weights on the arbor without a wheel (with tape?) near the outside and moving them around the circumference until you find the minimum vibration. Then take the weights off and go 180 degrees from the spot where the weights were and begin to carefully drill out material until the vibration went away. Not as good a solution as a better machined arbor, but it might help.
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You have discovered the poorly machined wheel arbor that Blackstone refuses to acknowledge. In your experiment you are adding mass with every piece you add to the wheelholder/arbor (upper nut, and grinding wheel), this exacerbates the problem.
Since the arbor center hole being not centered wouldn't make the wheel be off center (directly), what do you think causes the "bouncing" between the skate runner and the wheel?... The entire machine vibrating back and forth, the movement back and forth of the shaft (within the tolerance of the bearings) or some of both? If it is the entire machine that is moving, bolting it down might help some (mine is bolted down). I wonder if the issue would manifest with greater amplitude with an X-02 since it is not direct drive?
That makes sense as to why I have to do my rotating the wheel process when installing a new wheel. I'm essentially finding the spot where the imperfections in the mass of the wheel are 180 degrees out of phase with the imperfections of the arbor.
Your statement that "CNC will ensure that they are all made the same way" must not be entirely true, because your description of the amount of vibration you originally had is way more than I have even when I haven't tuned the wheel to the arbor.
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Now that I think about it, the specs of the X-01 say that it spins at something less than 5500RPM (that's a "no load" speed). If I were to guess, I might guess that it spins at about 2/3rds the no load speed... that would put it at around 3666 RPM. That would mean in the approximate one second pass that I do, there would be around 61 fish scale marks on a blade... On a typical blade that would put them about 0.47 centimeters apart. That sounds about right. I think the reason a slow final pass will reduce the apparent fish scale is that if your 1 second pass becomes something like a five second pass, the space between the marks becomes less than a millimeter, making them much less noticeable.
That's an odd pattern on your stone...
It's not rubbing on anything anywhere while spinning?
Even with wobble or an uneven stone, at the speed that it spins, you'd assume that your pressure would be contacting different points at the wheel as it rotates to "blend" that pattern in.
I haven't looked back in time to see if this has been answered, but have you asked Blackstone about it or shown them the pattern?
Most of the force is applied across (x-direction) not in (z-direction). Also I think that the approximate 61 times a second that the wheel would bump you back out would effectively keep you from moving it in against the "low spots". I just don't think the relatively small pressure applied inward would be enough to modulate in the z direction that quickly.
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I would have to guess that the only way that you could get that fineshine line coming and going as it goes around the wheel like that would be that the wheel "sticks out" more in one part than it does in another. I would think that could be caused by 1) the hole in the wheel being slightly off center OR 2) the wheel being "not true" (out of round). Either one of those cases should be taken care of once you dress enough off a new wheel to get it to "true". A third case would be if there is some periodic mechanical movement or wobble in the machine (in sync with the rotation of the wheel). I don't know where that would come from but that would be a pretty significant problem. If it is, I don't think it would be a "wobble" or a "non-perpendicularity" because in addition to the line getting fainter and darker, if it were a wobble, I would think it would also move up and down relative to the top and bottom of the wheel (which your picture doesn't seem to indicate is occurring). Rather, it would be a translational thing that would cause the wheel to move in and out as it goes around (while still staying perpendicular/level).
I've had out of round (or perhaps hole off center) wheels before that I have had to dress more than normal to get rather large vibrations to go away. Whenever I put a new wheel on my X-01, I try to minimize the vibrations from the start. I first put it on and if its smooth, good. If not, I rotate it 180 degrees. If vibration improves over the original then I use the new position. if not or if there is still too much, then I try the +/- 90 degree positions. I use whichever of the four positions produces the least vibration. Then I dress it until the remaining vibrations go away.
If your problem remains after a lot of "meat" has been taken off of the wheel (enough to ensure that it is true), then I would think it is either technique OR some mechanical issue with the machine. However, I don't see how technique could produce that line fading like that. The wheel is moving way too fast and not in sync with anything you are doing to produce a symptom like that.
EDIT: I would think you would be able to check that theory about the wheel moving in and out by putting a skate in the holder just barely touching the runner and then rotate the wheel slowly by hand, checking to see if the space between the runner changes (it's going to be very slight). This wouldn't test for something that might be occurring only when the sharpener is "under load" though. But if you did observe it happening, then that would at least tell you something. You of course should see a bigger gap where the line is faint and a smaller gap where the line is dark.
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I used to use waxed laces on everything prior to my Makos and VHs. I've tried wax laces on both of those and didn't like it. I would get them too tight with the waxed laces and they hurt. I don't really need/want to tie either of those skates very tight.
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The thing that makes them so hard to get on (as optimus said) is that indentation. However, that is what helps give the great heel lock. I spot heat treated that area a tad to make it a bit easier to get on, but if you want to keep the great heel lock, don't get rid of it too much. I have to loosen the laces down more than I would with other skates to get them on. At any rate, I've either adapted/gotten used to it or they've loosened up a bit because it doesn't seem that hard to get on anymore.
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Here is another thing which supports my argument that less surface area doesn't always = less friction. Think of the action of pushing with a skate. You angle the skate such that the skate is on a single edge (if you pushed with the skate flat you wouldn't get much of a push). At the instant you start pushing with that skate, it has the absolute least surface area in contact with the ice of any time during skating (except when it is in the air during recovery). During this time of least surface area in contact with the ice, the frictional forces are at their absolute highest, allowing you to exert the maximum possible pushing force.
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Yeah, I had already read that article before. Although I don't claim to fully understand it, I don't necessarily buy it. And I think that his view is still an isolated view compared to the conventional physics reasoning about why things slide on ice. I don't really think ice in itself is that slippery. It's my opinion that ice that is dry and has been sitting over night is less slippery than ice that has just been resurfaced and is not fully frozen yet. This is further supported by the observation we have all had that a puck sliding on wet ice slides very well while it is hydroplaning on top of the layer of water. But after is submarines into the water (deforms the surface it is sliding on) the other drag forces come into play and it comes suddenly to a dead stop. Also after a rink has been skated on, it is much less slippery than when it is fresh. The ice/snow is no less ice than the hard ice it is sitting on. if ice is "just slippery" as he states, the snow should be just as slippery as the hard ice. I think the snow just can be deformed much more easily than the hard fresh ice can, which causes the friction/drag factors to be a much greater contributor.
My experience is that you can touch a very dry piece of ice with your skin and for an instant or two it can feel sticky and almost rough, until a moment later when the heat (and perhaps pressure) of your skin melts it and causes a layer of water to form. Similarly, walking across a sheet of ice that is dry in street shoes is much easier than walking across a sheet of ice that has just been resurfaced and is still wet. In my opinion, it's all about the layer of water. And incidentally, that layer or water can be at the microscopic or molecular level (in other words not visible).
I agree with you that with a wider flat (and with edge depth and blade width constant) that the edge becomes sharper and therefore more easily causes the blade to cut into the ice. A blade that is "running deeper" in the ice is going to have more drag than a blade that is sitting on top of the ice. However, I think a true model for a skate blade has (although it is much more complicated than this simplistic view) a component for friction that goes up as surface area increases and a component that goes down as surface area increases. Furthermore, I think the rate at which they each increase/decrease is probably exponentially related to surface area such that at extremely narrow blade widths one is very large and one is very small and they flip significance at the other extreme. I think the effects are also very much directional. In other words the reason we have blades that are much longer than they are wide (and why speed skate blades are much longer than hockey skate blades), is because that's the direction we want to travel. If we made blades very wide we would gain a huge ability to slide side to side, but what hockey player (other than a goalie perhaps) would trade the ability to push off for the ability to easily slide from side to side? I think this directional aspect of things is also what makes the actual size of the WIDTH of the flat to be in fact insignificant to how "fast" you go. Because you are not really changing either one of the components (the one that increases with surface area or the one that decreases with surface area) very much in the direction that you care about for speed (longitudinally).
I think the bottom line on FBV is it works because ROH allowed you to sink into the ice an unnecessarily large amount. FBV allows you to sink into the ice less.
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I'm a electrical (software) engineer and it's been a long time since my core statics and dynamics courses, so this really isn't my area of expertise, but I think what you are suggesting might not be 100% correct. The physics of a sliding object, and in particular a skate, would be very complex to model. It would be (and probably has been) a good thesis project for a mechanical engineering or physics graduate student. The general equation for sliding friction is F = uN, where u is the coefficient of friction and N is the normal (downward) force exhibited and F is the resulting frictional force. You can see that there is no component in the equation that has anything to do with the surface areas in contact. Now this equation holds true only for non-deformable objects and we all know that ice IS deformable. So as the ice becomes less accurately modeled as something that is hard and more as something that is deformable, the general equation becomes less true and the surface areas begin to come in to play.
Now what would cause the ice to deform? Well the ice is able to melt at the point of blade contact due to the amount of pressure applied. The more pressure applied, the more it melts. The pressure applied IS a function of how much surface area there is in contact Think in terms of pressure in PSI, pounds per square inch, and it becomes obvious that the amount of pressure applied will be the amount you weigh divided by the surface area over which it is distributed. This means that as the surface area in contact is increased, the ice deforms less and the original equation once again becomes closer to being "correct". While this increased surface area does in fact increase the area over which you would have to calculate drag, the effect of drag becomes less and less significant. If I were going to try to push a car on ice, I would have much more success pushing a car that was sitting on a large hard flat platform than one that was sitting on four legs. That's why we put spikes on shoes for walking on ice.
So the long and short of it is, you generally want to increase surface area in contact with the ice to increase glide (reduce drag). This of course decreases bite though. The current hockey skate blade width of .110 inches is what has been empirically over time settled on as the "sweet spot" in this trade off for hockey. This incidentally is why FBV works. The whole point of it is that the FBV will sink in to (deform) the ice less than a ROH will. I think what Blackstone is saying about "decreasing the flat width increases the glide", is due to the fact that as the flat is decreased in width the blade becomes less able to deform (sink into) the ice, therefore increasing the glide.
As I said, not my area of expertise though... anyone with some real expertise in physics, please feel free to correct my amateurish mistakes in reasoning.
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Thank you Afftondad,
Now I'm thinking as here,
1) Spinner dresser roughen surface of grinding wheel. It will affect finished surface of edge bottom.
2) Smoothness of the steel much affect gliding ability. This is just a common sense of skate science especially speed skate world.
3) In smoothness order, ROH>BFD>FBV dressing. The condition of BFD spinner is better than FBV's spinner from this view point.
4) It's so difficult to say difference of each FBV spinners by explanation. If we want to explain it subjectively, just we have to use it.
However, it is not difficult to objectively say which spinner has more/less bite if you hold one of the numbers constant. The following would be objectively true...70/50 72/50 75/50 80/50 82/50 85/50 88/50 90/50 92/50 95/50 98/50 100/50<- Less Bite More Bite ->Also The following would be objectively true...90/50 90/75 90/1(00)<- Less Bite More Bite->Having just checked the full size spinners available in order to type the above, I see that Blackstone is in fact moving towards what I had hoped for; namely, a bunch of flat widths within a single edge depth. However, they are doing it for the 50 depth instead of 75. I have mini spinners and unfortunately, it doesn't look like they are doing it (yet) for the mini spinners. Plus, I have more 75 depth than 50 depth. Oh well.I have not observed any roughness (in the edges as you state) due to FBV however, I sharpen my own skates. I would agree with Jimmy that if this is being observed it is due to the person doing the sharpening. I do agree however, that due to the differences in how a single point dresser applies it's dressing relative to how a spinner applies it's dressing, that FBV will be slightly less smooth than ROH LONGITUDINALLY (length wise along the blade). But in my opinion that shouldn't impact speed significantly since 1) those imperfections are longitudinal and 2) very, very slight. Someone earlier in this thread did some measurements with some very precise laboratory equipment and posted the results. The imperfections were very small. I think the most this will do is sometimes cause faint visible lines that run down the length of the blade. The difference between the types of dressings is that a single point quill maps itself onto the wheel in sort of a "1D/2D" manner where as the spinner maps itself onto the wheel in sort of a "2D/3D" manner. -
Afftondad, also I've read all of your past post on this thread and it was very useful and helpful sentences. I've been understood your logic.
Because so, I wanted to say on my former post that this page says different thing from we often discussing. This page explain as narrow bottom width=touching smaller flat area with the ice would create less friction so we can get more glide. This explanation is not came from just "confused" as Afftondad said. Its saying is different radically from we are thinking.
I would agree with you that the following statement they made on their page...BASE WIDTHS: Shorter widths allow less steel on the ice for increased glide; longer widths allow more for better traction.doesn't include 100% of the details of what is going on and therefore can sound a little non-intuitive.If you have ever talked to the guys at Blackstone, they will sometimes admit to you that they have to "dumb things down" for marketing purposes. They have to keep things as simple as possible so that the majority of people can have a fair understanding of the LARGEST contributors to the way FBV feels. They are faced with trying to respond to a very broad group of people, many of whom demand a SIMPLE answer to which FBV is "sharper" than which other FBVs AND how each one compares to various ROH settings. I think if you look at that page in context, the message they are tyring to convey becomes clearer.The first thing they say (I'm paraphrasing) is FBV is specified with two numbers... Flat Bottom Width and Edge Depth. They then try to explain what those two numbers mean within the context of the FBV "setting number." They explain 1) The narrower the flat width number the more glide and 2) the higher the edge depth the more bite.Now the statement 1 above is the one you have problems with and I understand why and I agree with you to some extent. Perhaps a way to make the statement closer to 100% correct would be to say the following (this would of course be too confusing for a marketing piece though):If you assume edge depth to remain constant and blade width to remain constant then you can assume the following:- Narrowing the flat bottom width DECREASES glide (in the area of the flat bottom, due to having less surface area to glide on)
- Narrowing the flat bottom width INCREASES glide (across the ENTIRE cross section of the blade, due to lessening the edge angle and making the ENTIRE cross section of the blade more flat, therefore increasing glide across the ENTIRE cross section of the blade)
- The amount of glide gained by 2 above is much greater than the amount of glide lost by 1 above.
There is a "duality" in each one of the THREE factors (Edge Depth, Edge Angle, and Flat Width). All three of these things have bite/glide interdependencies and because of the fixed width of the blade, interdependencies between each other. That is why the only real way to arrive at what you like is to go to someone who knows how to correctly sharpen (and can therefore REPEATABLY give you a real representation of the FBV you are asking for) and then through trial and error find what you like. Having said that, you should be able to reduce the number of trials if you hold one of the numbers constant. Since there are a lot more widths than depths, I would recommend holding the depth constant during the trials.Murray Wilson of Blackstone once told me that they originally didn't even want to provide those FBV to ROH comparison charts OR the ORIGINAL FBV chart that went90/50 90/75 100/50 100/75<-Less Bite More Bite->but the shops and customers pretty much demanded them. In my opinion the best the charts can do is to give you a rough idea of where to start. I would have rather they introduced FBV at a SINGLE depth (perhaps 75) and then the FBVs available could have been identified as 85, 87, 88, 100, 102, 104, 106, etc. That would have then been very easily understood. The higher the number, the more bite. Then down the road perhaps, some other depths could have been introduced if people were really clamoring for it.EDIT: Actually, after all that I just re-read blackstones statement and I do think it is wrong... It seems backwards... it should probably either say:BASE WIDTHS: Shorter widths allowlessMORE steel on the ice for increased glide; longer widths allowmoreLESS for better traction.ORBASE WIDTHS: Shorter widths allow less steelonIN the ice for increased glide; longer widths allow more for better traction.
VH Footwear/TRUE by Scott Van Horne
in Ice Hockey Equipment
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I have the CXN on my VHs and the pitch feels the same to me as my Mako's did (which is what I was going for). However, in addition to what laserrobottime suggested, since you are concerned that the CXN might be too much forward pitch and since some of the pitch in the CXN comes from the holder and some from the blade and since it has been said here that the Step CXN runner does not have the forward pitch in it that the stock CXN runner has, using the Step runners should back you off from the overall +3 of the stock CXN to APPROXIMATELY +2.
When I buy my next pair of VHs, if the future of the CXN holder is in question or if the CXN steel becomes hard to find, I'll probably just go with Bauer holders with a heel shim or +3 profiled steel.