Wacky Sharpening Experiment

[riley876]

So, for kicks, and in the name of science - I thought I might try something really wacky.

Of course I know for a proper job, one uses a dressed grinding wheel running parallel to the blade.  Because, as the conventional wisdom (and plain old common sense) goes, the grinding marks should run in the same direction that the skates run across the ice.  But I was wondering just how much does it really matter in practice if the grinding was done in such a way that the grinding marks were left going *across* the blade. 

So I rigged up a little belt sander arrangement.  The belt is 120grit (finer would be much better), run around a side-by-side pair of 5/8" router bearings to form the hollow.  The bearing and belt has about a 3/4" combined diameter,  but it seems to make a 7/16"-ish ROH.    Two passes, with skate flipped over between.  Each pass carefully angling the skate so the belt only touches one edge and the bulk of the hollow.   

The answer is that they were predictably pretty slow.  And with a slightly disconcerting tendency to suck themselves down onto the picks when skating forwards  .   So I did a heavy working of just the base of the hollow with a SkateMate, very carefully so as to not touch the edges themselves. Which fixed them enough to be an acceptable/reasonable speed for me.

The edges however are now glorious.  I'm finding it hard to believe how deep I can hold edges with this grind.  Very confidence inspiring.  Much better than my previous done-by-the-rink sharpenings.  I think because it essentially has made the edges microscopically serrated, this encourages them to slice deeply in the ice.   Though possibly some of it is due to a slightly deeper ROH too, now approx 7/16" vs 1/2" before.   

It's the ugliest grind you could imagine.  But oddly, its working well enough that I don't want to go back to a rink grind, at least for the meantime.  20 hours or so of skating has not shown any sign of them bluntening at all either.   And they may well have improved their speed a bit over that time too.

Wouldn't recommend this technique to anyone but the most desperate or insane, but thought it might entertain those of you here who like to tinker.

(Disclaimer:  no decent blades were harmed in this experiment!)

[Bill_S]

Very interesting! I like to tinker myself. It's the best way to learn something new.

[Query]

Sort of like the "cross-grinding wheel" some sharpeners use on new blades and massively abused blades...

So is this the start of a soon-to-be-famous "Riley" skate sharpening company?

[riley876]

So is this the start of a soon-to-be-famous "Riley" skate sharpening company?

Well, if my career as an olympic skater doesn't pan out, at least it'll give me something to fall back on 

Some photos:




Will track down a 240 grit belt for my next round, and rig up either cheap skate bearings or plastic sliders to guide the skate.  Like it is, it's too easy for the blade to get momentarily jammed in the guide groove, leading to much extra ugliness and foul language.

I tried taking photos of the finished blade, but my technology failed me.  Couldn't get a decent image up close.