Dull Blades Get an Appointment (UPDATED)

So I have an appointment tomorrow to get my blades sharpened. I'm able to skate on them for now only if I have really deep knee bend and perfect edge placement. Really, I should keep skating on them because maintaining edge control on dull blades is good exercise.  

So my basic rule is, when I'm working so hard to skate that I think...

Time for a sharpening!

I haven't had a sharpening since March! And despite my off and on  skating, I think I've put in the 25-30 hours that's expected between sharpening. So, my sharpener squeezed me in on Sunday. 

And I know what will happen. He'll run his thumb nail over the blade and he'll say the same thing he always does.

"These blades don't need a sharpening,
they've got plenty of life in them."

But it's been 10 months since I had a sharpening, so I figure I'm due. Otherwise 2013 would go down as the "Year without a sharpening."

And if he says, "These are still skatable," I'll do my Tim Curry face!

(Update: My skate tech reported they were dull but with no nicks!  That's so unusual, I have no funny face for it!)

Ooops! I Need Some Tissue for My Blade Issue!

What with 3 bouts of shingles since August and two knee injections since March, I haven't skated much this year. Are you surprised that I kind of forgot to stay on top of my sharpenings?

I was on ice Friday, barely able to get an edge. I was skittering all over the place.  It wasn't helped by the fact the ice was too cold for figure skating.  Ice as rock hard as diamond. I had to really work hard to maintain control.

When I got off ice I checked my blades.

Yes, they were d.u.l.l. And it's 3 weeks until my skate tech comes back.

I feel like doing this to myself:

I know what you're all thinking:

Yeah, I think that too!

New Blades; New Skates

So you've got new boots and new blades.

That first 3 minutes is terrifying, isn't it?

Here's what it's like.

The subtitle to this is : My First Video.  Maybe I'll do some more now that I've figured it out!

Blade Noise

Have you ever had the following happen? You get your blades sharpened and as you stroke across the ice your blades scrape no matter how you skate?

Before the knee went 'kablooey', I had my blades sharpened by a highly recommended sharpener. When I skated in them it sounded like a tiny, little chain saw.

I am badly sharpened skate, hear me scrape

What it actually sounds like is machining chatter, so I call it 'blade chatter'.  After that sharpening, even when I was skating well back on my rockers, and on two feet, I would get this horrible sound.

So, I posted the problem on www.skatingforums.com and one of the coaches there suggested that my edges weren't  even. That is, even when I was supposedly on the flat, one edge was slightly higher off the ice, leading to the scraping sound.  When I was on an edge, the side with the edge that was slightly longer, could brush against the ice, causing scraping.

You can see the edges here, they're supposed to be even

I don't know if this is actually the cause of my blade chatter. It's certainly a reasonable solution. All I know is that after I skated a few times, it went away. Maybe I just had a small area of unevenness and it was worn down by skating, or maybe it was something else.

I guess I'll query the Amazing Coach and find out what her 40 years skating experience says. It's an interesting technical problem. There has to be some vibration in the blade somewhere, because you can hear it all across the rink. Over.The.Music!

Everyone hears my blades....the shame, the shame.

Parts of the Skating Blade

So every once in a while, I like to post an 'educational' post. Today, I want to write about the parts of the figure skating blade.

Naming conventions seem to vary widely between coaches, parts of the country, and even between the US and UK. The only universal seems to be that the smooth part of the blade is called 'the blade' or maybe 'the rocker' and the pointy end is called 'the toepick'.

This is not what I was taught. Somewhere along the line I picked up a lot of names for parts of the blade. I don't know if this is useful to recreational skaters, but I think it's certainly handy to have a grasp of specific skating terminology.

Ladies and gentlemen, the blade.

This is from a UK site,  and I only have a couple of comments aboutvariations I've learned.

First off, I always heard the 'drag pick' referred to as the 'drop pick'.

Secondly, the vertical supports that attach the blade to the plates, I always read about being called the 'stanchions'.

Thirdly, the blade itself has two edges separated by a hollow between them. The measurement of this hollow is called 'the radius of hollow.'  I've heard the 1/2" ROH called a 'recreational hollow.' It's what I use, although I've also had 3/4 and 3/8. Some sharpeners will make a recommendation based on the type of ice you skate one--hockey ice is much colder and harder so it needs a different cut.

Source: Bill Schneider's skating pages

The radius of hollow has a 'bite angle' associated with it, but that's too technical even for me.

 

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.

Big Girl Blades

I've been skating on Ultima Mirages for several years. They're decent beginner blades with an 8 foot rocker and a toerake marginally more pointy than sandpaper. The toepick itself is about the size of a grain of rice.

Ultima Mirage

I wanted something with a 7 foot rocker, without the stubby tail of dance blades. So in consultation with my skate tech I got:

The MK Professional

Yeah, I agree the differences don't look much do they? But I swear, the Pros have a Big Girl Toepick (TM applied for).

Okay, MK Pro is a popular blade locally and after skating on it a couple of hours I can see why. There's something about the quality of the steel or the finish that makes moving across the ice take less effort. In my Mirages, I've always had difficulty skating backwards, not so in the PROs. They're almost effortless going backwards.

The rocker makes turns easier. Get in position, think about a 3 turn and zip zap thunderclap I've done one.

So far I haven't caught a toepick. Early days yet. That thing's massive compared to the Mirage.

Toepick!

Skating on Sharp Blades

So I went to the rink to skate on public and break in my new sharpening on my dance boots. This was my experience:

It felt like tentacles were reaching up from the ice and grabbing my blades, pulling me down, down, down, into a living hell.

Fortunately, I have pictures:

Evil Picture

Rising from the Cthulu mythos, come the cursed slime tentacles of the Evil One. Arms of of the Great Gods , they slide between the grains of sand until they merge into ice, creeping into the breath of the good earth, reaching into steel of the mystic edge blades of the ice dancer.*

* Yeah, I wasted some brain cells in the 60's reading Lovecraft.

Banal Picture

"Crap, I'm stuck"

Fortunately, after an hour of tooling around, the blades are manageable. Stops are still a bittch though.

Sharpening the Blades

Normally when I go into get my blades sharpened everyone rolls their eyes.  "They're still sharp enough!" they say and laugh.

So this time, I waited.  And waited. For about 80 skating hours.  Until I couldn't hold an edge.

Are my blades dull enough yet?

This time my skate tech's reaction was:

"These blades are dull!"

Anyway, he told me this story.  When he was skate tech for the Tom Collins Champions on Ice in 2008, he was approached by one of the Russian pro skaters. "You sharpen blades?" the man asked.  "Yes," my tech replied. The man handed the skates over. They were in awful condition.

My tech, greatly shocked, asked, "When was the last time you had these sharpened."

"Torino"

2006.

Pro skaters, they are different than the rest of us.

New Boots and Blades: A Test Run

My freestyle boots (Jackson Competitors) are five years old and still have lots of life in them. But the blades are also the original blades, and they're getting a little flat. At my last lesson, I could not get an edge, and turns required hauling my upper body around. I'd been delaying starting on my ice dance boots due to Dance Coach's testing schedule, but since I don't test again until April, I now have time to break them in. So today, I finally brought out my fabulous new ice dance boots with their new blades and took them for a skate down at the rink.

Before I started with the ice dance boots, I skated in low freestyle rec boots that have served me very well.

Jackson Competitors

I like my Jackson Competitors. They're a reliable recreational skate for low freestyle. When I got mine, they were sold without a blade. I have the Mirage rather than the Aspire. After 4 years of sharpenings, they're pretty flat. But, when I put the boots on, it's like putting on a familiar friend. I have the whole inside the boot thing pretty much down to a science. Silipos tube on the right heel, stretch cloth tube on the left. Perfect tying technique. Pronation fix that took me a year to work out, but it's perfect now.  But I though getting dance boots might help me get a better point and help improve my extension so I bought:

Jackson Finesse

I set out with the same in boot fixes as I had in the freestyle boots. Oh, wow, it was total failure. These aren't just boots with a lower shaft and a deep curve at the back, these boots are completely different construction.  Since there are 3 hooks instead of four, I lace them all the way to the top rather than leaving one hook open. The shaft of the boot seems thicker on the sides that the freestyle boot. You can actually see it bulging under the hem of my trousers.  The Finesse also have an instep that it's going to take time to get used to. The Silipos tube on my right heel was a total failure. These boots are tighter in the heel than my  Competitors. I had to stop and readjust the lacing at least twice and remove the tube in the first 15 minutes on ice. The soles of my feet ached for the first 45 minutes, then the pain finally disappeared. I've had this occasionally happen in my Competitors as well. I don't know why it occurs. 

The blades are new Mirage blades, freshly sharpened. Unlike my old blades, these have a decent rocker.

So I went out to a local rink and spent an hour stroking, doing swing rolls, chasse's, crossovers and three turns. My friend the Big Guy came out to watch. The shortness of the shaft means I really have to get my blade placement on the ice right. Initially, I felt like I was skating without any support, although this was just a mental illusion due to the short shaft. These are new boots and it's like skating in bricks. After the first half hour, I began to feel at ease with the boot.  Towards the end I felt fairly stable, and much more comfortable. 

I don't know if my extension and toe point is actually better in these boots.  I was more concerned with just getting the feel of them rather than doing any extensions requiring a high leg position. I didn't feel that comfortable yet.  The Big Guy said I looked less stable than in my Competitors. Duh! These boots will require some adjustment in my technique.

Downside to the Finesse is the padded collar. I thought I would like this, but it actually rubs painfully on the back of my ankle when I extend the leg and point the toe. I now will just slide the Silipos tube around my ankle to protect it.

The new blades were great. After having to haul around for turns it was nice to be able to just turn with minimal effort. I tended to over turn, I was so used to my old blades and their intransigence.

My judgement's still out on the Finesse. These are new boots, and feel like concrete blocks. Although in Jackson's rating system, they're 'less stiff' than Competitors, they aren't 'less stiff' than 5 year old Competitors. Also, the lower shaft seems to make them more appropriate for experienced skaters. I dread to think what would have happened if I had started in these. 

I'll have to report back after I've been skating in these for a couple of months, and after Dance Coach has made comments.

As for the Competitors?  They're getting new blades. I'm thinking Wilson Majestic.

The Rust Beater

(Still working on the Center of Mass is the Center of Everything post. Here's some mindless filler)

I am not a coach. I'm not a high level skater. My comments about skating have no ring of authority.  I can give no advice except in one area.

Blade rags.

These often under rated tools of the skaters trade are known by low class names: blade towel, blade rag, and 'that blue thing at the bottom of the bag'.  Some people use any thing handy, an old bar towel, something from the kitchen or the bathroom, a piece of cloth cut from an old flannel robe. I dis those things. Dis them hard. Ptooey!

Cotton is okay for drying yourself off after a shower, but we're talking about your skates here. These are worthy of royal treatment. You must only allow the most absorptive, soft, scratch free fibers to touch your precious blades, or the skating demon with sprinkle them with rust. The towel must be made from the inner fiber of the rypoff tree from the deepest jungle in the forest of Bongo-bongoland. This fiber is harvested by artisans wearing special gloves dampened with the first dew of morning, and placed lovingly in handwoven pine baskets. The strict inspection regimen means that only half the harvest is ever used for these magical creations which are available for only $15.99.

SCREECHing halt!

Sorry, I've been looking at catalogs and everything has a little story to make the enormous friggin' markup palatable. But here it's not necessary. I'll tell you the secret. Yes, I've found a blade towel that is better than anything else I've tried.  I've used these for years and I swear by them.

Welcome to the freakishly cheap 'super-absorbtive' microfiber towels from the Dollar Store. I kid you not. A couple of swipes of these and my blades are dry. I dry my blades, pop on the cheap soakers, and leave everything in the bag in the car. According to traditional wisdom I should be skating on little red stubs of rust, but they're as perfect as the day I bought them (except for the fact my rocker is getting to end of life, but that's another story).

I tried cotton towels of various kinds when I started out, but they were almost worthless. They took a lot longer to dry the blades, and I don't think they did a good job. These sweet little one dollar babies (in various colors, and sometimes 2 for a dollar) do the job, do it fast, do it well. Got a dollar to spare? They're worth a try.

New Boots! A Halloween Scarefest!

Today I went to my skate tech to pick up a pair of new boots. I presently skate in very low end freestyle boots, but in a year they'll be trashed. Since it will take me a year to break in a new pair of boots I bought a pair of  dance boots to replace them. A year from now dance boots will be appropriate for me to take lessons in, and it will take me that long to break them in.

So I put on the new boots and my skate tech walked me to the ice. I got on.

Scary. New boots, new blades of a different length, new sharpening. I didn't fall, but it wasn't as comfortable as my old freestyle boots.

Dance boots are low cut in the back, since the shaft is lower there's only 3 hooks.  First time out I just laced up the first two hooks since for freestyle you leave the top hook undone in new boots. That was a tactical error. It was like skating on blades on sandals--no control at all.  I retied them all the way to the top and did some edges and crossovers. Then I tried some 3 turns.

Ooops! That's not gonna happen!

The new blades are the same model as my present blades but they're a quarter inch longer. I couldn't believe that made such a difference.  It felt like the rocker was too far back. My skate tech showed me how my old blades had not a much rocker left (they're 4 years old) so that may have some impact too. He offered to move the blades but I decided to get used to the skates first and let my coach comment on them. I've made the mistake before of messing with my blade position when it was ME not the skates. I've learned my lesson not to mistake my lack of skill for equipment error.

I guess I've got a year of using these boots for warmup while I break them in.   I'll be like a skater in the sixties hauling two pairs of boots to the rink: one for patch and one for freestyle. It will build up my shoulder muscles :-).

Still if any of you do ice dance and can give me suggestions on getting used to dance boots, I'm all ears.