Friday, August 24, 2012

Rusty Blades and Gummi Stones

When I first got a dog, every time she got an upset tummy, I rushed her to the vet. After the third visit in a month, my vet told me, "I'm happy to take your money, but trust me, dogs puke at the drop of a hat."

And that is an excellent metaphor for rust formation on upper level blades.  It's going to be part of your life, like it or not. You need learn to prevent both situations with careful daily attention.

When this hits the ground a dog will hurl and a blade will rust
The first time I saw the leprous brown spots on my MK Pro edges, I showed them to a coach, "Is this rust?" I asked, "My Mirages never rusted."

The coach made a rude noise, "That's because they were made of aluminum." Which was a sarcastic way of making fun of the Mirages. Sturdy and forgiving of bad treatment they may have been, they were not top quality blades.

I won't bother you with the chemistry of rust formation on steel--let's just summarize with the statement, some blades rust really fast (in 10 minutes), and aren't forgiving of rough treatment, or an open glass of water in the same room.

Taking tips from the coach, I developed a way of reducing the occurrence of rust on my blades.
1. I do not use hard guards unless for some reason I have to walk across a non-matted area. The coach had me look in my guards, and they are nasty. Even A FEW minutes wear can lead to rust.
2. Instead, I use the TerryTuff blade soakers with the ribbon on the bottom, when I'm walking on rubber matting.
3. I take a blade rag to rinkside and use it to wipe down my blades rather than use the soakers to do it. This keeps the soakers less damp.
4.  When I get to where I'm putting the boots in the bag, I dry them down again, with a different dry blade rag.
5. I store the boots for transport with a separate set of soakers than the ones I walk around in, so these soakers are always dry, and haven't been tramped around in on the wet rink floor.
6. When I get home I take the boots out and store them with the blades exposed so they dry out.

If rust does develop, and this may be inevitable, the coach showed my how to use a hard Gummi Stone (hard). Effectively, this is a diamond rosin embedded in a stiff rubber core. It only looks like a stone. Its purpose is to polish out the rust. It doesn't appear to be hard enough to take an edge off, so it's not like a sharpening stone. A couple of minutes of elbow grease and the rust is gone from your blades without disturbing your sharpening. You can find gummi stones online and in some ski shops.
Gummi Stone (hard)--it doesn't look like much
I've read of people who rub petroleum jelly, or WD-40 or Rustoleum on their blades. I'm not ready to take that step.

But how did I solve the dog problem? My dog was gulping her food down too fast, so I put a tennis ball in her bowl to slow down her eating. Problem solved!

Solving both problems just requires persistent daily attention! You can't let up for a minute.

13 comments:

  1. Hi Babbette: Thanks for the heads up re: MK blades. I was thinking about those but now will look to another brand. In this day and age there's NO excuse for rust on blades. None of the hardware on my race boats rust--even in a salt water environment. Ditto on the blades of my various pocket knives; they hold an edge and don't rust--ever. These days I barely have the patience to baby the irons in ancient woodworking planes (I wax those with Butcher's wax). Skate blades? Nope, they'll either stand up to the guff of thoughtful use or I'll find ones which will.

    Ta,
    George A.

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    1. Well, I didn't explicitly say it, but only the exposed steel along the edge is subject to rusting. The rest of the blade is chromed and does not rust.
      As far as the rest of your concerns, you may want to talk to your coach who can explain the blade options available to you.
      Rusting of the exposed edge is so common, that it is the least of my worries for blade selection. I'm worried about toepick and rocker and blade match to my skating style more than a rust issue.

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    2. Thanks Babbette, I was just surprised that rust is still a problem on upper crust blades. No rust on the relatively inexpensive Ultima blades which came on my Jackson freestyle boots. I use cloth "soakers" for off-ice storage but walk around inside the rink building with hard blade guards. The blades appear to be chromed steel. I doubt if they are anything too refined. If I see crud inside the hard plastic guards I give them a spin in the dishwasher.

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  2. I'm glad you found a solution to both problems. The timing of this post was strangely coincidental considering I was woken up by one of our dogs puking this morning, let's hope my blades don't have rust when I get to the rink later today.

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    1. The tennis ball solution sadly only worked for a couple of weeks then she took to batting it out of the bowl with one paw, sending food all over the floor too. I ended up with putting a half a brick in. She couldn't figure out what to do with that.

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  3. Now I know why my kids' skates suddenly started having rust problems when they moved up from beginner blades to Coronation Ace to Vision. Thanks!

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  4. I've never had rust on any of my blades - MK, Ultima and Wilson -- through the years. I always wipe them with a chamois after use and put on soakers. I wear hard guards as our rink has spotty mats. They get wiped at the end of the session and stored with soakers. In my car, often in a closed bag (naughty, I know). But no rust ever.

    The only rust incident I remember was when my dance partner left his hard guards on overnight after a practice at a competition and the next morning he had rust everywhere. Those were MK Dance Parabolics but I think it would have happened with any blade. We competed that day with the rusty blades and it was fine, but he is a trooper!

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  5. Ah, so THAT's why my blades never rust! I always dry them off carefully and store them in terrycloth soakers, but often don't take them out of my skate bag to dry and other ills. But surely someone at some rink is laughing at me meticulously drying my aluminum Mirage blades!

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    Replies
    1. I don't think they're actually aluminum. The coach was just making a joke.

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  6. Interesting. I've never had rust on my Gold Star blades. I do dry them carefully, store them in terrycloth soakers, and unzip the skating bag when I get home, but nothing more than that. This summer I did manage to get a bit of green mold (ick!) along the edges of my soles when I took 8 weeks off from skating. Fortunately, it wiped off easily with a towel.

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    1. Yep that's what I was doing too. Mirages didnt rust MK Pros did.
      It is a mystery as to why one pro rusts and someone else's doesnt

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  7. I'm willing to gander a lot of you with rust issues live in humid climates--rust will happen where it's humid, no matter how careful you are. I have MK Pros and I've never had rust issues with them. Yes, I am careful to dry them off, put the soakers on, and store them outside my skate bag once I get home, BUT, I also live in CA where we don't have to deal with humid conditions. Same reason cars out here stay rust-free--little to no humidity.

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    Replies
    1. I've been told that the big factor for cars and rust is SALT. If you live in area with snowy/icy winters (where the roads get salted) the cars will eventually start to rust.

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