How to Sharpen Ice Skates
Sharpening ice skates on your own is not as simple as it sounds. A sharpening stone or file is not the best way, even though many think it is. If you really want to properly sharpen your own ice skates without ruining the steel or shaving off more on one than the other, there is only one way to start, which is getting a professional blade sharpening machine.
- Purchase the blade sharpening machine. This will be the same machine used by the pro skate shops. This will help you avoid ruining your skates. While the machine is expensive, so is the cost of skates.
- Look up some information on skate sharpening classes. There should be some classes that you can take locally.
- Make sure that you select the correct attachments for your specific blade type. For example hockey blades and figure skating blades are totally different and have different sharpening requirements.
- Understand your blades and how things work, things such as, skates blade radius, rocker profile, toe picks and bytes. These are important to understand, due to your skating safety.
- Test the sharpening by taking a test skate. When you are confident that you understand how to use your sharpener and understand your class instructions, you may want to take a freshly sharpened pair of your skates out for a test. Pay attention to any differences in the feel of the blade, especially if one blade feels bigger than the other or they feel in any way uneven. You may need to go back and make some changes to your blades until they feel 100% normal to you. A good sharpening should last about 40 hours of skating for a recreational skater. Someone who skates more often will obviously need sharpening more frequently.
- Remember, never try to sharpen your own skates by hand. This needs to be done precisely by a machine otherwise you are risking your safety.