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Today I had the kind of skate that made me question continuing, but when I arrived home a saw a notification and cheered up significantly:  Video of them complete! 

I love how they look, hope they feel good, and don’t break me trying to break them in.   ;D
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For your sake, I hope the video was not a deep fake!  Hard to imagine Harlick is still in business; not sure how many skaters can tolerate nearly a 1-1/2 yr delivery time.  Here's hoping they fit out of the box.

Just imagine boots ordered for a growing child.  ::>)
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For your sake, I hope the video was not a deep fake!  Hard to imagine Harlick is still in business; not sure how many skaters can tolerate nearly a 1-1/2 yr delivery time.  Here's hoping they fit out of the box.
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The Pro Shop / Re: Intermediate blade choices (MK Pro, Paramount SP)
« Last post by tstop4me on March 13, 2024, 12:49:43 PM »

- The CPs have a bit more glide than my old Pros - which might just be a function of them being brand new. They're sharpened to the same ROH as my old blades (1/2"), so no difference there.


If you have a micrometer or caliper, you should check the thickness of the CP vs the Pro.  At a constant ROH, you should get less bite/more glide if the the CP is significantly thinner than the Pro.
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I have an update! 
Yesterday Harlick did a live video, and I saw my boots!
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The Pro Shop / Re: Intermediate blade choices (MK Pro, Paramount SP)
« Last post by mjebos86 on March 13, 2024, 11:50:23 AM »
Update - I have my new skates!

I ended up going with the Paramount CP blade (essentially the carbon steel version of the SP blade I was initially interested in). My tech tried to order the SP for me, but the CP was shipped instead (I think there was a miscommunication, and my tech doesn't typically stock Paramount, so she didn't catch it). She was very apologetic and offered to order the SP for me, but I decided not to wait, as my old skates were getting increasingly uncomfortable and starting to hinder my progress.

A few points of interest:

- When my tech sharpened the CPs, she commented that they seemed a bit harder than average for carbon steel blades - so even though it wouldn't be on the level of a stainless blade, she thinks it's possible I might still get a little more time between sharpenings than I did with my old MK Pros.

- My tech also mentioned that in her emails with Paramount, they described the CP as having a 7' main rocker. I thought that was interesting to note, as Paramount's website doesn't give main rocker radii for their lower-level blades - just the higher-level 12", 17", and 27" stainless blades (and even then, they're not necessarily "given" per se, but implied by the diagrams in their brochure showing the MK/JW profiles they're based on).

- The 12" spin rocker on the CP feels much more round than my old MK Pros ever did, even when they were brand new. I also found this interesting given the mystery surrounding the actual specs of the spin rockers on the MK Pro and the Coronation Ace. Paramount says that per their measurements, the MK Pro has a 12" spin rocker, and the Coronation Ace's is a more subtle compound 12"/27" - but in Bill S's excellent thread on this forum comparing the two, it seemed like this wasn't necessarily the case. After skating on the Paramounts, I feel pretty certain that whatever the MK Pro's specs are, it does not have a 12" spin rocker (or at least, the pair I've had for the last 5 years didn't!).

- The CPs have a bit more glide than my old Pros - which might just be a function of them being brand new. They're sharpened to the same ROH as my old blades (1/2"), so no difference there.

Overall, while it's only been a couple weeks, I'm quite happy with the Paramount blades so far. If my long-term experience with them is as good as my initial impression has been, I could definitely see myself getting another pair in the future - maybe even the stainless ones next time :)
7
The Pro Shop / Re: Pro-Filer Redirects to Wissota
« Last post by Kaitsu on March 12, 2024, 02:30:15 PM »
Grit size in sand paper was 800. I am not sure if your 800 grit is same as ours. Nevertheless, its already very fine grit.

As the material removal in the polishing is so less, I didn't monitor how much polishing affected to the edges evenness. As long as I round the edges, it does not matter how well I can keep edges even.

Polishing will take less time than what I use for power grinding. In the polishing I do not need to make measurements and height adjustments after every few passes like I do in the power grinding. Its more straight forward proses. If I could get mirror finish without rounding the edges, I could use that extra time on special cases. I believe the difference in the gliding properties is so small that it does not make sense to make it for the skaters which maintain their skates in 6-12 month's cycles and walk in the concrete floors without covers.
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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.
9
The Pro Shop / Re: Pro-Filer Redirects to Wissota
« Last post by Kaitsu on March 10, 2024, 03:13:44 AM »
And one more note... Edges rounding does not happen evenly. Some areas on the blade does have less rounding than the other. This makes "repairing" with burnishing even more difficult. 
10
The Pro Shop / Re: Pro-Filer Redirects to Wissota
« Last post by Kaitsu on March 10, 2024, 03:07:37 AM »
I know that my friction test is far from the perfect. Example plastic piece I used does not contact the edges which are used in the skating. However I didn't have any other ideas how to witness visually the friction reduction with the existing pieces what I had on my hands in that moment. I repeated my non polished / polished test couple times by re-grinding the blade and re-polishing it. This is not shown in the video. 

Paramount skate’s runners side surfaces are presenting me the dream side surfaces. They are plain grind to be flat without any bevel edges, which exists on most of the blades where chrome is removed. I truly hate when side surfaces are beveled / rounded already at the factory. Wilson might be the worst advanced blade manufacturer in this perspective. As I hate this feature so much, I am not going to shape side surfaces with burnishing tool to look like what I criticize.

However, I have lots of experience where skater says that skates are terrible to skate, even they have been recently sharpened (somewhere else). They feel too sharp. When I look the blades, I can feel that they feel extremely sharp when I test them with finger. ROH can be same as I would do, so root cause is not too small ROH. When I have reground the blades, they are happy. In my theory, there are two possible root causes which explains this. In some reason if you use coarse grinding wheel, edges feel sharper than with fine wheel. This is opposite what I could imagine in the first hand. This can explain also why profiler sharpening might feel sharper that what I have experienced with my printed tool. I don't think the printed cylinder is the problem causer in my tests, but I might to clarify this later by machining cylinder from the metal.

Another very plausible root cause for too sharp edges is that skate tech tilts honing stone too much in the deburring phase and/or uses too much force, causing burnishing (deforming) affect. Personally I have always been against the edges deforming. This is just my personal opinion, but I encourage everyone to sketch it to paper what does it mean when side surface is beveled / rounded. Note in your sketch that you are not skating in the way that blade would be in 90 degrees angle to the ice. Edge beveling / rounding issues materializes when you tilt the blade. I might be also wrong in this matter. Maybe this beveled / rounded edge is the "secret" why people like so much from the Wilson blades.
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