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The Pro Shop / Re: Pro-Filer Redirects to Wissota
« Last post by Query on March 10, 2024, 03:24:41 PM »The Pro-Filer figure skating kits had two tools - one with a diamond dust coarse grit, one with an (aluminum oxide??) fine grit, which can be used instead of polishing. The hockey kits only had a coarse tool.
At a guess, your sandpaper is quite coarse - maybe as much or more so than the coarse stone in the Pro-Filer kits.
What grit sandpaper did you use? Did you consider switching to a fine grain after the initial sharpening?
It looked like your tool worked pretty well.
Were the edges fairly even?
How does the total sharpening and polishing time compare with the time you would have spent with your powered sharpening machine?
I love the simplicity of your friction measurement device! But I wonder if relative friction of rough and smooth surfaces is comparable with that tool and rink-temperature ice - partly because ice would deform more. I guess you could try to balance an ice cube of the right temperature on top, and slide it, but that would be very hard to balance. But the vertical force would be much less than the weight of a skater. Doing a really good friction test on an edge would be hard. E.g., you could mount a properly weighted blade on a pivoting device at an angle over the ice. Somewhat like Sydney Broadbent of iceskateology.com did. Probably very expensive to build. I'm sure some people would still find something to complain about the test.
If you talk to many skaters, some, like me, like their blades very sharp, and some don't. But the majority of skate techs do slightly dull the edges after sharpening, like you did, though I've usually seen it done with a flat stone.
At a guess, your sandpaper is quite coarse - maybe as much or more so than the coarse stone in the Pro-Filer kits.
What grit sandpaper did you use? Did you consider switching to a fine grain after the initial sharpening?
It looked like your tool worked pretty well.
Were the edges fairly even?
How does the total sharpening and polishing time compare with the time you would have spent with your powered sharpening machine?
I love the simplicity of your friction measurement device! But I wonder if relative friction of rough and smooth surfaces is comparable with that tool and rink-temperature ice - partly because ice would deform more. I guess you could try to balance an ice cube of the right temperature on top, and slide it, but that would be very hard to balance. But the vertical force would be much less than the weight of a skater. Doing a really good friction test on an edge would be hard. E.g., you could mount a properly weighted blade on a pivoting device at an angle over the ice. Somewhat like Sydney Broadbent of iceskateology.com did. Probably very expensive to build. I'm sure some people would still find something to complain about the test.
If you talk to many skaters, some, like me, like their blades very sharp, and some don't. But the majority of skate techs do slightly dull the edges after sharpening, like you did, though I've usually seen it done with a flat stone.