TRUE TF9/TF7 skates

[hockeydad3 51]

1 hour ago, SkateWorksPNW said:

9/10 double

Ok that´s what i guessed. When I shift my center of gravity backwards, I feel a click that initially feels like I'm falling backwards. The front half of my runner feels good, but the back half doesn't have enough forward pitch and there is some steel missing under my heel. I ordered a pair of runners profiled with the ellipse zero profile, let's see when they arrive and when I can skate on them.

[smcgreg 81]

1 hour ago, hockeydad3 said:

Ok that´s what i guessed. When I shift my center of gravity backwards, I feel a click that initially feels like I'm falling backwards. The front half of my runner feels good, but the back half doesn't have enough forward pitch and there is some steel missing under my heel. I ordered a pair of runners profiled with the ellipse zero profile, let's see when they arrive and when I can skate on them.

Are you saying the back is 9' and the front is 10'?  That seems odd.  My son also felt like there was steel missing under his heel, but I thought that was because it was a standard 9'. 

 

[hockeydad3 51]

42 minutes ago, smcgreg said:

Are you saying the back is 9' and the front is 10'?  That seems odd.  My son also felt like there was steel missing under his heel, but I thought that was because it was a standard 9'. 

 

I just can tell you my perception mentioned above.

[Vet88 674]

9 hours ago, smcgreg said:

Are you saying the back is 9' and the front is 10'?  That seems odd.  My son also felt like there was steel missing under his heel, but I thought that was because it was a standard 9'. 

 

9' front, 10' back.

[smcgreg 81]

On 1/7/2021 at 12:17 PM, smcgreg said:

To follow up on this and our sizing experience, again, my son is 6.5 in Mako.   We got him 6.5 without sizing, because it was for Xmas.  Out of the box he thought they were perfect.  AFter baking they were clearly too big. 

At the store, my skate guy, who is very good, thought that a 6 might even be too big, so, he tried a 5.5. ($$$ if only...)  Again, out of the box, the 5.5. actually felt perfect to him except for a couple spots that could have been locally heated.  After baking though.... too small.

So, he ultimately settled on 6, which he loves (boot wise), but the disconnect between 1) other manufacturers and 2) unbaked fit vs baked fit makes it imperative to actually try the things on after baking to assure correct fit.  I was very surprised that they got tighter after baking with the 5.5.s, but I guess that's a testament to the material used.

 

Following up to this reply to help maintain some continuity. 

Today, my son skated on his TF9s in two back to back games for the first time since profiling to 10 ft and -1 pitch.  As a reminder, he hated the stock profile out of the box and was miserable after one stick adn pucks.  As reference, he skated on his Makos in a game yesterday and decided to dive in head first for two games today for a number of reasons.  This was a fairly high level skate (college recruitment), but not at the AAA 15U level.  Since he skated one game yesterday, the Makos were fresh in his mind and TF9s were brand new and effectively novel to him since the profile was different.  I'll break it down by things I think made a difference.

1.  10 ft radius - Much better than stock.  He was visibly "teetering" back and forth on the stock profile at sticks and pucks.  It was probably a combination of things, but he commented he felt like there wasn't enough steel under his toes and heels.  No such comment today and no "teetering".

2.  minus 1 pitch - Again, much better than stock.  He commented that he still felt like he was being pushed forward a bit, but could probably get used to it.  Will give it a couple more skates. 

Other harder to attribute observations: 

3. Power transfer - He commented that he felt more powerful on them.  As support, after playing two back to back games, he felt less tired than the day before playing only one game on his Makos yesterday.  As corroboration, watching him, I thought he was going further on each stride. I commented on this to a friend before his comments.  So, not that this would be a specific True property, I just think the Mako footbed is breaking down and he's just getting better power transfer, resulting in greater stride efficiency and less fatigue.

4. He said they feel like "tanks".  Heavier, beffier, less agile.  They are heavier than Makos, but as I've stated before he needs more protection, so, any more protective skate will likely be heavier.  at this point, this is his only complaint and he accepts that nothing will feel like the Makos from here on out.  So, need to adjust and see if he can get the agility from these on top of the other benefits.

Finally, the fact that he skated two back to back games without any comfort issues in brand new skates is almost unheard of in any other brand, than Makos, I expect.  The only comfort complaint was a bit of rubbing at the cuff because they come up higher than Makos.  He's going to try higher socks next time to see if that fixes it, but if not, I'll heat and roll out the cuff.  Still, pretty impressive to get that knid of comfort/fit for $600. 

 

 

[flip12 714]

3 hours ago, smcgreg said:

Following up to this reply to help maintain some continuity. 

Today, my son skated on his TF9s in two back to back games for the first time since profiling to 10 ft and -1 pitch.  As a reminder, he hated the stock profile out of the box and was miserable after one stick adn pucks.  As reference, he skated on his Makos in a game yesterday and decided to dive in head first for two games today for a number of reasons.  This was a fairly high level skate (college recruitment), but not at the AAA 15U level.  Since he skated one game yesterday, the Makos were fresh in his mind and TF9s were brand new and effectively novel to him since the profile was different.  I'll break it down by things I think made a difference.

1.  10 ft radius - Much better than stock.  He was visibly "teetering" back and forth on the stock profile at sticks and pucks.  It was probably a combination of things, but he commented he felt like there wasn't enough steel under his toes and heels.  No such comment today and no "teetering".

2.  minus 1 pitch - Again, much better than stock.  He commented that he still felt like he was being pushed forward a bit, but could probably get used to it.  Will give it a couple more skates. 

Other harder to attribute observations: 

3. Power transfer - He commented that he felt more powerful on them.  As support, after playing two back to back games, he felt less tired than the day before playing only one game on his Makos yesterday.  As corroboration, watching him, I thought he was going further on each stride. I commented on this to a friend before his comments.  So, not that this would be a specific True property, I just think the Mako footbed is breaking down and he's just getting better power transfer, resulting in greater stride efficiency and less fatigue.

4. He said they feel like "tanks".  Heavier, beffier, less agile.  They are heavier than Makos, but as I've stated before he needs more protection, so, any more protective skate will likely be heavier.  at this point, this is his only complaint and he accepts that nothing will feel like the Makos from here on out.  So, need to adjust and see if he can get the agility from these on top of the other benefits.

Finally, the fact that he skated two back to back games without any comfort issues in brand new skates is almost unheard of in any other brand, than Makos, I expect.  The only comfort complaint was a bit of rubbing at the cuff because they come up higher than Makos.  He's going to try higher socks next time to see if that fixes it, but if not, I'll heat and roll out the cuff.  Still, pretty impressive to get that knid of comfort/fit for $600. 

 

 

Cool to hear the detailed follow up.

Out of curiosity, how much do the Makos weigh compared to the Trues, and how much higher cut are the Trues?

[Vet88 674]

4 hours ago, smcgreg said:

Following up to this reply to help maintain some continuity. 

Did you change the holder size or leave him on 254?

[smcgreg 81]

6 minutes ago, Vet88 said:

Did you change the holder size or leave him on 254?

For now, on the 254.  As I noted, his glide seemed longer and he was stable fore-aft. Going to stick with current parameters for a couple skates to see how he adapts.  He doesn't feel as agile right now, so, will chip away at more low hanging fruit with the next change.  First would likely be another minus 0.5 on pitch.  Since he thought they felt like tanks, I didn't think a longer holder would help much. 

[Vet88 674]

fwiw - comments I have received from True about their skate length:-

"The internal measurement of True skates are a 1/4 size longer than the equivalent internal measurement of Bauer skates. The external measurement of True skates is longer than equivalent sized Bauer skates because of features in the True boot and it's design - for example the True one piece shell has an inner carbon toe box that is covered by an external toe box."

Sadly their is no rational explanation as to why someone who can fit their foot (25.5cm long) into a size 6D Bauer (with toes just off the toe cap) can fit the same foot into a 5.5R True skate (with about a 1/4 size of room to spare). True insist that their skate sizings are equivalent to Bauer and refuse to acknowledge that the internal measurements of their skates are at least a 1/2 to 3/4 size larger than same sized Bauer skates.

It's the CCM debacle all over again. At least CCM fronted up about it, eventually. One can only hope True will bite the bullet and do the same and fix their sizing in the next release, this was alluded to me by the comment "as we incorporate your feedback into the development of our next skate models".

[Giltis 116]

I saw a TF9 Goalie skate, I won't link the photo as I'm not sure if it's supposed to be out yet (also it would take a few steps and I'm lazy), but it looks good and I'll probably be ordering a TF7 for myself.

What I wonder is if the goalie holder will take on both player and goalie runners, if so then I can pick up a cheap player runner and use that for ODR skating, and swap them out for the goalie runners for playing. This is unless there's more to the difference between the skates than maybe just angles, tendon guard, and added protection to the boot against impact. 

[VegasHockey 1280]

6 hours ago, Vet88 said:

fwiw - comments I have received from True about their skate length:-

"The internal measurement of True skates are a 1/4 size longer than the equivalent internal measurement of Bauer skates. The external measurement of True skates is longer than equivalent sized Bauer skates because of features in the True boot and it's design - for example the True one piece shell has an inner carbon toe box that is covered by an external toe box."

Sadly their is no rational explanation as to why someone who can fit their foot (25.5cm long) into a size 6D Bauer (with toes just off the toe cap) can fit the same foot into a 5.5R True skate (with about a 1/4 size of room to spare). True insist that their skate sizings are equivalent to Bauer and refuse to acknowledge that the internal measurements of their skates are at least a 1/2 to 3/4 size larger than same sized Bauer skates.

It's the CCM debacle all over again. At least CCM fronted up about it, eventually. One can only hope True will bite the bullet and do the same and fix their sizing in the next release, this was alluded to me by the comment "as we incorporate your feedback into the development of our next skate models".

I was told the same thing. 

I wonder though if the sizing becomes off once you hit a certain length, for example, anything over a size 5.0 the sizing becomes more skewed than in an intermediate/junior skate? 

I know many individuals who bought skates for their younger kids, sizes ranging between 3.5-5.0, and they said the skates fit perfectly without any issues. It could be kids of that age don't really know how a skate should fit or maybe they struggle with conveying a sizing issue if there is one.

I just wonder if the issue is more with certain specific sizes more than others. Many individuals who have had sizing issues are in senior skates with sizes ranging between 6.0-9.0, myself included. 

[Miller55 333]

7 hours ago, SkateWorksPNW said:

I was told the same thing. 

I wonder though if the sizing becomes off once you hit a certain length, for example, anything over a size 5.0 the sizing becomes more skewed than in an intermediate/junior skate? 

I know many individuals who bought skates for their younger kids, sizes ranging between 3.5-5.0, and they said the skates fit perfectly without any issues. It could be kids of that age don't really know how a skate should fit or maybe they struggle with conveying a sizing issue if there is one.

I just wonder if the issue is more with certain specific sizes more than others. Many individuals who have had sizing issues are in senior skates with sizes ranging between 6.0-9.0, myself included. 

True was already making retail skates on junior sizes before the TF release, so that might be why they have their sizes locked in better in that range.

[hockeydad3 51]

My LHS guy told me I could cut the edge of the felt tongue to improve the wrap of my TF7 skates. Have any of you heard of it or done it yourself?

[VegasHockey 1280]

2 hours ago, hockeydad3 said:

My LHS guy told me I could cut the edge of the felt tongue to improve the wrap of my TF7 skates. Have any of you heard of it or done it yourself?

I used to do this on my skates with felt tongues. If you look at used pro stock skates you'll see a lot of pros do this too. Do you need more wrap?

[hockeydad3 51]

The TF7's are my best fitting skates ever. I baked them with the shrink wrap method. My feet have a high instep, flat arch, normal width, normal forefoot and need a good wrap around the ankles. I'm getting a strong pain in my footsole if I ty my laces too tight, but I need a good lock to prevent my toes touching the cap too much. So I'm thinking about an optimization of the wrap. 

[VegasHockey 1280]

7 hours ago, hockeydad3 said:

The TF7's are my best fitting skates ever. I baked them with the shrink wrap method. My feet have a high instep, flat arch, normal width, normal forefoot and need a good wrap around the ankles. I'm getting a strong pain in my footsole if I ty my laces too tight, but I need a good lock to prevent my toes touching the cap too much. So I'm thinking about an optimization of the wrap. 

That would definitely help. The downside is once you remove the felt if you take too much off you cannot add any back. Also, don't forget that over a period of time the felt will compress. Maybe consider buying some of the thin TRUE tongues? I have seen them sell for $25-30 if you look around on eBay, sidelineswap, and such. 

[flip12 714]

9 hours ago, hockeydad3 said:

The TF7's are my best fitting skates ever. I baked them with the shrink wrap method. My feet have a high instep, flat arch, normal width, normal forefoot and need a good wrap around the ankles. I'm getting a strong pain in my footsole if I ty my laces too tight, but I need a good lock to prevent my toes touching the cap too much. So I'm thinking about an optimization of the wrap. 

Have you tried adding some padding above your toes in the box? True sticks with the Velcro attachment of the tongue to facilitate shifting the tongue up or down over the toes, similar to adding POWERFOOT inserts. This can relieve enough toecap pressure if you need something to help bide the time until the foams compress a bit, which could also help in time. Eventually you might not need anything to take the edge off, depending on how much the foams compress.

[hockeydad3 51]

1 hour ago, flip12 said:

Have you tried adding some padding above your toes in the box? True sticks with the Velcro attachment of the tongue to facilitate shifting the tongue up or down over the toes, similar to adding POWERFOOT inserts. This can relieve enough toecap pressure if you need something to help bide the time until the foams compress a bit, which could also help in time. Eventually you might not need anything to take the edge off, depending on how much the foams compress.

My target is to get a better ankle-/heellock without the need of tying the laces close to my painlimit. I have very little room between tying my laces too loose or too tight. Maybe I should give the skates more time to break in and do another bake.

[VegasHockey 1280]

1 minute ago, hockeydad3 said:

My target is to get a better ankle-/heellock without the need of tying the laces close to my painlimit. I have very little room between tying my laces too loose or too tight. Maybe I should give the skates more time to break in and do another bake.

I would do another bake, and if you are using wax laces switch to normal unwaxed laces. 

[Vet88 674]

12 hours ago, hockeydad3 said:

but I need a good lock to prevent my toes touching the cap too much. 

to which I'd have said they are possibly a 1/2 size too small?

[Miller55 333]

I would definitely bake them again. I think you could probably bake them once a week the first few weeks and it would help a lot with dialing in the best fit. 

[flip12 714]

1 hour ago, hockeydad3 said:

My target is to get a better ankle-/heellock without the need of tying the laces close to my painlimit. I have very little room between tying my laces too loose or too tight. Maybe I should give the skates more time to break in and do another bake.

I know. Stuffing the toe box might decouple your lacing pressure from your toes cramming in the toe box.

[smcgreg 81]

On 1/10/2021 at 1:35 PM, smcgreg said:

Following up to this reply to help maintain some continuity. 

Today, my son skated on his TF9s in two back to back games for the first time since profiling to 10 ft and -1 pitch.  As a reminder, he hated the stock profile out of the box and was miserable after one stick adn pucks.  As reference, he skated on his Makos in a game yesterday and decided to dive in head first for two games today for a number of reasons.  This was a fairly high level skate (college recruitment), but not at the AAA 15U level.  Since he skated one game yesterday, the Makos were fresh in his mind and TF9s were brand new and effectively novel to him since the profile was different.  I'll break it down by things I think made a difference.

1.  10 ft radius - Much better than stock.  He was visibly "teetering" back and forth on the stock profile at sticks and pucks.  It was probably a combination of things, but he commented he felt like there wasn't enough steel under his toes and heels.  No such comment today and no "teetering".

2.  minus 1 pitch - Again, much better than stock.  He commented that he still felt like he was being pushed forward a bit, but could probably get used to it.  Will give it a couple more skates. 

Other harder to attribute observations: 

3. Power transfer - He commented that he felt more powerful on them.  As support, after playing two back to back games, he felt less tired than the day before playing only one game on his Makos yesterday.  As corroboration, watching him, I thought he was going further on each stride. I commented on this to a friend before his comments.  So, not that this would be a specific True property, I just think the Mako footbed is breaking down and he's just getting better power transfer, resulting in greater stride efficiency and less fatigue.

4. He said they feel like "tanks".  Heavier, beffier, less agile.  They are heavier than Makos, but as I've stated before he needs more protection, so, any more protective skate will likely be heavier.  at this point, this is his only complaint and he accepts that nothing will feel like the Makos from here on out.  So, need to adjust and see if he can get the agility from these on top of the other benefits.

Finally, the fact that he skated two back to back games without any comfort issues in brand new skates is almost unheard of in any other brand, than Makos, I expect.  The only comfort complaint was a bit of rubbing at the cuff because they come up higher than Makos.  He's going to try higher socks next time to see if that fixes it, but if not, I'll heat and roll out the cuff.  Still, pretty impressive to get that knid of comfort/fit for $600. 

 

 

Probably the last follow up on this for a while.  The details that got us to this point are in previous posts above.  In general though, decent 15 yr old moving from Makos to TF9s.  The last post was referencing fixes we made to the stock profile to address his complaints after the first couple skates.  After that last post we made another change to the profile and points are listed below. 

1. Additional (-1) pitch.  After the 2nd profile above, he still felt the pitch was too aggressive, so, we took it back another notch.  This made it 10ft (- 2) pitch.  After measuring it compared to his makos, it still appeared to be effectively 1/4" higher back to front compared to Makos that were -2 from stock. 

After this, he felt it was better, but still felt like it was "pushing him forward too much".  We gave it a week to see how he adapted (skating everyday) and if no improvement would profile and take it back another (-2) to a (-4) total. This seemed very extreme to me, but given the previous changes and the existing difference between the  old makos, I thought this is how we would get to where we needed to be. 

After 7 skates on the second profile, comments continued to be... 1) much faster in straight line open ice skating than the Makos 2) he uses a lot less energy to go faster.  Consistently less tired than norma. 3) tight turns better than the Makos but.... 4) agility and footwork bad.  Skates felt "heavy", "like tanks", "clumsy".   So, 1)-3) are big positives, but 4) is a killer.

One observation that he was getting a bit of a hot spot where the top of the cuff was rubbing above his ankle made me think of something else.  He commented that the TF9s were higher than the Makos.  He laced his Makos one eyelet from top, and had the TF9s one eyelet from the top.  So, the last skate before we got them profiled, I asked him to drop the lacing to the 2nd eyelet down.  That would make it closer to the actual Mako lacing pattern since the TF9s came up higher.  My thought was, it was more the lack of fore-aft flexibility was the issue.  He came off the ice and we were going to take them to my skate guy to get the profiled, he said, "don't bother, they're perfect"......  LOL.....  So, one day away from going to a (-4) profile and how knows where that would have sent us. 

Interestingly, as I say, the (-2) is still more aggressive than the Makos we had at (-2).  This is a bit surprising, since I assumed they would have a similar ptich.  This is a demonstration of a couple of things 1) how important ankle flexibility and range of motion is in the anterior/posterior plane for all aspects of skating, including footwork and agility and 2) how such a minor thing like 1 eyelet lacing pattern can make an enormous difference.  Not that this would be the case with everybody, but there are so many friggin variables when dialing in skates .... its' crazy. 

I'm still a bit surprised about the speed difference between the Makos and TF9s.  I'm going to attribute it to the Makos being on their last leg.  He always has rivet issues with them and I think the bottom outsole is just "worn out".  There' s a lot of give around the holder and outsole and that creates loss of power transfer.  Free speed though.... we'll take it!

We're going to do some testing fo the lacing patterns now to quantify the differences as far as top end speed and agility since it will be a very easy change to make and he "perceives" a huge difference.  I'm curious to how much of a difference it makes quantitatively. 

That's it for now.  Hope this helps others trying to nail these skates down.  No doubt they are comfy.  But that stock pitch is pretty aggressive for somebody who's got an ingrained skating pattern .

[VegasHockey 1280]

1 hour ago, smcgreg said:

Probably the last follow up on this for a while.  The details that got us to this point are in previous posts above.  In general though, decent 15 yr old moving from Makos to TF9s.  The last post was referencing fixes we made to the stock profile to address his complaints after the first couple skates.  After that last post we made another change to the profile and points are listed below. 

1. Additional (-1) pitch.  After the 2nd profile above, he still felt the pitch was too aggressive, so, we took it back another notch.  This made it 10ft (- 2) pitch.  After measuring it compared to his makos, it still appeared to be effectively 1/4" higher back to front compared to Makos that were -2 from stock. 

After this, he felt it was better, but still felt like it was "pushing him forward too much".  We gave it a week to see how he adapted (skating everyday) and if no improvement would profile and take it back another (-2) to a (-4) total. This seemed very extreme to me, but given the previous changes and the existing difference between the  old makos, I thought this is how we would get to where we needed to be. 

After 7 skates on the second profile, comments continued to be... 1) much faster in straight line open ice skating than the Makos 2) he uses a lot less energy to go faster.  Consistently less tired than norma. 3) tight turns better than the Makos but.... 4) agility and footwork bad.  Skates felt "heavy", "like tanks", "clumsy".   So, 1)-3) are big positives, but 4) is a killer.

One observation that he was getting a bit of a hot spot where the top of the cuff was rubbing above his ankle made me think of something else.  He commented that the TF9s were higher than the Makos.  He laced his Makos one eyelet from top, and had the TF9s one eyelet from the top.  So, the last skate before we got them profiled, I asked him to drop the lacing to the 2nd eyelet down.  That would make it closer to the actual Mako lacing pattern since the TF9s came up higher.  My thought was, it was more the lack of fore-aft flexibility was the issue.  He came off the ice and we were going to take them to my skate guy to get the profiled, he said, "don't bother, they're perfect"......  LOL.....  So, one day away from going to a (-4) profile and how knows where that would have sent us. 

Interestingly, as I say, the (-2) is still more aggressive than the Makos we had at (-2).  This is a bit surprising, since I assumed they would have a similar ptich.  This is a demonstration of a couple of things 1) how important ankle flexibility and range of motion is in the anterior/posterior plane for all aspects of skating, including footwork and agility and 2) how such a minor thing like 1 eyelet lacing pattern can make an enormous difference.  Not that this would be the case with everybody, but there are so many friggin variables when dialing in skates .... its' crazy. 

I'm still a bit surprised about the speed difference between the Makos and TF9s.  I'm going to attribute it to the Makos being on their last leg.  He always has rivet issues with them and I think the bottom outsole is just "worn out".  There' s a lot of give around the holder and outsole and that creates loss of power transfer.  Free speed though.... we'll take it!

We're going to do some testing fo the lacing patterns now to quantify the differences as far as top end speed and agility since it will be a very easy change to make and he "perceives" a huge difference.  I'm curious to how much of a difference it makes quantitatively. 

That's it for now.  Hope this helps others trying to nail these skates down.  No doubt they are comfy.  But that stock pitch is pretty aggressive for somebody who's got an ingrained skating pattern .

May want to have him try skipping the 3rd from the top eyelet and lace the 2nd from the top eyelet. It will give him more lateral stability without hindering his forward flexion. 

Unless he is confident everything is 100% ideal and he doesn't want any more changes. Then leave it as it is. 

[smcgreg 81]

1 hour ago, SkateWorksPNW said:

May want to have him try skipping the 3rd from the top eyelet and lace the 2nd from the top eyelet. It will give him more lateral stability without hindering his forward flexion. 

Unless he is confident everything is 100% ideal and he doesn't want any more changes. Then leave it as it is. 

So, would that be trying to mimic a "55 flex" thing?  I loved those and still use them myself.