In recent years, figure skating has become increasingly popular. I must say that modern youth also likes to spend leisure time at the rink, where a noisy company can merrily glide on ice on skates. Often you can meet those who like to visit the rink alone in their free time, when they can be alone with their thoughts while riding on snow-white ice.
Those who decide that he needs personal skates for such a pastime know that sooner or later they will need sharpening their skates. Proper sharpening will allow those who decide to stand on the ice to achieve significant progress in skating.
Sharpening skates is a difficult job that requires good theoretical knowledge. about the whole process of riding.
A thorough approach to the process of sharpening skates will affect faster gliding on ice, will allow you to better balance and control your body. On skates that are well sharpened, you can make quick spins and accelerate faster, in the end, you can feel more confident on the ice and get more pleasure from the skating process itself.
Sharpening of skates must be carried out with full knowledge of the matter. There are typical mistakes that lovers make. One of them is the uneven outer and inner side of the blade, which is sharpened by artisanal methods. Uneven removal of steel is also possible, which will lead to the fact that the skate will be poorly balanced. With unskilled sharpening, you can overheat the blade, and this is fraught with a loss of its durability. It is more difficult to control your movements on ice if the blade is sharpened with a radius that is too small or, conversely, too large.
The most common mistake of hockey players (skaters) is that they ride on fairly worn blades. Unfortunately, this affects the speed of riding. The fact is that the new blades also have a factory radius of the contour, which depends on the model and size of the skates.
There is an opinion that the factory radius of skates is suitable for absolutely everyone. This is not true, because each player or skater should try and form a profile that is most suitable for him. So, for example, novice athletes skate quite slowly. Over time, these skills take on a more advanced form. You can often see how an inexperienced skater spends his strength on how to resist skating, instead of letting his energy into the development of professional skills. Only with time, each player can select the correct profile radius, providing a more tight contact of the blade with ice.
Today, professional sharpening of skates is moving towards the European style, the main purpose of which is to take care to reduce the friction force for more efficient skating.
Experts say that a higher speed can be developed on skates, whose radius is combined with the size of the groove. Different riding styles correspond to different sharpening.
For example, the style of the “butterfly”, when it is necessary to move from side to side, requires a good grasp with ice, this will allow you to quickly move up and down. In this case, the sharpening of the skates has its own peculiarity: the skate is sharpened very sharply in the area of the heel and toe, that is, it has a large groove. In this case, a smaller groove is located in the middle of the ridge, which provides a sliding movement.
Sharpening hockey skates has a number of its features and requires professional skills. At present, many large ice rinks and ice palaces have grinding points where this painstaking process can be entrusted to a specialist.