Whether you're an ice hockey player or a recreational skater, you will need sharp blades to skate smoothly. Plenty of skating rinks or ice hockey teams will sharpen your skates using tested sharpening methods. As a general rule, sharpen your skates after every 20 hours of skating, according to The Rutland Figure Skating Club at Castleton College. If you're playing high-impact ice hockey you should sharpen every eight hours of game time.
Skate Edge Theory
Smooth, sharp metal edges help you skate with good control and better balance. Skate sharpness also improves your stopping and turning. However, your skates aren't sharpened in the same way that you would sharpen a knife. The bottom of the blade is curved upward to create a hollow, according to SkateNY. That means skates actually have two blades -- an inside edge and an outside edge. Different skating forms often require different types of blade. Even different positions in an ice hockey team may require specially sharpened blades. For example, a forward may have a smaller rocker in contact with the ice.
Hollow Grind
To create the concave hollow of your blade, you need to use a circular grinding wheel. Most of the time this is something you wil find offered as a service in many ice rinks or sports stores. It usually costs around $5 to sharpen a pair of skates as of 2009, according to "The New York Times." The operator dresses the stone using a diamond-tipped rod to create a curved edge suitable for making a skate blade hollow. The sharpening takes around a minute, depending on how sharp you need the blades. The operator should mark the blade with the grade of hollow so you can aim for the same settings next time.
Small Nicks
When your blades hit the wall or another skater's blades, the metal gets chipped. These little nicks can interfere with the smooth glide of your skates. Use a piece of stone called a deburring stone to smooth out these small skate blade nicks. Run the stone gently along the outside of the blade in long strokes until you see the nicks disappear. Gently feel the blade to test for invisible dents and use the stone a little more in any ragged areas.
Flat-bottom V
In 2009 "The New York Times" hockey section profiled a new type of skate sharpening method called the flat-bottom V. Several National Hockey League players claim the technique creates a sharper blade for turning but with good forward glide, according to the article. Instead of grinding out a curved hollow in the middle of the blade, the flat-bottom V technique gouges microscopic "fangs" in the blade ridges. These gouges cut into the ice when turning or stopping. Between each fang the blade is flat and not curved, which the manufacturers of the sharpening tool claims makes skaters glide better.
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