I couldn't use the reference piece of my blade level checker (see previous post) because the curved blade sides provided no flat reference surface for it to stick to. I used a very small square to press against the stanchions and sight along its top edge to the other half of the Wissota edge level checking kit.
I don't know your tool, but maybe you can check that by measuring both sides, and seeing whether the deviation is the same. Likewise you should see the same amount and shape of daylight on both sides using the square.
Could you use a micrometer to determine how much side honing actually occurs? And whether it is symmetrical on both sides of the blade?
I'm not smart enough to know what tool is needed to see if the plating thickness, and the thickness of the chrome relief removal, are symmetric - which Mike C said sometimes isn't true. What tool would you use if you wanted to do that?
Does the side honing appear to be cylindrically shaped, like the hollow on the bottom of blades? That would make them "hollow ground" in knife lingo.
In theory, that type of side honing slightly increases the effective sharpness for a given ROH, by reducing the edge angle. If the thickness removal is as small as I've been told for some blades - on the order of .001 or .002" (though Mike C said that one model had about .007" if I remember right) - I don't understand how it has made such a difference as you have seen.
A potential problem is that if you don't remove the same amount of metal along the whole length when you sharpen, you could modulate the blade thickness and edge angle in a complex difficult-too-compensate-for fashion.
In any event your pictures answer a question I've had - the side honing affects the entire side of the runner, not just what Sid Broadbent calls the "chrome relief facet", so I think you would need to pad a Pro-Filer sharpener (e.g., with foam tape) to make it work - if there is room in the gap for such tape.
A tapered shape seems a lot like the streamlining of a raindrop. It should make the blade marginally faster, though I'm not sure if it is enough of a difference to notice. Unless it is too much of a difference, creating MORE drag.
The problem is that these are uncontrolled experiments, with many variables altered at once, and that there is no objective way to measure the change on how you skate, even if you could control it. You can't really tell how much the variation of each shape parameters affects your skating. In a USFSA sponsored study, Broadbent did once try to measure characteristics over the ice by fixing the blades or skates on a rotating machine, with some sort of sensors attached, but figure skating is obviously more complicated than that.
BTW, Mike C once told me that all the high end MK blades had the same profile shape at the factory, to the extent that they were consistent, but other people have said differently. Also, that was some time ago, and might be out of date.
I'm always amazed by just how similar the models of figure skate blade are. Even though the tricks figure skaters have used have evolved a lot over time, as have the boots, it seems like blade makers got it "right" pretty early on. Also that, somehow, incredibly small changes substantially affect how a blade feels. Which just makes it obvious how much harm a poorly trained skate tech, or one in a hurry, can do. (I'm not including you in that category.)
Why would they make more noise? Do you think it is the tapering? And why would it do that? I don't get the physics.
Topic: Gold Seal vs. Pattern 99 blade comparison (Read 25761 times)