Fighting Rust

My Ultima Aspire blades keep on getting small dots of rust no matter what I do! Does anyone have a solution?
Thanks in advance!

Great question! We have been fighting this for years.

Since my daughter skates at least 5x a week and sometimes 2x a day, we tend to leave them in the back of the car. Hauling them in and out of the house is just way too much work and my rink does not have lockers that we can rent.

Here is what I think is our problem. #1) She does not dry them off all the way #2) She sometimes forgets and leaves then in the hard guards instead of the putting on the soakers. #3) Then later we got her too thick of soakers and so with them on, the blades could never dry out.

Our best "solution" - Dry them off and then let them completely dry in the car without anything on the blades.

I'm curious what works for others.

Try gummi stones to clean off the rust.

http://icedoesntcare.blogspot.com/2012/08/rusty-blades-and-gummi-stones.html

My MK Pros don't rust for some reason and I do almost everything wrong: leave them in the car, just give them a swipe and stick them in their soakers, store them in their soakers.

I think that I just got lucky.

I love the transpack skate bag. Skates dry so nicely because of the mesh. Do you dry well after skating and put them in dry soakers? Or do you leave them in hard guards? When you get home do you take them out of the skate bag/zuca?

This is what we do - done skating, sit, remove hard guards and bang the guards to get excess water out. dry skates, put in thick soakers, put in bag. Put guards in skate town in the bag.

Once you get rust in a blade, in my experience, that blade will always rust. The older blades that came with reidells were rusty for us. The chrome also peeled off. It did not effect skating, they were sharpened regularly.

Yep - We do as you describe and they still rust. My daughter skates on Gold Seals and those give us the problem. I think we are on our 3rd set of Gold Seals and we have had this issue on all of them.

bumping

If this is still a problem try putting a large Pingi dehydrator bag in your skate bag. They're on Amazon.

I use them to keep my boots from smelling, but I don't get any rust on my blades since I started using them.

http://icedoesntcare.blogspot.com/2013/07/dealing-with-stinky-boots.html

Concorde - if you keep them in the car, make sure to unzip the bag, esp if she uses a Zuca. The best thing for skates for us was retiring the Zuca. With the Zuca she was getting mold in the skates under the foot bed. It just could never air out when she was skating daily.

Same as any iron or steel tool:

Dry them off, and do NOT put them in a bag or box or case. Also, try NOT to keep them in a car, especially if you live in a humid climate.

Then apply a thin coat of oil. Oil really works, like magic. I use mineral oil, like "3 in 1" brand, but almost any oil will probably do. Some people use grease, which is probably better, but potentially messy. (I sometimes carry two pieces of cloth, one to remove water, one with oil on it - outside my gear bag.)

Some people claim that a mild acid, like vinegar, can remove some of the rust, but that hasn't work very well for me, for whatever reason. But removing the rust that is present, with mild acid or an abrasive, is a great idea: for some reason, rust spots tend to grow. Be careful around the edge itself - an abrasive may dull the edge, though that will go away with the next sharpening.

Is there like a special towel thay figure skaters use to dry their skates? I've seen a lot of skaters at my rink use this blue towel with red marking...not sure if its special or something

Myblade said:

Is there like a special towel thay figure skaters use to dry their skates? I've seen a lot of skaters at my rink use this blue towel with red marking...not sure if its special or something

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Sounds like a piece of a Supergirl costume :cool14:. There are microfiber wipes specifically sold for drying skates (such as Total Hockey Shammy). They cost about $8 each. But you can save a lot of bucks by just buying plain microfiber wipes. I use the Quickie ones (~14" square, thin and flexible). They sell on Amazon for $10/pkg of 24 (http://www.amazon.com/Quickie-Origi...1446519823&sr=8-1&keywords=quickie+microfiber). They are very absorbent and durable. I used to use a chamois, but that requires a long break-in period (that's why I held onto the same piece for over 20 yrs before it finally became too tattered and I chucked it). The microfiber wipe also has more nap than chamois and is more effective than chamois on suede boots. Tip: Velcro clings onto microfiber wipes, so keep the microfiber wipes away from any Velcro straps.


Here's my procedure for keeping blades rust free. When I get off the ice, I first wipe the slush and most of the water off the boots and blades with a first microfiber wipe, and then thoroughly dry off the boots and blades with a second microfiber wipe. I then put on a first set of blade covers (soakers) and put the skates in my kit bag. I don't like to transport skates without soakers (both to keep the edges from getting dinged and to keep the edges and picks from cutting up the kit bag and other stuff in the kit bag). I leave the kit bag open, unless it's raining. But under any circumstance be sure to open the kit bag in the car. When I get home, I remove the first set of blade covers, dry off any residual water (from condensation) from the boots and blades with a third microfiber wipe, and then put on a second set of blade covers. This way I don't need to apply oil. Oil is very effective, but easily transferred to all the stuff in your kit bag, as well as onto your hands and the floor.

It's probably a towel they got at a competition. I bought a giant pack of colorful microfiber kitchen towels at a Homegoods for about $10 for 10 towels. But my skater likes her competition towels best.

Query said:

for some reason, rust spots tend to grow.

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Rust has a porous microstructure and tends to trap water molecules, leading to further rusting.