Skate profile/radius/etc

[hergs 7]

Ok, I'm a hockey official, 6'5" 230lbs and I have an issue with going between skates. I have the original mako's 10.5d that I love, everything on them is stock except 11ft radius 3/4"hollow +2 pitch instead of stock +3mm with 288mm easton holder. The association I skate for gave me a  credit for new skates. Awesome right? Went with MX3's 10d LS3 steel LS edge holders 288mm. The issue is I cannot for the life of me make the steel on the bauers feel like the eastons. I get the eastons have a more forward lean and flex however I cannot get the same feel on the blades. IE. radius is the same sharpen is the same.

I've played around with 4 different profiles and combos to get them identical and even brought in the makos to the guy who does my skates and said just match these. To date has not happened, I cannot recreate the same feel for the blade.

The feel I get with the makos is while stopping the point of contact to the ice is more towards my toes and the ls3 steel is more the middle of my foot and wayyy more upright and backwards skating is weird. The other problem I have if I go to a 9ft radius on the ls3 the length of my stride significantly decreases and my skating diminishes.

I would swap holder however in my area I cannot find easton holders or steel. 

 

I feel like I'm just out of options. Any gurus please help

[tcraig 42]

I don't personally have experience with it, so someone else feel free to correct me. But I believe this might be a case where a heel lift/shimming the holders would help. Because that would actually change the holder pitch, as opposed to the steel profile.

[Kgbeast 195]

Forward lean is not just in holders, but also in the boot. Stand the Mako on the blade and just push it enough with a finger so it does not fall, then measure the angle of the back of the boot (it is pretty difficult, but you can do it with phone protractor app). Then do the same with Bauer. The difference in angle is basically what you need to compensate for with shims and/or profile changes. Playing with just holders is more or less a waste of time. One holder that offers forward pitch that could be sufficient here is Graf Cobra (3000 or 5000), but it is also a much stiffer holder which is bad if you like "flexy" feel in your holders (many like that). Before swapping holders however, I would give rear post spacers a try.  

[althoma1 575]

I'm also an official and the Makos are the most comfortable skates I've ever worn. After some effort you'll be able to get the pitch feeling similar on the Supreme skates, but the overall feel of the boot will not be the same as the Makos.

If  you love your Mako 1's I'd pick up some of the remaining second gen Makos on clearance. If you're in the US HockeyMonkey has 10.5D Mako M8's in stock and if you're in Canada then Hockeysupremacy has the Mako II in that size.

 

[hergs 7]

I don't mind the actual boot of the bauers, I just want the same feel on the ice with the steel. It's not even close right now. 

Shims come in mm sizing? I assume the Lightspeed holders have 0 pitch. So asking for a +2mm shim should hopefully do the trick and stay with the 11ft radius?

[Kgbeast 195]

7 hours ago, hergs said:

I don't mind the actual boot of the bauers, I just want the same feel on the ice with the steel. It's not even close right now. 

Shims come in mm sizing? I assume the Lightspeed holders have 0 pitch. So asking for a +2mm shim should hopefully do the trick and stay with the 11ft radius?

In popular culture, it is commonly accepted that Mako pitch is +3 over Bauer pitch. This means that the difference between front and the rear tower is larger in Mako skates by 3/32". I would assume that it would be based on skate size 8.5 - 9 (which is average for US male).  For size 10.5 skate, this difference would be a hair larger. With this eye-balling, I would suspect that you would want 3mm shims in the back to roughly match the forward pitch. Once this done, you can also profile your blades if you still feel that more or less pitch is required. 

The radius is not related to forward pitch, you should be able stay with 11' radius and you might like it more than Mako's 9' radius.

[IPv6Freely 2096]

21 hours ago, hergs said:

I would swap holder however in my area I cannot find easton holders or steel. 

http://www.hockeymonkey.com/catalog/product/view/id/140459

[smu 29]

I had problems with my older skates and decided to by a pair of X60 Bauer skates, this was about 5 or 6 years ago. The skate fitter put me on a sheet of plastic ice and viewed me from the side and back.

1. First from the side, he could see from his experience that for my body language, I needed to have more of a pitch forward and to have my blades profiled, I good loose some steel or he would insert a 4-6mm heel lift in both skates, I forget the exact thickness.

2. Then, he said to loosen my skates and place my hands on my knees and bend my knees until my knees/hands were just over my toe cap. He then viewed my calf muscles from the rear and he cold see that my tendon guard was not tracking in relation to my calf muscle and bending to the inside indicating over-pronation in the right foot. With this he added approximately another 4-6mm of plastic (as it was the same as he added to the heel) on the lateral (outside) between the holder and the bottom of the boot, front and back (some say you don't need the front done?).

With this it corrected my skating problems almost perfectly. Three years ago I purchased a pair of X-80 with the intentions of having someone move both my holders medially (towards the knee), but I soon realized that there was no room, especially in the heel area. I then decided to get them profiled, but forgot about how much I needed the 6mm heel lifts. It took me a couple of years to remember about the heel lifts meanwhile I was experiencing more and more problems. Falling down unexpectedly, feeling of skates not being sharp and the worst falling and landing on the back of my head.

I then learned that I was over-pronating now in both feet and worse. I have been actively working with this ever since and can keep helping myself by adding mm to the inside heel area below my Superfeet small plastic shims (just on the medial side less than 1/2 of the width of the heel and 2-2.5" long). For those that don't know it, if you shim from inside the boot, below your insole, you shim on the medial side and in the heel area to straighten your heel up lessening pronation. If the wedges are placed on the outside between the holders/boots the shims are placed on the lateral side.

With all this minor adjustments that I was going through I was forgetting about my old heel lifts that I had put on the X-60 Bauer. I did this and it worked right away, I was no longer falling unexpectedly backwards. Since then I have had the LightSpeed 2 Steel profiled quite a bit to give me the aggressive forward pitch and it has been quite successful.

Some may have heard this story before, but I am still having difficulty nailing the amount of pronation I have at any given time. I am only talking about minor mm additions, but I never know until I actually step on the ice whether or not I need to add or subtract mere minor height adjustments. I am a good skater, I am in the Senior age category and I have had 2 issues of sciatica, in that time frame, that has my pelvis tilted slightly and no doctor can help me saying my crazy changes to my lifts are correlated to my back/pelvis problems. When it is bad it is if I have poorly sharpened skates and can't handle the puck at all because I am concentrating on standing up. When things are good, I can skate and stick-handle like I did before all these symptoms started.

Has anybody had these same issues as I want to buy a pair of VH skates. I am thinking of having StepSteel with the LS2 holders (stronger or something better) and profiled for a good positive pitch. For the holders I would do 1 of 2 things. 1.

1. Have them put on with T-nuts and slightly medial so I good loosen the holders on the bench, if I am having problems and add some Bont wedges on the lateral side(s).

2. Again have the blades mounted with rivets, just slightly medially, so I can asses the situation on the ice an then have the rivets removed if I am having problems and making the rivet holes a little longer towards the medial side so I can slide the holders. The cost of the rivets is little and it is done free.

I have heard that VH has come out with 2 more holders that may give me the forward pitch that I need drastically. The only problem is that this will be my own remote fitting as there is no one in the Halifax, Nova Scotia area to do a remote fitting, let alone the 3D variety!

We have the likes of Sydney Crosby, Nathon MacKinnon and Brad Marchand and others within a 10 mile radius of Halifax, with more stars to come. You would think someone could be trained here!

Anyone have any ideas on my back/pelvis problems, relative to pronation or the problem of what I should do to to order VH skates. I want my game back, not have my skates off on the bench once or twice a game trying to catch the right amount of material to place in the medial side of the heel pocket.

Thanks - Alan