Last evening, I switched from my old 2007 Coronation Aces to the new ones. Remember that new, the 2007 blade had a different spin rocker profile than the one that replaced it. I was curious about the difference in feel on ice.
First, the blade swap. It went mostly without any serious issues. I pulled off the old blades, then removed the silicone "gasket" between blade and boot so that I could mark the original blade orientation.
With the silicone removed from the center of the mounting plate, I could remount the original blades and carefully mark the sole where the blades fell. I used a small try-square. Holding the square flat against left, then right edges at both the front and at the heel, I drew lines on the soles as alignment guides to position the new blades when mounting them. Having already established where the old blades should be, I avoided having to adjust the new blades left or right at the rink.
Here is one blade while it was being mounted. The 1/4" difference in length is obvious at the heel.
Naturally I had to drill new holes in the heel for the shorter blades, but I also had to do a little re-drilling on the left blade's front plate. The new blade and old blade mounting holes were a little different.
I also sharpened both blades. The left blade was skatable as-is, but the right blade had one fairly dull edge. I decided to put my preferred 3/8" ROH on both blades to keep them similar to the old ones. Hand sharpening took about an hour for both.
Now the first skating report, new Coronation Aces...
The ice this morning wasn't the best because of condensation bumps, but it wasn't terrible after I used a shovel to scrape the biggest offenders flat.
Stroking, both backward and forward: Even though the rocker on the old blades had become 8' because of all the sharpenings since 2007, the new ~7' rocker didn't feel that different. I could skate just like I used to. No issues at all. I felt right at home.
Three turns: I could feel a little difference, especially if I made the mistake of getting a little forward on the blade after the turn. It's a little hard to describe the feel, but after a turn while forward on the blade, I felt like I hooked into the center of the circle fairly quickly, and ended up on toe picks easily. By the end, I had become used to it without any further issues.
Brackets: I tried just my favorites, the forward inside brackets. This experiment was a little later into the skating session, and they were not much different from what I was accustomed to. I did note on one or two examples that I had the same problem as with three turns. If I got a little forward, the edge suddenly turned deeper, and I ended on my picks. Otherwise, the feel was very close to my old Aces.
Spins: Remember that I've had troublesome spin days before, and this might just be one of them. However, I just could not get a centered spin on these new blades. The feel was very different from my old Aces. I tried mightily, but couldn't find center. I'd either fall to the inside, or be too far outside the circle. I also found that it was easy to end up too far forward onto the toe picks.
It could be the particular day and my maddening variable performance, or perhaps this is something with the blade that I have to get used to over time. This blade was NO magic bullet for spinning today. I'll give them another day or two of trials, then it's on to the MK Pros.
And I do wish that my SkateScience dance blades would come while I'm in the middle of all this testing.