Looking for advice on profiling Flare steel

[Favro9 0]

Hi everyone, first time post!

I want to buy another set of Flare steel and have it profiled and was hoping for advice from anyone who might have any.

My skates are custom ultrasonics with a holder size 288. I like the stock profile that came on the pulse ti steel and it feels very comfortable to me now. In the past I've tried Flare with it's stock profile and while I loved the edges, the profile felt pretty flat and like there was too much steel on the toe, which I think hindered my agility. I had those profiled to an ellipse 1 with the standard 20mm offset and then they felt too pitched forward and unstable for me. My understanding is that the profile on my ultrasonics is a standard quad 0, but if that's the case I'm surprise that the ellipse 1 would feel less stable than that. Another issue I had with the ellipse was that it took off a ton of the flare, which was kind of a bummer.

Right now I'm leaning towards getting the Flare profiled with a quad 0 or a quad 1, but am having trouble deciding between the two as well as what pitch I should choose. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Oh and one more thing, the Flare steel I currently have is DLC coated, and I sharpen it on a sparx machine to 1 1/4", and it always has such a massive burr on it that I can't fully remove with a rubberized stone or leather strop, so I have trouble ever getting a nice edge. Not sure if that's because of the sparx or the flare or whatever, but I'm thinking of getting the non-coated steel so that I can use a normal stone which I hope will be better at removing the massive burrs. Thoughts?

[regsharp 4]

sent you a pm, but see I forgot to address your specific questions regarding which profile to go with-- will depend a bit on who you have do the work...that same shop?

 

Edited July 22, 2022 by regsharp

[psulion22 402]

I'm on Flare 272 with a Quad 1 at the normal pitch.  It was the best combination of speed, agility, and preservation of the Flare.  I'm in a similar boat to you. Quad 0 took off too much Flare and I lost some stability and speed, Quad 2 is super stable but there's too much steel in the toe.  On a 288, you may want to try Quad 2.  The stock profile on Flare is a single 10'.  Quad 1 is a 6' front and Quad 2 is a 7' front, both have less in the toe than the stock Flare.

I'm also using a Sparx on mine.  If you're getting that much of a burr, you're doing too many passes at a time or the wheel is set too high.  Try dropping the wheel down one click to see if it helps, if that isn't sharpening enough of the steel try using the goalie risers and adjusting the wheel.  I found the goalie risers change the settings by about half a click.  Also do two passes at a time and remove any burr after those before doing more if needed.  I've found that doing one or two passes more often gave me better, more consistent edges than doing 4+ when the steel felt dull.

Where do you have your Flare profiled?  I need a new set of steel and am looking for a place to have them profiled that has experience with them.  I'd rather not get the shims and hand them to someone that's never seen them.

[VegasHockey 1280]

On 7/20/2022 at 12:29 PM, Favro9 said:

Hi everyone, first time post!

I want to buy another set of Flare steel and have it profiled and was hoping for advice from anyone who might have any.

My skates are custom ultrasonics with a holder size 288. I like the stock profile that came on the pulse ti steel and it feels very comfortable to me now. In the past I've tried Flare with it's stock profile and while I loved the edges, the profile felt pretty flat and like there was too much steel on the toe, which I think hindered my agility. I had those profiled to an ellipse 1 with the standard 20mm offset and then they felt too pitched forward and unstable for me. My understanding is that the profile on my ultrasonics is a standard quad 0, but if that's the case I'm surprise that the ellipse 1 would feel less stable than that. Another issue I had with the ellipse was that it took off a ton of the flare, which was kind of a bummer.

Right now I'm leaning towards getting the Flare profiled with a quad 0 or a quad 1, but am having trouble deciding between the two as well as what pitch I should choose. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Oh and one more thing, the Flare steel I currently have is DLC coated, and I sharpen it on a sparx machine to 1 1/4", and it always has such a massive burr on it that I can't fully remove with a rubberized stone or leather strop, so I have trouble ever getting a nice edge. Not sure if that's because of the sparx or the flare or whatever, but I'm thinking of getting the non-coated steel so that I can use a normal stone which I hope will be better at removing the massive burrs. Thoughts?

Buy this and use the ceramic edge to knock off the burr:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08VDCGYS1/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Edited July 23, 2022 by PBH

[VegasHockey 1280]

2 minutes ago, psulion22 said:

I'm on Flare 272 with a Quad 1 at the normal pitch.  It was the best combination of speed, agility, and preservation of the Flare.  I'm in a similar boat to you. Quad 0 took off too much Flare and I lost some stability and speed, Quad 2 is super stable but there's too much steel in the toe.  On a 288, you may want to try Quad 2.  The stock profile on Flare is a single 10'.  Quad 1 is a 6' front and Quad 2 is a 7' front, both have less in the toe than the stock Flare.

I'm also using a Sparx on mine.  If you're getting that much of a burr, you're doing too many passes at a time or the wheel is set too high.  Try dropping the wheel down one click to see if it helps, if that isn't sharpening enough of the steel try using the goalie risers and adjusting the wheel.  I found the goalie risers change the settings by about half a click.  Also do two passes at a time and remove any burr after those before doing more if needed.  I've found that doing one or two passes more often gave me better, more consistent edges than doing 4+ when the steel felt dull.

Where do you have your Flare profiled?  I need a new set of steel and am looking for a place to have them profiled that has experience with them.  I'd rather not get the shims and hand them to someone that's never seen them.

Find store that use Elite machines for profiling. I recently changed out all of our machines to Elite and a majority of the NHL teams have made the change as well. 

[psulion22 402]

1 minute ago, PBH said:

Find store that use Elite machines for profiling. I recently changed out all of our machines to Elite and a majority of the NHL teams have made the change as well. 

Without trying to hijack the thread, are the profiles the same on the Elite machines?

[VegasHockey 1280]

1 minute ago, psulion22 said:

Without trying to hijack the thread, are the profiles the same on the Elite machines?

Elite offers a majority of the same options as ProSharp, SSM, BlackStone and CAG. 

https://eliteperformancetech.com/performance-profiling/

 

[psulion22 402]

13 minutes ago, PBH said:

Elite offers a majority of the same options as ProSharp, SSM, BlackStone and CAG. 

https://eliteperformancetech.com/performance-profiling/

 

Thanks!  I sent you a PM.

[Favro9 0]

On 7/21/2022 at 9:22 PM, regsharp said:

sent you a pm, but see I forgot to address your specific questions regarding which profile to go with-- will depend a bit on who you have do the work...that same shop?

 

Hi, yeah I had the last set profiled by kkskate.com and I'm having this set done by them as well. The pair I sent in for profiling had already been sharpened many times so the flare was already worn down a bit, and like you said in your pm since I chose the 20mm pitch option I was left with a really small flare at the toe, I don't think there was any way I was going to get them back with much of it intact haha. The actual work they did was great

[Favro9 0]

41 minutes ago, psulion22 said:

I'm on Flare 272 with a Quad 1 at the normal pitch.  It was the best combination of speed, agility, and preservation of the Flare.  I'm in a similar boat to you. Quad 0 took off too much Flare and I lost some stability and speed, Quad 2 is super stable but there's too much steel in the toe.  On a 288, you may want to try Quad 2.  The stock profile on Flare is a single 10'.  Quad 1 is a 6' front and Quad 2 is a 7' front, both have less in the toe than the stock Flare.

I'm also using a Sparx on mine.  If you're getting that much of a burr, you're doing too many passes at a time or the wheel is set too high.  Try dropping the wheel down one click to see if it helps, if that isn't sharpening enough of the steel try using the goalie risers and adjusting the wheel.  I found the goalie risers change the settings by about half a click.  Also do two passes at a time and remove any burr after those before doing more if needed.  I've found that doing one or two passes more often gave me better, more consistent edges than doing 4+ when the steel felt dull.

Where do you have your Flare profiled?  I need a new set of steel and am looking for a place to have them profiled that has experience with them.  I'd rather not get the shims and hand them to someone that's never seen them.

Awesome! Quad 1 is what I've decided to go with as well, just with no build in pitch. I figure since I like the quad 0 my ultrasonics came with I didn't want to jump all the way up to a quad 2.

And that's a great idea, I'll try doing less but more frequent passes and see if it helps with the burrs. How often do you find you need to sharpen flare steel compared to standard steel? In my experience I feel like they retain a good edge longer, however they also sustain damage like nicks and rolled edges alot easier, ever with the DLC coating

Edited July 23, 2022 by Favro9

[Favro9 0]

39 minutes ago, PBH said:

Buy this and use the ceramic edge to knock off the burr:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08VDCGYS1/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Just to clarify this is okay to use on coated steel?

[psulion22 402]

7 minutes ago, Favro9 said:

Awesome! Quad 1 is what I've decided to go with as well, just with no build in pitch. I figure since I like the quad 0 my ultrasonics came with I didn't want to jump all the way up to a quad 2.

And that's a great idea, I'll try doing less but more frequent passes and see if it helps with the burrs. How often do you find you need to sharpen flare steel compared to standard steel? In my experience I feel like they retain a good edge longer, however they also sustain damage like nicks and rolled edges alot easier, ever with the DLC coating

I find the DLC lasts a lot longer than the regular (I have one set of each).  At first, I was skeptical of how effective DLC really was, but the difference in edge retention is pretty significant.  I haven't skated on regular steel in years, so I really couldn't say the difference between that and Flare.  I sharpen my regular steel with a 7/8" regular wheel (I find the Sparx profiles to be about 1/16" less sharp than listed, and I'd prefer 1") and give two cycles every 4-6 hours of ice, which is 1-2 weeks for me.  The DLC lasted almost double that.

[regsharp 4]

5 hours ago, Favro9 said:

Just to clarify this is okay to use on coated steel?

That is similar honing stone as I recommended, just prefer a skinnier version for the Flares (EZLCD4 Eze-Lap Double Sided Knife Sharpening Stone) as it's easier to control on the smaller available surface area of that angle.

Would love to check out the Elite machines myself, but a little outside my budget; nor do I have the space in my shop