Contemplating buy sharpener...
It used to be that the Edge Specialties Pro-Filer was a $100 hand tool kit that did an adequate job, and I have used them on (old style) Matrix blades, including Dance, Supreme, Synchro styles. Sure, it took a few minutes / blade to do a good job - 5 minutes if I waited too long - longer than a skilled powered sharpener operator can manage. So what?
Pictures are at
https://www.medstarhealth.org/mymedstar-patient-portalBut Wissota bought out Edge Specialties, and has not chosen to make Pro-Filers.
You could perhaps buy a used one on eBay, etc. Be careful you get the figure skating kit, not the hockey kit - the gap sizes are much different.
Also, an even better hand tool was made by Berghman. E.g.,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Dgf4D56IJEbut I think they stopped being made in about 1949. They too can be bought used, rather cheap.
BUT: they only were made for 1/2" hollow.
And, the stone was old tech - quite crumbly. Very coarse grit too. You can buy modern 1/2" abrasive cylinders a number of places that would work - I would choose one with diamond grit. I used one from a 1/2" Pro-Filer without a problem.
Things I liked about them was the adjustable width, and the self-centering mechanism, and the fact that you can see what you are doing very well, so you can choose to sharpen almost up to the toe pick. If you wanted to use them with a blade that wasn't flat (I haven't tried this), there is plenty of space to apply adhesive compressible foam to both sides of the gap, which I
think would work.
Some people have successfully sharpened skates with nothing but an abrasive cylinder - no holder. I think they place there fingers in such a way that they sort of act like a gap, that keeps the blade centered on the stone. But my hand-eye coordination isn't that good. When I've tried that, I kept nicking the edges, and creating non-uniform edges. Some people can even hand craft a custom hollow (including a hollow that varies along the length) using a smaller radius cylinder. That is way beyond my coordination.
BTW, at hand sharpening speeds, you can use water instead of oil or polishing fluid. It won't mess up the stone (though oil alone isn't really that bad - many knife sharpeners use oil), and if it spills in your skate bag, it doesn't make much of a mess. But you may need to re-apply the water once or twice while sharpening, whereas you only need apply oil once during sharpening. I don't see that as a serious problem. (As best I understand it, at machine sharpening speeds, water would boil, so is not usable.)
(Incidentally, I found a bunch of cheap sharpening hand tools from a Chinese importer. But they all had 1/4" hollow! And I have tried another skate sharpening hand tool, that some hockey players have used, that was complete junk, and could not produce reliable edges.)
Hand tools are NOT good for skate sharpening businesses. Powered machine sharpeners are faster. If you work out the math, even the expensive ones are worth it for a business that does a lot of sharpenings.
There is another issue. At current, as Kaitsu pointed out, the major figure skating blade makers do NOT put a hollow on blades. I.E., there is no initial hollow, when you order a new blade from the factory, except with some extremely cheap blades that probably aren't worth using by figure skaters. Hand tools are not adequate for that - you would take a very long time, and wear out the stone. I know that from experience. (Maybe you could get by with those initial very coarse stones that came with the Berghmans...) I have verified with another professional skate tech that Kaitsu is right about this for Jackson Ultima Matrix, MK and Wilson figure skating blades. So you would need to find a (good) skate tech to create the original edge. (BTW, many mail order retailers will do it before shipping - you have to ask to find out.) Likewise, if you wanted to modify the profile in a significant way, hand tools are too slow. (I have restored the "sweet spot" - i.e., the transition point between the main rocker and the spin rocker, around where many people like to turn and spin - using Pro-Filers. But that is a very minor change, that takes less than a minute at most, though I find it quite important, because it helps me figure out when I am on that part of the blade. I also like to move it to where it works best for my feet, because my toes are shorter than what blade makers assume.)
Anyway, good luck with your adventure.
I must warn you that there is a more difficult learning curve with powered sharpeners than hand tools. That's because they take off metal more quickly and easily.
>Question: How measure material taken off after a sharpening?
As Bill points out, a micrometer can do it, or even a very precise and consistent calipers. But you have to mark the point along the blade you are measuring it from. Some people mark the bottom of the blade with a pencil or magic marker. They know to stop when no ink remains. You can actually remove a little less with hand tools than with a powered sharpener - because to some extent, at the slower speeds of hand sharpening, you are reshaping the steel, rather than just grinding it too shape. So maybe you remove .001" instead of .003", if you are good, and you haven't waited too long between sharpenings. In theory, that saves you money. In practice you can get somewhere near 30 machine sharpenings even removing .003", if you assume that you have an adequate blade shape for about .1" - i.e., where the toe pick digs into the ice too easily, when you are just trying to skate. The difference is significant if you have $500 blades. Maybe not as important if you have $150 blades. I've talked to an (in my opinion incompetent) skate tech who routinely removed at least 1/16", which would mean the blade would have a good shape for 1 or 2 sharpenings - imagine doing that on a $500+ blade pair!
That said, you can get a little more use out of an old blade if you carefully trim the furthest back toe pick ("the drag pick"). But that takes a certain amount of skill and care.
When I started using the Pro-Filer, it didn't occur to me to trace the blade profile, like Bill discusses. I messed up a pair of expensive MK Dance blades that way. I had to figure out that I should have traced the blade too. I also had to learn to reverse the tool or the skate half-way through, so the two edges will be of equal height even if the Pro-Filer gap is slightly off center.
Topic: Wissota powered skate sharpener review (Read 34739 times)