identifying ProSharp profiles

[218hockey 50]

I've come across this issue a few times. How can I tell which profile is on my runners?

We have a local store that has been doing ProSharp profiles for a couple of years and is supposed to have trained technicians. I brought them a new blade and asked if it was stock or profiled and they told me they could match a blade but other than that they didn't weren't sure. Huh? I figured a shop with ProSharp equipment could tell me exactly which profile was applied.

 

[218hockey 50]

 

So here's what's going on. Top blade is new as delivered in off the shelf Ultrasonics. So it says Power Profile. Is that a Quad 1?

The bottom is a "new" blade I got from a "friend of a friend". This is the mystery blade. I was hoping that nothing had been done to it but look at the heel and toe. Is there any way to tell if this is even a ProSharp profile?

Neither set has ever been sharpened.

 

 

Edited August 29, 2021 by 218hockey

[Vet88 674]

If neither have been sharpened then the top is a quad 0 (6 9 11 13) and the bottom should be a standard 10' profile. The top came with boots, the bottom would come as blades on their own.

But... I don't have a retail Pulse Ti replacement on hand to compare yet the toe of that bottom blade looks odd. It appears to have more out of it than the quad and it looks very different to a number of 10' profile blades I have on hand (Bauer, Tydan, Step). It looks like someone has ground the toe down to give it a 6' or 8' front radius. Maybe Bauer are feathering the toe deliberately to match the quad toe so it doesn't feel so different when you replace the blades and you don't get them profiled.

As to working out a profile, you can have a guess at the toe and heel but the differences are so small over the short distance thru the middle that even when comparing them to a template it is very very hard to see, especially after a sharpen or 2. Or at least that is what I have experienced, ymmv depending on eye and experience.

Edited August 30, 2021 by Vet88
took another look at the pics.

[hockeydad3 51]

11 hours ago, Vet88 said:

If neither have been sharpened then the top is a quad 0 (6 9 11 13)

Is Bauer really putting a Quad Zero on every runner length?

 

18 hours ago, 218hockey said:

I've come across this issue a few times. How can I tell which profile is on my runners?

Try them on ice!

I have two sets of runners for my trues´s, one is from Step and is some mm´s lower. The stock ones had been pofiled ellipse xs and the step had been profiled ellipse zero. I couldn´t tell the difference between them by eye, no matter what i`ve tryed. On ice there was a huge difference. Now both are profiled ellipse xs and one set had been sharpened twice by hand and its feeling different in my head. But i didn´t have the time to compare both sets directly on the ice.

Maybe you could digitice the runners and try a comparison on a pc.

[Vet88 674]

9 hours ago, hockeydad3 said:

Is Bauer really putting a Quad Zero on every runner length?

For Pulse Ti senior sizes that are fitted on boots, yes.

[hockeydad3 51]

52 minutes ago, Vet88 said:

For Pulse Ti senior sizes that are fitted on boots, yes.

Do you think that a Quad zero could be a good choice for a size 11 skate?

[Vet88 674]

I would say it's not the skate or size (youth and small junior excluded due to blade length) that determines the profile, it's you. Any blade can have any profile on it, how well you skate on that profile is up to the skater. But if you wanted to try a different profile from a stock 10' then a Quad 0 is as good as any place to start. It will be different, you may take to it quickly, you might hate it or love it. I recently went the other way, a combo to a 10', it messed with me enough that it took 2 weeks before I could accelerate hard out of turns without feeling I was sitting hard on my heels.

[218hockey 50]

On 8/29/2021 at 8:01 PM, Vet88 said:

 

But... I don't have a retail Pulse Ti replacement on hand to compare yet the toe of that bottom blade looks odd. It appears to have more out of it than the quad and it looks very different to a number of 10' profile blades I have on hand (Bauer, Tydan, Step). It looks like someone has ground the toe down to give it a 6' or 8' front radius. Maybe Bauer are feathering the toe deliberately to match the quad toe so it doesn't feel so different when you replace the blades and you don't get them profiled.

 

Yes, it appears there is material removed from the front of the bottom blade. I think they've been profiled and never sharpened. Also, if you look close there is a Minnesota Wild logo engraved on the bottom skate. Not sure if that means it actually came from the team.

Might just sell them cheap. But if I do that I'll just do it and not sharpen and skate on them.

Also, I'm surprised that Bauer would sell Quad 0 runners as a "Power Profile" on a Supreme skate. Think it would have been a Quad 1 or something a bit "flatter".

[hockeydad3 51]

7 hours ago, Vet88 said:

I would say it's not the skate or size (youth and small junior excluded due to blade length) that determines the profile, it's you. Any blade can have any profile on it, how well you skate on that profile is up to the skater. But if you wanted to try a different profile from a stock 10' then a Quad 0 is as good as any place to start. It will be different, you may take to it quickly, you might hate it or love it. I recently went the other way, a combo to a 10', it messed with me enough that it took 2 weeks before I could accelerate hard out of turns without feeling I was sitting hard on my heels.

If one consistently followed the theory that different areas of the runner are responsible for different actions, one would have to make different templates for different runner lengths. So there should be a different Quad Zero profile template(6 9 11 13) for, for example, 246mm and 296mm runners, right? If the runner is too short, the acceleration zone would be too far forward, or no longer there, and if the runner is too long, the acceleration zone would be too far in the middle, right? Prosharp recommends choosing only one size below and above the optimal recommendation. That means that the Quad Zero Profile would only be ok for skates between size 6 and 9. This seems to be a problem of the multi radius profiles, single and dual profiles don´t need this adjustment.

Edited August 31, 2021 by hockeydad3

[mojo122 535]

On 8/29/2021 at 2:33 PM, 218hockey said:

 

So here's what's going on. Top blade is new as delivered in off the shelf Ultrasonics. So it says Power Profile. Is that a Quad 1?

The bottom is a "new" blade I got from a "friend of a friend". This is the mystery blade. I was hoping that nothing had been done to it but look at the heel and toe. Is there any way to tell if this is even a ProSharp profile?

Neither set has ever been sharpened.

Toe geometry differs from what comes on the Ultrasonic and what is sold as aftermarket.  Aftermarket has a softer toe similar to Step. 

6 hours ago, 218hockey said:

Also, I'm surprised that Bauer would sell Quad 0 runners as a "Power Profile" on a Supreme skate. Think it would have been a Quad 1 or something a bit "flatter".

Quad 0 is only on size 7 runners and larger. Smaller runners have Quad XS, XXS, and 3XS depending on runner length. My 254’s are XS.

[218hockey 50]

Guess I was wrong.

Top runner is Power Profile stock fitment to Ultrasonic.

Bottom runner is standard off the shelf PulseTI. I just thought it was odd it had less toe material than the the Ultrasonic blade.

[Ric_Flair 4]

On 8/31/2021 at 1:55 PM, mojo122 said:

Toe geometry differs from what comes on the Ultrasonic and what is sold as aftermarket.  Aftermarket has a softer toe similar to Step. 

Quad 0 is only on size 7 runners and larger. Smaller runners have Quad XS, XXS, and 3XS depending on runner length. My 254’s are XS.

Hi @mojo122.

Do you know why the toe geometry differs from the stock Ultrasonic blades and the aftermarkets? (Aside from them having diff profiles if course). So what if I had a Quad out on the after market, the toe would still be significantly less material; do you have any experience with this scenario, of offer any opinion on what kind of difference I might experience between the two blades?

Am in the middle of possibly switching out blades (well, getting an extra set). I do have the option to get original stock Pulse Ti Power Profiles, or aftermarket Pulse Ti blades, then profiled by the shop to a Quad... what's your thoughts?

TIA

[mojo122 535]

My guess is that they opted for the softer toe to make it more "Step" like, but that decision came well after the initial production run was made on the retail skates.  If you look at the runners in the 3X Pro the LS Pulse SS it has the same Geometry as the aftermarket Pulse TI and LS Pulse.  

I have a set of retail Pulse TI and 2 sets of aftermarket Pulse TI profiled at Bauer's custom factory.  Even with the different toe shape I routinely rotate all 3 sets and and have no issues. If you would be paying for the steel plus the profiling fee I would opt for Pulse TI Per Profiled steel.  If you already have the retail profiled version why not keep things the same?