Fred Bartick, a Minnesota-based (Bloomington, MN) skate technician with over 35 years of experience, talks about some basics regarding blades and blade sharpening. After a brief introduction, Fred begins by talking about the hollow he uses for most sharpenings. The hollow is the “groove” in the bottom of the blade that provides the inside and outside edges. The vast majority of skaters prefer a hollow to have a radius of between 7/16 and 1/2 inch. As Fred notes, a 1/2 inch hollow is the standard starting point for most skaters in the US, but the radius of the hollow is really a personal preference for each skater. Skates with a deeper hollow will bite the ice more, while a shallower hollow has less bite.

Not surprisingly, Fred notes that the edges should be level and even. Probably every skater has had the experience at some point of uneven edges which makes even skating in a straight line difficult. During a sharpening, a small amount of metal is removed from the blade. In order to maximize the life of a given set of blades, it’s very important for the skate tech to take as little metal off the blades as possible during a sharpening, while still creating the necessary hollow and even edges. Ideally a sharpening also takes small nicks out of the edges, but as Fred notes, it is typically not a good idea to sacrifice a large amount of metal (and blade life) to remove all (larger) nicks, especially near the back of the blade where the larger nicks typically happen and where skaters use less often.

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