Blade Dilemma for an Adult Skater ( phantom)

[pkpach]

Hi everyone,

I’m an adult figure skater (5’7” and 130 lbs) who has been skating for 3 years. Two years ago, I switched to ultima Protege(8") blades. At that time, I was still learning three turns, and they were quite challenging for me. However, I was in the early stages of my skating journey, so I assumed it was part of the process.

Later, I switched to Coronation Ace blades, which helped me a lot with turns and significantly improved my single jumps. My jumps became higher, and my progress accelerated. However, I encountered issues with landing. The Coronation Ace Lite felt too short for me, and I often felt like I might fall when landing. Additionally, the toe pick dragged on the ice during backward crossovers, which was frustrating. After about a year of use, I noticed that I hadn’t made any improvements in my spins.

I then decided to switch to Gold Seal blades, and they’ve been a mixed experience. On the positive side, I feel much more confident in my landings, and my spins improved significantly within the first week of using them. My edges also feel noticeably better. However, all my jumps have gotten worse. I feel like my ankles and knees are under much more strain to jump, and I often feel "flat" on the ice.

Now, I’m considering trying Phantom blades, but I’m worried they might have a similar “sweet spot” to the Coronation Ace blades, which didn’t work well for me in the past.

I’d love to hear your advice! Have you experienced anything similar with these blades? What would you recommend for someone like me?

Thanks so much for your help!

--

coroAce Lite
- incredible jumps
- difficulty finding the sweet spot on spins
- toepick scraping the ice on backward crossovers
- short blade to land on jumps

gold seal
- incredible for spinning
- I can use the edges well
- feeling of being flat on the ice
- difficulty jumping because I make much more effort to be able to jump

 

[IceM]

These are things that are best discussed with a coach that knows your skating, so take my advice with a grain of salt, and apply it generally.

If your spins, turns, and jump landings all feel good on the Gold Seals, I wouldn't change them. This indicates that the blades are working as they are supposed to, and perhaps blades that previously have not worked has caused you to develop some bad habits on your technique. So, I would focus on developing that technique.

If it really bothers you, you could talk to an experienced skate tech and ask to flatten the profile a little bit, to move the sweet spot a little bit back, and see if that helps you. This tends to happen naturally the more you sharpen the blades as well. That would at least give you some information as to what you would personally prefer in a blade. And maybe you can reassess the situation accordingly with that information.

In general, there's some variance in the MK/JW blade profiles (sometimes quite a bit between pairs, and even between the two in a given pair, believe it or not), so moving to a new blade everytime to fix and issue that is probably solved by developing technique on the ice, can get pretty messy pretty fast.

That's my 2 cents anyway. I wish you good luck!

 

[pkpach]

These are things that are best discussed with a coach that knows your skating, so take my advice with a grain of salt, and apply it generally.

If your spins, turns, and jump landings all feel good on the Gold Seals, I wouldn't change them. This indicates that the blades are working as they are supposed to, and perhaps blades that previously have not worked has caused you to develop some bad habits on your technique. So, I would focus on developing that technique.

If it really bothers you, you could talk to an experienced skate tech and ask to flatten the profile a little bit, to move the sweet spot a little bit back, and see if that helps you. This tends to happen naturally the more you sharpen the blades as well. That would at least give you some information as to what you would personally prefer in a blade. And maybe you can reassess the situation accordingly with that information.

In general, there's some variance in the MK/JW blade profiles (sometimes quite a bit between pairs, and even between the two in a given pair, believe it or not), so moving to a new blade everytime to fix and issue that is probably solved by developing technique on the ice, can get pretty messy pretty fast.

That's my 2 cents anyway. I wish you good luck!

My coach had recommended CoroAces to me, but they didn't work. Since we don't have a skating shop in the city, I wanted more opinions before buying another blade because, besides being expensive, it's hard to resell the one I have.

Yes, the spins have improved a lot, but I'm struggling to do the jumps. I need to use a lot more force to be able to jump. But I really don't know if I learned the wrong thing with CoroAces and now I'm having difficulties.

In my case, I don't want to flatten them. I think that the Gold Seal leaves me too flat on the ice, while I really liked the profile of the CoroAces (previous one). I don't know if it's possible to change the profile to make it more curved. There are some hockey shops in the city that I know change the profile of skates and I will check with them.
Thanks !!

 

[Ic3Rabbit]

Please be careful with trying to change the profile of your blade, and a hockey shop. 99% of the time they'll wreck your blade. Good luck!

 

[Query]

Yes - while the best skate techs I know sharpen both figure & hockey blades, and tend to have a lot of other mechanical skills, modifying figure skate blade profiles is a bit of a specialty. Mainly because there are lots of instructions available on how to modify hockey profiles, including from sharpening machine and profiling machine manufacturers, and widely used specialty machines and guides to help them do it. But good info on modifying figure skate profiles is harder to find. Plus I think it works best if matched to the skater's individual anatomy. And many skate techs don't have a lot of experience and feedback from non-beginner figure skaters.

You possibly interact with the point(s) at which the rocker curvature changes, and the "touch point" which just barely touches the ice at the same time as the drag pick, in specific ways. You may also be affected by the angle between the drag pick and the nearby rocker profile. Changing the curvature or length of the spin rocker segment alters all of these points. My attempts to change my profiles have only been partially successful in achieving what I want. From what they have said to me, hockey players can be very picky about sharpening too, especially the point at which the blade tends to center, and for goalies, the back part of the outside edges across which they may need to slide, and other things for skating referees - but those are different parts of the blade than you are talking about.

Increasing curvature will remove a lot of metal, and therefore decrease blade lifetime, even if done right. So you don't want it done wrong. I doubt there are more than a dozen or two skate techs in the world, if even that many, who are really good & experienced at it - and they might need to do it a little at a time, getting constant feedback from you as they change it to suit your needs.

Even many hockey players, especially goalies (who have special needs), sharpen their own blades, or modify in-store sharpenings, to get exactly what they want. I wonder if hockey players tend to be more aggressive and give more feedback to skate techs than typical figure skaters do.

One other warning. The MK Phantom, if the info I found is correct, is both side honed and tapered. That means that if you change the profile, the width of the blade at those points will alter too. That may not be what you want. Which just makes proper figure skate profiling for your blades more of a specialty.

 

[thisismynewsport]

To be honest this sounds like a technique issue rather than an equipment issues. 3 years of skating is not very long! It takes many, many years to learn and perfect things. Changing blades that often will hinder your progress.

 

[Query]

When you say you have trouble finding the sweet spot for spins - Coronation Ace, like a lot of JW blades, and some others - has 3 rocker segments. The "spin rocker" section up front is divided into two different sections, with different rocker radii. The section up front has more curvature than the middle one, which has more curvature than most of the blade. Some people love that, some don't. If you want to "feel" the transition between different sections, maybe 3 sections is confusing, especially if no one told you the spin rocker is divided into two sections.

Phantom blades only have one spin rocker segment.

But I don't know enough to advise you on whether they make sense for you.

See image at
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1503550726620855/posts/3451778495131392/
If that doesn't work, try Googling "pattern 99 curves". You will find an image showing the rocker profiles of Pattern 99, Coronation Ace, Phantom, Gold Seal, MK Pro, and Gold Star blades.

EDIT: BTW, on the JW blades I've actually looked at, the forward-most section mostly can't be used, because it only touches when the toepick also touches. So maybe my idea for your issue doesn't make sense.

 

[Query]

A higher resolution picture of those blade profiles is in
https://scarletskater.wordpress.com/2017/06/01/choosing-figure-skating-blades/

If those are accurate, notice that if you draw a line from the back toepick to the place on Pattern 99 and Coronation Ace blades where the line is tangent along the curved section, you can see that you can't use any of the front-most section without touching the toepick. Unless you trim the toepick. And you would be able to use less of the next section too, if you remove some of the metal, as you must when you sharpen blades.

I don't know if that helps.

Also note that I think many skate techs re-sharpen MK and JW blades before selling them, and possibly give them the profile that skate tech thinks they should have. So the shape varies depending on who your skate tech is. A few very good skate techs try to customize the shape according to the feedback you give them - if the shop lets you talk to the skate tech. Which some don't.

 

[Query]

In retrospect, it's possible the ScarletSkater page I cited might possibly be out of date in certain respects. It's impossible for most people to to keep up with all the equipment changes. And perhaps not everyone would agree on everything she says - as is often true for opinions on sports equipment. There could also be imperfect standardization of the meaning of technical terms used in describing blades. And of course she didn't try to include all blade models of all brands.

To be honest this sounds like a technique issue rather than an equipment issues. 3 years of skating is not very long! It takes many, many years to learn and perfect things. Changing blades that often will hinder your progress.

That sounds reasonable. Every time I have tried to switch blade types, there has been a fairly long period of getting used to the new blades. I wasn't always happy with the switch in the long run. And switching costs money - sometimes you can make do with older blades if you can find a very good skate tech who understands how to trim the toe pick (to restore the relationship between the toe pick and the rockered portion) and/or shim (to restore the tilt and/or height of the foot above the ice) - though once you get into the steel that isn't hard, or where the chrome (or other) plating hasn't been ground off, it probably isn't worth it. If your coach is knowledgeable about blades, it may be worth asking them whether you would benefit by switching.

I'm not an expert enough skater to evaluate your skating, but perhaps a knowledgeable coach could find techniques to achieve what you are trying to achieve by switching? Since skate techs make a profit selling & sharpening new blades, some are inclined to tell you to switch when you could do something else.

I wish there were ways to briefly mount & rent different runners, with all the different shapes. Or a way to morph & sharpen your blade using an app on your phone. Along the lines of the T1000 Terminator...

 

[pkpach]

Thank you very much for all the answers.
I ended up deciding that I will travel to another city that has a skating store and a specialist who recommended MK Gold Star to me, but asked me to go to the store to test the blade and see the positioning of the blade on the skates to make sure that I have the correct blade.
I think I am not ready to use an 8" blade yet because I do not have doubles yet, only single jumps, and I do not have enough strength to be able to push off the jump without the help of the blade.

I think I have more information, such as, I like to spin well forward on the blade, which would make me choose a rounder rocker, the opposite of the coroAce, which has a flatter rocker.I have no problems with the high station anchor, I really liked the deep edges that the gold seal has.

I feel a little more prepared to choose something and I will have the opportunity to choose the blade in a store instead of online without anyone's support.

Thank you!!!