Eclipse Dance blades

[icedancer]

Thanks for the info on the length of the blades!  I measured my Super Dance 99 from behind the drag pick and they are just a hair over 10.25 inches (they are also 10.25 size blade) -

I have usually found that you do not "fall backwards" on the dance blades and the ability to have neat feet is amazing (having stepped on the back of my old Coronation Aces doing dances many times, the dance blades were great for me!) -

As far as the speed goes, they are faster and honestly as I am older now I find the speed of the dance blades a little scary.  i have never noticed anything about turns slipping due to shallowness of ROH but honestly have no idea what hollow my blades have right now.  Turns are nice.

I will be curious to know how the spins go - I could spin on the SuperDance 99 but not on MK Dance and also jump a little on the Superdance but I HATED the picks on the MK Dance and didn't feel comfortable with any kinds of jumps or hops because the picks were blunted smooth and there was absolutely no bite or whatever you would want to call it.

Thanks - looking forward to your experience with these blades and may seriously consider finding a pair!

[Bill_S]

Wow! At 10.25" Super Dance 99 blades are REALLY short.

Like you, I never felt that I was falling off the back of the blade. It felt as stable as my Aces. It's a good thing, because falling backward is the worst. Ouch!

[icedancer]

Yup they are too short!!  Also my left boot is a bit longer than my right and so it looks super-super short and a lot of people freak out when they see me skate on them.

I am going to check the measurements of my old MK Dance - I think they are closer to your Eclipse -

[Query]

BTW, Bill, my old MK Dance came with 7/16" hollow.

I'm sorry that 1/2" didn't work well enough for you. I presume that proper alignment - which takes time and practice - would help. I sometimes let my blades get dull and skated on cold hard ice, to practice body weight alignment. If I can avoid skidding on dull blades and cold ice, the alignment is right. So perhaps a TRUE master would have tried Riedell's 1" recommendation.

My impression is indeed that thinner (up to a point) is usually faster and has longer glide. But - one source (Jaya Kanal?) said school figure blades used to be fatter than freestyle blades. Perhaps a very thin blade digs too far into the very soft ice that many school figures skaters prefer??

Have you tried spinning in your dance blades yet? I want to see if you agree that dance blades don't spin well, and if you can figure out why (I can't).

I would love to see how they compare with my current Super Dance 99 (which are VERY short) and some old MK dance I have hanging around the house...

Why did you switch to Super Dance? Do they have advantages?

[Bill_S]

Skating Impressions, Day 2:

I MUCH prefer a 3/8" hollow with these blades. I had great edge grip today. Speed still felt fast, so I didn't give up much by going to 3/8". I really wish that there were a way to accurately quantify increased speed. These subjective impressions may be misleading, especially with differences in ice quality between sessions, plus the nature of subjectivity itself. Better ways of measuring "speed" are cumbersome. I'll have to be satisfied with "they feel fast".

They turn more quickly. I always begin a session by slow skating around the periphery a couple of times, then do forward inside edges down the ice, and back. On the return trip I aim to put the lobes opposite the originals, making it look like a row of circles down the ice. Here's this morning's...



When doing these, I turned in a tighter radius than my freestyle blades. I'm not going at a slow figures pace when doing these. They are done with a bit of edge growling down the ice. These blades thrive here. I guess that it reinforces my impression about tight hockey turns in the previous report. The feel is different when doing turns, and the photo above shows smaller circles (and more of them) than I usually do with my old Aces (8' rocker after 12 years of use). I mentioned rocker because these blades have a more rounded rocker (7'+). Perhaps that's part of the cause? Is a thinner blade the other contributing factor? I can't answer that.

BTW, I did some really tight hockey turns in the rink corners and ripped up the ice for the hockey players that were scheduled next. Revenge is sweet.

I managed to do some of my weaker threes a bit better today. I expect that I'm slowly adapting. However, my turning-threes traveling down the ice are still off-kilter, so much so that I took a tumble toward the end of the session. I caught an edge, and down I went. I can't yet find the spot on the rocker that lets me do those comfortably.

I became frustrated trying to perform a good spin. I always traveled and made odd flowery tracings trying to find the sweet spot.



Spins are nowhere near what I can do on my familiar old Aces. I took another tumble attempting a spin, and the toe picks hooked my trouser leg. They put a small rip in them. 

However, waltz jumps were great on them. They weren't any different from doing them in my Aces. I was able to do a couple of toe loops using the dance picks. I'm not a strong jumper anymore, so take this with a grain of salt.

My feeling so far is mixed. I love the speed, the ability to turn (!), not having a big tail sticking out beyond my heel to step on, but I really wish spins were easier. Keep in mind that I've had spinning trouble with MOST of the other blades that I have used this autumn, with the exception of the MK Pro blades. They feel closest to my ancient Aces when spinning. That points a pretty strong finger at ME being the problem. I'm not adapting easily to different spin rockers in these week-long tests.

One more thing. When I got on the ice this morning, I did feel the little extra heel height in this blade. That feeling faded away after the first 15 minutes on the ice, but it's odd that I didn't notice it Monday.

[icedancer]

Why did you switch to Super Dance? Do they have advantages?

I wanted to try something besides MK Dance which I had had 2 pairs of on my old boots.  The picks really freaked me out on the MKs and I could not spin.  So when I got new boots in I tried the SuperDance and found that I could spin in them and also do some jumps so that was great.  They were really really short though and that kind of freaked me out so I have sequentially put both old pairs of MK Dance on these same boots.  I liked the length but still had some trouble (one of the blades had acquired quite a flat spot on the rocker which was disconcerting because it was only on one foot!) - so at some point I went back to the SuperDance but I have been wanting to get out of them for YEARS!!!  I've also been very suspicious of my boots which are an SP Teri Dance Boot - very heavy and not so forgiving - so yeah, problematic.

My favorite dance blades were my first pair which were called Wilson Dance - they were a tad longer and had picks like a Majestic - in fact a Wilson rep told me that they were Majestics with the backs cut off.  They were discontinued and I have never been able to find another pair.  I have toyed with the idea of buying a pair of Majestics and cutting the backs off but I haven't gone that far!

Bill - thanks for the details about the blades and your experience with them - this is great!

[Loops]

This is very interesting.  I do like my Coronation Dance blades, but when replacement time comes, I would be willing to put these on the list based on your experiences. 

[Bill_S]

Skating Impressions, Day 3:

The Olympia broke down halfway through the ice cut this morning, leaving this...



The Olympia dropped a lot of snow where it stopped, but the attendant shoveled it off. Drop-in hockey was just before, so you can imagine how rough the ice was. I did skate for 45-minutes, and one other skater there, a grad student, was doing double-loops on it. It was amazing to watch her perform on that iceberg-rough surface.

It wasn't a fair test of the blades, and I still couldn't spin. With the rough ice, I just didn't do much at all with competence today. I felt a bit off, with the ice partly to blame.

It's too bad that the ice wasn't better, but those are the breaks.

[icedancer]

I just measured my MK Dance (size 10 1/4) from just behind the drag pick to the heel they are both 10 3/4 inches so your Eclipse blades ARE about 1/4 inch shorter (which in Dance Blade - land) makes a difference!

Too bad about your crap ice - Hope they fix that zam!

[Bill_S]

Yay, the Olympia is fixed. There was a piece of plastic caught in the auger.

Skating Impressions, Day 4:

I attended the mid-day session today (Saturday) that runs right after Learn To Skate. The kids there hardly leave any marks, then it's zammed afterward. This is the smoothest ice of the week.

I skated aggressively today, putting power into stroking almost the whole time. (I lost couple of pounds, probably perspiration, during the session.) I was doing turns at speed. I felt almost as comfortable on these blades today as I do on the Aces.

But (here we go again), spins were the skill that still suffered. However I did spin today than earlier in the week, and I didn't embarrass myself with most of my attempts. I probably eeked out 6 revs at most, and some of the tracings showed rounder patterns and a bit less travel. I've been experimenting with where to put my weight for the best results. Nothing tried yet feels as good as my beloved Aces, or the MK Pros that I used earlier in the fall.

I like all other aspects of this blade though. I feel as though the shorter tail has kept me out of trouble with some questionable moves. If I'm on the back of my blade and need to quickly three-turn forward, it just happens. In many ways, these blades feel like a German sports car vs. a larger sedan. I love the feeling that these blades seem to anticipate what I'm about to do, and start in perfect harmony with my physical actions. There's no delay.

[Bill_S]

Skating Impressions, Day 5:

I attended the early afternoon freestyle session today to continue gaining experience with these blades. It's starting to be like a broken record - moves OK, spins not. I did have one spin where I started off nicely centered showing paint-can sized circles, but I managed to destroy my center for the following 3 or 4 revs. Paint cans and pigtails.

I did try a twizzle down the ice at a fairly fast speed. I can do them readily in my Aces, and I've been doing them OK in these blades. However, I made it half-rev around OK, but caught an edge coming back to forward. The blade stayed put, but my body kept going forward fast. I fell hard. My right knee let me know that it was displeased with the impact. It's turning purple now and it was felt even through the knee pads I wear. Thankfully, that was the last of the bad luck.

There's a different feel between the two blades (Aces vs. Dance) doing the that move. I actually feel more secure on my Aces - probably because that's what I am used to. I sometimes feel like I'm at the limit of not getting the blade rotated around in time on the Eclipse Dance blades, although the blades have been generally forgiving of my errors (until today).

I still enjoyed the speed, and the control in cornering. That's my favorite aspect of these blades.

With more blades coming in to test, these will be removed from my old boots soon. I need to make a decision whether to mount them one of my new pairs of boots. If I could just get used to spinning in them, there would be no question at all.

[Bill_S]

Skating Impressions, Day 6:

Today was different because I travelled to Columbus to pick up my new Pattern 99 blades at the OSU ice rink. Because of that, I attended a "noon skate" held at the Ice Haus in downtown Columbus.

The ice is different from my home rink. When freshly Zammed, it is more slippery than home rink ice. However, it doesn't hold an edge as deeply for some reason. It took a few laps to get used to it.

I skated with a lot of energy today, and with a LOT of speed. It was a public session, and there were some guys on hockey skates. I must be competitive at heart because I become determined not give an inch when it comes to speed. I had the right blades on today for blazing around. There's a smile on my tired face right now.

I did lots of threes, some brackets, some turning threes or twizzles and even attempted some spins. If you've been reading along, you can guess how my spins went.

Oh, yeah - I did a few Waltz jumps and a couple of toe loops. No problem there either.

Nice blades!

[Query]

Maybe I shouldn't have asked you to try spins on your dance blades. While I'm not advanced myself, the only times I've seen spins in ice dance routines was when a couple does pair-spins while holding onto each other. That's so different that I'm not sure singles spins are relevant.

Could you drill through your boots, and replace the screws with bolts and thin nuts (like roller skating nuts)? Then you can rapidly switch between two sets of blades, one for dance, one for whatever you need spins for. Of course that would work better if both pairs of blades have holes in the same places. If not, maybe you can just use different boots with the two types of blade. As long as I don't try to do any jumps harder than a waltz jump, I'm perfectly happy doing dance moves in my old broken down boots.

[Loops]

Skating Impressions, Day 6:

Today was different because I travelled to Columbus to pick up my new Pattern 99 blades at the OSU ice rink. Because of that, I attended a "noon skate" held at the Ice Haus in downtown Columbus.

The ice is different from my home rink. When freshly Zammed, it is more slippery than home rink ice. However, it doesn't hold an edge as deeply for some reason. It took a few laps to get used to it.

Sounds like OSU has cold hockey ice. It's fast, but has less grip. That's what I skate on here.  Sometimes I feel like I'm just skimming along on the surface. Scary. Oh how I miss the nice freestyle ice at my old rink....

[Bill_S]

Loops: Just to clarify, the ice I skated on was at the Ice Haus in downtown Columbus, part of the Nationwide Arena building complex. After skating there, I drove to the OSU rink to purchase the blades. The OSU rink is about ten miles north.

With 10 sheets of public ice among 6 rinks in the Columbus area, they have something to be thankful for. I didn't count Nationwide Arena itself because it's only for Blue Jackets' hockey games, and special events.

query: I would have tried spins even without any encouragement from folks here. It's something that I like to do, so it's important to me. I do have two pairs of new boots awaiting two favorites from the outcome of the "blade shootout". At least that's the plan.

For now, I'll just keep adding holes to my 12-year old boots to fit the blades. There has been no major problem so far, then I'll retire the old boots when I get the chosen blades mounted to new ones.

[MCsAngel2]

 Gee Bill, I think you really might need a third pair of boots so that it's not so difficult to choose between all the blades. Just saying.....

[Bill_S]

    

[MCsAngel2]

Still cheaper than a corvette, remember??

[MCsAngel2]

Also, aren't you still holding out hope that Skatescience will make more stock soon?

[Bill_S]

There are probably no Skate Science blades for me in the future. It's too bad I couldn't get them to try.