New girl on here, lookin 4 a way 2 build a figure skate sharpening machine

[rgsparber]

Welcome to Home Made Tools! Yes, I'm the nut that made a figure skate sharpening machine. My wife is a figure skater and she (and I) were fed up with the terrible figure skate sharpening she had to endure. Everyone was sharpening free hand which meant getting far fewer sharpenings out of every set of blades plus having to relearn how to skate after each sharpening.

My machine is designed to only sharpen one brand and one size of blade plus has only one hollow radius. This is what makes it so precise and also prevents me from having to sharpen everyone else's skates. The key to the design is having a precise pattern for the blades contour. This pattern is mounted precisely below the blade. A piece of steel slides along this pattern and guides the blade a preset depth into the grinding wheel. Each pass removes 50 millionths (yup, 0.00005) of an inch. If my wife has been doing a lot of spins, I will grind down about 1.5 thousandths of an inch in order to restore the contour. The best thing about having this machine is that we sharpen the blades before they are noticeably dull so they feel like they are always exactly the same. No need to get used to the blades after a sharpening.

The machine cost me about $400 to make but one (awful) sharpening cost about $20. She wore out one pair of blades and we are about half way through a second pair. This means the machine paid for itself a long time ago just based on sharpening cost. She also got more out of each pair of blades because less metal is removed by each sharpening. There is about 0.1 inches of hardened metal on a blade. She had times when an incompetent sharpener removed 0.02 inches which is about 10 times more than necessary. And finally, she has to walk out to the garage to get a sharpening rather than drive for 30 miles to visit a hack. Any of this sound familiar to you?

I would be happy to provide more information if you like. It would be really cool to have another person benefit from what I learned making and using this machine.

Rick