This is not the age old question of how often I should get my skates sharpened. My question is, what do you actually look for (feel for) to tell if your blades got a nice sharpening or not?
Whenever I see someone asking about where to get blades sharpened, I see answers that say ask the good figure skaters around the rink. But how do you actually tell for yourself after you've gotten a sharpening if it was good or not? The reason I'm asking this is because I have asked around and have been recommended to a skate shop that's 1.5 hours drive away, and one that's about 20 minutes drive. The further one is said to be "better". I've been to both now and don't know how to decide whether the further one would be worth the long drive, or if the closer one is more than good enough.
When I went to the far one, it was my very first sharpening (excluding when I bought the skates), and I'd left it far too long to be sharpened (probably over 50 hours). I could not stop to save my life when I got back on the ice, even the T-stop. The guy told me that my skates' ROH is 1/2", but I vaguely remember being told the number 7/16" when I had them sharpened when bought.
Today I went to the close one, after 28 hours of skating. The guy asked what ROH I had so I told him 1/2". When I skated afterwards, I could still snowplough stop perfectly fine! I did feel a bit more grip on the ice when skating around in general and when doing edges, but the slight scraping I feel when I do edge jumps is still there (not sure if that means I should get a deeper ROH, but that's another matter and I'll talk to my coach about that).
So, I don't know if the fact that I can still stop perfectly fine is an indication that the sharpening wasn't as good. Or if it's simply because I left it too dull the last time so couldn't adjust to the change. Or, my blades actually were 7/16", the previous guy just told me wrong accidentally, so today they got shallower when I said I wanted 1/2".
So how do you tell?