What do sharpened skates look like

Unlike most other knife-like objects with a single sharp edge, skate blades have two sharp edges that are connected by a hollowed-out region in between.

This hollowed-out region is created by passing the skate blade along a grinding wheel. In turn, the size of the hollow on your skate blade will affect how the skate feels and performs on the ice. Different Types of Skate Sharpening Hollows. The flatter cut allows for less energy to be lost into the ice, allowing for more glide and a greater top speed.

This type of sharpening will slightly diminish the ability to make quick, sharp turns and quickly accelerate. The image below lists several of the more common hockey skate sharpening hollows that are often offered at skate shops. To be clear, sharp edges are always a good thing. Sharp edges are required in order for hockey players to turn, pivot and stop short. The sharper, the better. The solution is not duller edges, the solution is a larger ROH. This will cause more of your skate blade to float on top of the ice surface and less to sink below it.

As a result you will feel faster and stopping will likely be much smoother. Your edges, though, can and should still be razor sharp. A good sharpening will restore that edge so the blade has bite once again and you can turn and stop with confidence. Many people are familiar with the fingernail test shown in the image below.

We have found, time and again, that this simple test does a great job ensuring that a suitable edge is present on a skate blade. We recommend testing spots up and down the blade on both the inside and outside edges. If you feel a little bite to your nail as you drag it across the edge — the edge is sharp.

If your fingernail ever feels like it slides across the edge smoothly i. Be certain to perform this test on any areas of your blade where you know there was prior trouble with the edge. The radius of the grinding wheel is then transferred to the skate blade by grinding sharpening. Again, please note that the figures shown above are NOT to scale. The hollow on the bottom of your blade is actually much less pronounced.

To give you a reference, here is a to-scale figure to show you what the radii actually look like. A smaller radius will give you more bite into the ice for tighter turns and quicker acceleration, but at the same time because your edges are digging deeper into the ice which causes greater friction, your glide and speed will suffer Also a more pronounced radius will be more fragile and less durable.

The main variable to consider when first picking a radius to try is weight. As a general rule, the heavier the skater, the larger the radius needed. An extremely light skater can tolerate a very small radius producing a deep hollow with lots of edge because they do not have much weight to bear on the ice. A heavy skater trying to skate on a small radius too much edge will bite into the ice so hard that they will have trouble stopping without chatter or going over the top of their skates.