Why skate sharpening

How to videos How to videos Sharpening Contact Us. Radius of Hollow The Radius of Hollow or RoH is the depth of the cut in the bottom of the skate blade in hockey or figure skates that is made by the skate sharpener. Read More. Blade Profile The profile or rocker of a hockey or figure skate blade refers to how much of the skate blade touches the ice. The Perfect Skate Sharpening There are three components that make up a perfect skate sharpening — even blade edge height, sharp skate blade edges and a smooth blade finish.

Even Skate Blade Edges Without even edges on your hockey skate or figure skate, the rest of the skate sharpening process does not matter. Sharp Blade Edges It is important that your hockey skate or figure skate edges are sharp, clean and without burrs or nicks.

Smooth Skate Blade Finish A smooth skate blade finish is a key factor in a good skate sharpening. Shop Now Learn More. Your Bag 0 items. Sharpening your skates involves passing them over a spinning stone with a rounded outer surface. This surface can be modified to have a very curved surface resembling a segment of a small circle, or it can be flatter, resembling part of a larger one.

A larger radius will mean a flatter grinding wheel, and therefore a skate with less hollow cut away from its centre. In the pictures here, you can see what these hollows look like when viewed up close. We do this because each hollow will affect how the skate feels, and how it interacts with the ice. The radius of the grinding wheel is then transferred to the skate blade by grinding sharpening.

Again, please note that the figures shown above are NOT to scale. The hollow on the bottom of your blade is actually much less pronounced. To give you a reference, here is a to-scale figure to show you what the radii actually look like.

A smaller radius will give you more bite into the ice for tighter turns and quicker acceleration, but at the same time because your edges are digging deeper into the ice which causes greater friction, your glide and speed will suffer Also a more pronounced radius will be more fragile and less durable. The main variable to consider when first picking a radius to try is weight. As a general rule, the heavier the skater, the larger the radius needed. An extremely light skater can tolerate a very small radius producing a deep hollow with lots of edge because they do not have much weight to bear on the ice.

A heavy skater trying to skate on a small radius too much edge will bite into the ice so hard that they will have trouble stopping without chatter or going over the top of their skates.