Sharpening 101

Sharpening puts a groove on the bottom of your blade, creating two sharp edges. The shape of this groove is called the radius of hollow (ROH). The feeling of sharpness in your steel is determined by how deep the ROH is, and how crisp and even the edges are.

Keeping your skate blade edges sharp is important to maximize your on-ice performance. When you skate on the ice, blades become duller over time and lose their sharp edges, which can have a negative impact on performance and skating efficiency.

Hockey Action June 16 for Elite Blade Technology by Pierre Arsen

The Importance of Skate Blade Sharpening

Regular sharpening will help you:

Improve your confidence
Improve your agility
Improve your acceleration
Improve your stability
Improve your speed
Improve your ability to stop and change direction
Reduce fatigue and injury

Sharpening vs Profiling

Sharpening and profiling your blades are both important to your on-ice performance. Sharpening refers to putting a radius of hollow into the groove on the bottom of your blade. The Radius of Hollow is measured in terms of inches. A one inch ROH is larger and flatter than a ⅜” ROH. Profiling, also called contouring, refers to the shape of your blade from heel to toe. It is also measured in terms of a radius (or multiple radii) but it is measured in feet, not inches.

PROFILING 101

Finding the Right Radius of Hollow

The feeling of sharpness in your steel is largely determined by how deep the Radius of Hollow is. The smaller the ROH, the deeper the groove. So a 3/8” hollow is going to bite more than a 1” hollow, which will allow more glide. Heavier players may benefit from a shallower ROH for added speed and glide, while lighter players often need a smaller ROH for extra grip.

Many players skate on a hollow that’s deeper than optimal for their body type and style. Too small an ROH can cause unnecessary drag and fatigue.

With the perfect edges on Elite’s automated sharpening system, you may find that you don’t need as deep a cut as you have with other sharpenings. Your blades will have just as much bite, but they will also give you more glide and less fatigue. This is what we are seeing with many of pro players using the Elite E-S4 — they are trending toward a wider Radius of Hollow, allowing for more glide while still feeling sharp.

Performance profiles also tend to put more blade in contact with the ice, which has the effect of giving more bite for the same hollow.

Elements of a Good Sharpening

Sharpening your blades is an important part of maximizing your on-ice performance, but not all sharpening processes are the same. We’ve all experienced the frustration of a “bad sharpening” which happens when the Radius of Hollow is not accurate, the edges are uneven, the burr has not been properly removed, or the shape of the blade has been distorted.

To trust your blades you need a sharpening system which delivers the following with precision and consistency:

A consistent radius of hollow: So that you feel the same every time you step on the ice.
Perfectly symmetrical edges :This requires that the groove of the ROH is centered perfectly down the middle of the blade, so that the two edges are both the same height.
A preserved blade profile : Most importantly, a uniform removal of steel along the entire length of the blade, so as not to distort and degrade the profile of the blade.
A crisp clean edge : Whatever system you are sharpening on, you need to remove the burr that is created during the sharpening process from the edges of your blades to create a smooth, clean edge and perfect surface finish.

A Consistent Radius of Hollow

Once you’ve found the ROH that’s right for you, you want to make sure you’re getting exactly the same feeling every time you sharpen. Resin wheels on traditional hand sharpening machines require dressing, which can vary from operator to operator, and may change from one blade to the next as the resin wheel burns and disintegrates with each sharpening. If you are sharpening your blades on an Elite E-S4 sharpener, Elite’s steel grinding wheels are factory formed to a specific ROH. They don’t need dressing and never change shape, meaning that the ROH applied to the blade is 100% consistent, never changing over time.

Symmetrical Edges

Skate sharpening cuts a groove into the bottom of the blade, creating two edges. When done properly, both edges are the same height and perfectly symmetrical. Poor sharpening can leave uneven edges – one biting too much and the other too little, or in extreme cases, not at all.

That’s often what causes the uncomfortable feeling players recognize when stepping on the ice and feeling like they “don’t have an edge.” In many cases, the blades aren’t truly dull but have uneven edges – a common issue in hand sharpening if the wheel isn’t perfectly centered.

The only way to ensure that the edges are symmetrical is to ensure that the grinding wheel is perfectly centered under the blade. Traditional hand sharpening systems rely on the human eye to line this up, making perfect symmetry impossible every time. To make matters worse, blade widths can vary, even within the same pair.

Elite solves this problem with powerful self-centering clamps, designed to perfectly center the blade over the grinding wheel with extreme precision, no matter the width of the blade.

Preserve Your Blade Profile

Your blade profile – the curve of the blade from toe to heel – has a huge influence on performance – agility, balance, speed, and power. Even very tiny changes in blade shape make a huge difference to the way your blades feel on the ice.

Once you’ve found your ideal profile, or even if you want to keep the stock profile your blades came with, it’s important to maintain it with precision sharpening. Blade profile preservation is impossible to achieve consistently with traditional hand sharpening, no matter how skilled the operator. Over time hand sharpening tends to eat away at the heel and toe, deforming the blade. Table-top, automated machines that apply constant pressure will also gradually remove more material at the curved heel and toe of the blade. It’s simply math.

This is the biggest breakthrough made possible by responsive, computerized sharpening systems like the Elite E-S4. The E-S4 uses high-tech Siemens controllers and precision digital drives to automatically control the speed and pressure of the sharpening pass from toe to heel, ensuring a perfectly preserved profile every time, so you always feel the same every time you step on the ice.

This technological breakthrough in precision sharpening allows for the full benefits of performance profiling to be realized by hockey players.

A Crisp Clean Edge

All sharpening leaves a tiny burr, a rough edge of excess metal pushed out of the groove in the bottom of the blade. It needs to be properly removed by stoning (also called honing) the blade to provide smooth even edges and a perfect surface finish. If your edges don’t feel right, make sure your service provider is properly stoning your blades.