Ice skating is the most popular sport in which not only skill but also equipment is important. That is, skates should not only sit comfortably and firmly on their feet. Their blades should be sharp enough. In the article you will learn how to sharpen skates at home.
Why is this procedure necessary?
In order for you to freely ride on ice, special attention must be paid to the blades. A lot depends on the correctness of the sharpening procedure: how you will gain acceleration, whether you can slow down in time, how well the complex elements of the program will be executed.
Proper blade sharpening makes it possible to maintain maximum stability on ice. You need to perform the procedure when the skiing speed is lost, you cannot brake quickly, or you feel slippage while riding. Also, before sharpening your skates at home, take a look at the surface of the blades: are there any scratches, burrs or other damage on them. In addition, the groove is an important point. Thanks to him, stability, maneuverability, and skew tilt during a turn are controlled. There may not be a groove on new blades, so sharpening is a mandatory procedure that must be repeated periodically.
What tools are needed to work?
To begin with, you must definitely collect all the necessary equipment. Before sharpening skates at home, prepare these tools:
- grinding machine with an abrasive wheel;
- a vice or other tools that can fix the blade at the required angle;
- fine-grained whetstone;
- emery paper ;
- round file.
When selecting tools, you should pay attention to the fact that the hardness of the metal from which the file or bar is made should be much higher than the hardness of the alloy from which the blades are made.
Features of sharpening skates without a groove
In principle, this method does not require special efforts, as it is the simplest.
The basic principle of this method is the sharpening of the blade soles at right angles to its side walls. To work in this case, either sandpaper or a file is used. Moreover, the second tool is preferable, because it should be harder than the alloy from which the blades are made. However, with the file you will have to spend longer.
How to handle the skates, if they have a groove?
There is already a little work to do. Moreover, the sharpening accuracy must be very high, otherwise you can just damage the blades. For work, you will need sandpaper and a circular file. Before sharpening your skates at home with these tools, inspect them. If you need to deepen the groove or make it, use sandpaper.
Next, a file comes into operation, the diameter of which should be no more than 10 mm. Using this tool, try to display the shape of the gutter as correctly as possible. At the same time you will process the edges. Note that the depth of the groove must not exceed 0.6 mm. As for sharpening the edges of the blade, the correctness of the procedure should be checked periodically. To do this, put the skates on a very flat surface. If the work is done accurately, then the blades will stand strictly perpendicular.
Lastly, the metal should be walked through with a fine-grained bar, which should finally eliminate all burrs and other defects from the surface. So you know how to sharpen skates using simple tools. Now you should understand how to complete this procedure with the help of special equipment.
How to make the right sharpening of skates using a machine?
In order to make the process as simple and fast as possible, you should use special equipment. Before sharpening the skates at home, buy a special machine in which you have to eliminate the horizontal emphasis, because it will only interfere. Best of all, if the unit is equipped with a vertical guide, which should be fixed at a distance of 2 cm from the edge of the disk.
Naturally, you can immediately buy a machine that is ideal for sharpening skates. Otherwise, you will have to redo your device a bit. Now let's start sharpening. To do this, put the heel end of the ridge down to the guide. Now the blade should be pressed a little against the rotating disk at the desired angle. Next, you must slowly drive the horse down. Try not to press the skate strongly against the abrasive wheel, as you can easily burn it.
Try to do everything carefully: put on goggles and protective clothing, work with gloves. Hold the horse tight so that it does not fly out of your hands. Note that the circle should rotate in the direction away from you, otherwise the sparks will fly right into your eyes! After using the machine, you will have to do a little work manually: with an abrasive stone, walk along the blade to remove burrs or scratches from the metal surface. Now you know how to sharpen skates. Good luck