How many times can ice skates be sharpened?
Generally skates should be sharpened every 20-40 skating hours. This depends on a few different factors such as how many times a week a skater is on the ice, which elements the skater is working on, and the build of the skater.
Skates should typically be sharpened after 8-10 hours of use on an indoor rink. This timeframe shrinks when skating outdoors. If you find yourself struggling to skate smoothly or falling down doing a typical skill you'd be comfortable with it is a sign that you may need to get your blades checked.
Get a sense of how often your hockey skates need to be sharpened, and try to adhere to a schedule. Sharpen them too often and your blades will wear out prematurely. Not frequently enough, and you'll find yourself losing an edge when trying to turn, or being unable to control your skates.
The biggest factor is how often you skate, hence the rule of thumb based on ice time. It's not unheard of for some players to sharpen their blades before every game, and others once or twice a year. If you're playing twice a week, try dropping your skates off for a sharpening once a month and adjust from there.
Anywhere from 1 – 20 years. It totally depends on quality of components, upkeep and maintenance, the type of skating you do, and how often you skate. The wheels may be the first to go, but they can be changed. The key is to clean and maintain your bearings, wheels and other parts to help them last.
Hockey player and goalie skates are often sharpened with a ROH from 3/8” up to 1-1/2”. Figure skates are generally sharpened to 1”, and speed skates are COMPLETELY FLAT!
Done frequently enough, a blade should last 5 to 8 years for the average recreational skater. Generally, the frequency should be every 20-30 hours of skating. FACTORS: Hardness of the steel used in the blade, and how much and how aggressively you skate.
The normal range for this is ⅜” to ¾”, although higher or lower hollows are occasionally seen. Typically, skate shops will do 1/2”, 5/8”, or 7/16” hollow as a default if they aren't given any specific instructions.
No one should ever skate on dull or unsharpened blades. Your skating edge will help you turn and maneuver, as well as keep your balance. The second is that people with weak ankles cannot skate. This actually has more to do with the skate, than the skater.
A quick test for a sharp edge is to hold the skate upside down, place one thumbnail on the edge of the blade and gently pull down and away from the blade on three or four parts of the blade. A good, sharp blade will easily scrape a layer of your thumbnail, leaving the remnants on the blade.
Does skate sharpening matter?
It is important that your hockey skate or figure skate edges are sharp, clean and without burrs or nicks. A good skate sharpening will restore sharp blade edges so that the skate blade edge bites into the ice.
Ice Skate Care and How To Know When They Need Sharpened
Going to skate once or twice a week for 45 minutes or 1 hour is ideal at the very beginning. It will allow a skater to feel more and more comfortable on the ice with every session and make faster progress in skating.
Ice skaters use a lot of friction to move around on the ice. This friction creates heat, which can wear down the blades over time. If you notice that your ice skates are becoming less responsive, or if they're starting to look dull, it's probably time to replace them.
If a player's skate chatters as the stop occurs, it means the player's weight is too much on the heel of the skate! Weight will be applied equally on both skates with the feet shoulder width apart or slightly wider in the hockey stance position. The head is up with two hands on the stick.
The blades on figure skates are sharp enough to cut the skin on a person's face and can even slice deeper, resulting in some serious injuries.
The Most Important key point:
There's no reason to hesitate too long when buying a perfect first pair of skates. As soon as you've found the right fit within your target budget – go for it. Everybody is awkward on the ice at the beginning and having cheap or expensive skates won't make a difference.
Generally, you can expect to pay about $100-125 to a decent beginner skate set (with attached blades) that you can use for recreational skating and will take you through basic skills, and about $200-250 for a pair that will last through beginning freestyle.
The most common radius of hollow cuts are ½” and 5/8” for skate sharpening shops because it provides the best balance between edge depth and glide speed.
In this video, the Penguins' equipment manager talks about Crosby's skate sharpening preferences. Around 3:44, he mentions that Crosby used to prefer a deeper hollow, but now uses a 1/2" hollow.
How deep should I sharpen my skates?
You can get your skates sharpened anywhere from 1/8th of an inch to one inch. 1/8th would be the sharpest, and one inch would be the least sharp. The majority of pros use something with a shallower hollow, but preference does widely vary.
Yes. Huge difference. Invest in good blades. Not only will they hold a sharpening better, better blades are made with higher quality steel which gives you better speed/flow across the ice and also makes it easier to hold an edge.
When blade holders are damaged, which usually comes in the form of cracking, it is most often caused by impacts from the side. Just as with blades, the puck may hit your blade holder causing it to break. And if your blade is bent, that can cause stress which leads to the holder cracking.
You should replace your hockey skates when the rivets are loose, they have holes in them and if they are hampering your performance as a player. What is this? While there's no definitive time to replace your old skates, there are several indicators that can help you make the decision on your own.
The deeper the hollow or U shape, the sharper a skate feels. The following are common sharpening measurements in order of deepest to shallow: 1/4, 3/8, 7/16, 1/2, 5/8. A sharper skate will give you more bite but less glide.
Skate Sharpening & Skate Care
Skates need to be sharp even if the skater is young. Most often children's skates require sharpening every 2 months depending on how much they skate.
The machines aren't complicated — there's a grinding wheel set horizontally and the equipment manager moves the skate, on its side, along it by hand — but there's an art to doing it right. The Hurricanes lug two sharpening machines along with them on the road.
Use a Hockey Skate Blade Sharpening Stone
If you can learn how to use a skate stone, you can properly sharpen your skates at home. Note that this isn't so much a way of sharpening skates as it is a way to fine-tune things after you've made a couple passes on your blades using an appropriate machine.
Unfortunately, most ice hockey skates don't come from the factory sharpened. They're often U-shaped, rounded, dull, and flattened. This is a single edge blade that isn't cut out for ice hockey because you won't get great results with it.
New skates are not sharpened, so you will need to get them sharpened by a trained sharpener, and then re-sharpened every 15-20 hours of ice time – to keep them in tip top condition by removing knicks and deformaties in the metal edge.
How do you sharpen skates by hand?
Using A Hand Stone to Adjust The Sharpness of Your Figure Skates
Store your ice skates in a cardboard box – they're durable, affordable, and won't trap in moisture like plastic bins. Before putting in your skates, wrap the blades in a dry towel to prevent any damage to other things in the box, like extra laces or other ice skates. Once the box is closed, it's ready to store.
HOW TO STOP ON ICE SKATES - Ice Skating Tips! - YouTube
Factors. A skaters weight can be a factor when selecting and edge. The heavier a skater is the more their edges will sink into the ice.
So, how often do players in the NHL get new skates? It varies from player to player. Victor Hedman of the Tampa Bay Lightning says he uses a new pair of skates every ten games. Patrick Marleau of the San Jose Sharks said he used to get a new pair of skates four to five times a season.
Testing for Even Edges
Bring the skate blade to eye-level and look down the blade towards the coin. If there is a significant height difference between the inside and outside edge, it will be visible; you'll see one side of the coin will be higher than the other.
On the Ice
It's skating on natural ponds and similar that can dull your blades. Usually, a sharpening after you've skated on the pond will fix things.
Glide and bite are determined by the amount of blade cutting into the ice. 1/2 inch is our standard hollow, a 3/8 would provide more bite, a 5/8 would provide less bite.
Different Types of Skate Sharpening Hollows
For example, a lighter player can benefit from a deeper hollow (7/16" or 3/8") by providing them with the ability to cut deeper into the ice. This type of sharpening provides more bite for the user, allowing for more responsive turns/stops and quicker overall acceleration.
In competitions, skaters must perform a certain set of movements. They need to perfect all the required moves for their routines. Skaters train for three to six hours every day. It is normal to fall in figure skating.
What skills do you need to be a figure skater?
The skills they need
Figure skaters need to be able to glide, spin, turn, jump, hop, skip, and stop. They also need to develop agility, balance, coordination, flexibility, and the speed that comes from the explosive “quickness” of muscles.
Figure skating looks glamorous, but becoming an Olympic figure skater is a full-time, year-round commitment. It's also a long-term obligation, typically requiring at least 10 years of intense training. However, if you truly enjoy the sport, your passion can fuel you through the difficult times.
The important thing is to check your blades regularly and know what you are looking for when you do. While your skates can never be too sharp, they can certainly be too dull and that can take a whole lot of fun out of the game.
The atoms will tend to migrate away from that organized edge. This is a very slow process. So, these two things mean that the answer to your question, "Do unused knives get dull?" is yes.
If you are very lightweight, a 3/8” radius is probably what you need. Light to average weight skaters typically have a radius of 1/2″ to 5/8” while heavier skaters usually opt for about 3/4″ to avoid chattering when they try to stop.
The skate blades are typically made of tempered carbon steel, coated with a high-quality chrome. Lightweight aluminum and stainless steel blades are becoming more popular with skaters. Blades are about 3⁄16 in (4.8 mm) thick and may have a slightly tapered cross-section.
1) The bottom of your blade is not flat, but rather concave. (See blade cross-section figure) This creates a hollow which allows your skate to cut into the ice. If you've ever put on a pair of skates out of the box (they don't come sharpened), you've learned this the hard way. No hollow = No bite = Sore butt.
Some players will sharpen very frequently, such as every 2-3 hours of ice time, while others go for an entire season without sharpening. If you're unsure of where to start, try getting them sharpened after 10 hours of ice time, and then adjust as you feel is necessary.
We recommend testing 3-5 spots up and down the blade on both the inside and outside edges. If you feel a little bite to your nail as you drag it across the edge – the edge is sharp.
Ice skaters use a lot of friction to move around on the ice. This friction creates heat, which can wear down the blades over time. If you notice that your ice skates are becoming less responsive, or if they're starting to look dull, it's probably time to replace them.
Do skate blades get dull over time?
Blades do wear down by sharpening. And they have a limited lifetime. My daughters sharpener (yes we have a special guy) is pretty conservative with grinding and very consistent so newly sharpened blades don't take much time to get used to. My skaters like a freshly sharpened blade because of this.
The most common radius of hollow cuts are ½” and 5/8” for skate sharpening shops because it provides the best balance between edge depth and glide speed.
Typically, most skate sharpeners will use a hollow of 7/16, 1/2 or 5/8 as a default if they aren't given any specific instructions. Generally, younger and more inexperience players utilize a deeper hollow of 3/8 to ½.
If a player's skate chatters as the stop occurs, it means the player's weight is too much on the heel of the skate! Weight will be applied equally on both skates with the feet shoulder width apart or slightly wider in the hockey stance position. The head is up with two hands on the stick.
No one should ever skate on dull or unsharpened blades. Your skating edge will help you turn and maneuver, as well as keep your balance. The second is that people with weak ankles cannot skate. This actually has more to do with the skate, than the skater.
Use a Hockey Skate Blade Sharpening Stone
If you can learn how to use a skate stone, you can properly sharpen your skates at home. Note that this isn't so much a way of sharpening skates as it is a way to fine-tune things after you've made a couple passes on your blades using an appropriate machine.
Skate Sharpening & Skate Care
Skates need to be sharp even if the skater is young. Most often children's skates require sharpening every 2 months depending on how much they skate.
Ice Skate Care and How To Know When They Need Sharpened
Going to skate once or twice a week for 45 minutes or 1 hour is ideal at the very beginning. It will allow a skater to feel more and more comfortable on the ice with every session and make faster progress in skating.
On the Ice
It's skating on natural ponds and similar that can dull your blades. Usually, a sharpening after you've skated on the pond will fix things.
When should I replace my skate blades?
SkateWorks - Replacing Hockey Skate Blades
Excess wear on blade or blades. Blades should be replaced if they are lower than 3/8” at the ball of foot center or heal center.
New skates need to be sharpened by a professional, be sure to let them know they are new. The first sharpening is both the hardest and most important because the new steel blades on your skates have no edge.
Using A Hand Stone to Adjust The Sharpness of Your Figure Skates