Recreational Ice Skates

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What are recreational ice skates anyway?

It's a term probably borrowed from wheeled inline skates and is used loosely by manufacturers and online shops. The most common meaning is probably something like a hockey skate without the Achilles Tendon Guard at the back, and with some sort of speed lacing or easy fastening system.

If you search or browse UK websites on the internet you'll come across lots of recreational skates in children's sizes, many of them adjustable for growing feet. Adults aren't well catered for in 2010 in the UK. If you're looking for hockey skates or figure/ice dance skates then there's no problem - but if you want something more modern then you may have to find a dealer who will order something in for you. This page shows various examples of skates including 3 with a hinged cuff.

Having searched the internet I decided I'd settle for Powerslide Ice Cyclone as they had a hinged cuff and no laces at all, just 3 quick-release straps. I sent an email to Powerslide and got this automated reply:

Subject: Your Online-Request at Powerslide
From: <ice.form@powerslide.de>
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2010 22:24:21 +0100

You sent us an eMail via Powerslide-Webpage. Your eMail consists following data:

---------------------------------------------------------

online request - question about availability
I am in Scotland UK and want to buy POWERSLIDE ICE
Cyclone Man in size EU43. I have two pairs of your Phusion inline skates in that size and the shoes are a good snug fit. How can I buy them?

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Thank you for your interest .
We will contact you as soon as possible

They never did contact me again. I emailed Kate's Skates who had previously supplied Powerslide inline skates to me on special order. They didn't reply either. I emailed Skates.Co.Uk and they said they could order what I wanted and they'd get it from Germany. They said the easiest way to pay was over the phone but it was anything but. They didn't know what I was talking about when I phoned them. I asked for Ben to phone me back. He didn't. After a day or two of this I eventually managed to pay by card over the phone.

After a full week I emailed them and was eventually told that Powerslide had broken their promise and sold the only remaining pair of Cyclone skates. I chose a different type of skate, the Powerslide Thunder. After that, any requests for progress reports went unanswered. I'd asked them who the courier would be and asked for a tracking number but got no reply. Eventually the courier left them at a neighbour because he hadn't pressed the door entry system properly.

POWERSLIDE ICE THUNDER is the name of this skate from Powerslide in Germany. It's a cliché that German engineering is good and generally this is true. When the skates arrived on 15th March 2010 I tried them on and walked about my room and hallway. They were supplied sharpened after a fashion with a rough surface which I smoothed down by hand with a SkateMate.

The blades are thicker than most which means that a hollow-ground groove of 3/8 inch radius will be deeper and grip the ice well for fast turns, possibly too well for skidding to a stop easily. This turned out to be the case. It was a lot of work sharpening by hand with the 3/8 inch retrofit SkateMate and the groove was too deep. The left skate felt like it wanted to veer off to the left but I put this down to drag caused by imperfect sharpening.

I used the SkateMate's larger radius sharpener and made the groove shallower. On the 2nd day they were much better, more controllable yet still able to do fast turns. But still not right - I could glide long straights on my right foot alone, but not on my left. I could do curves on either edge on my left skate - but not straight lines.

The larger radius SkateMate spares arrived from Sweden. I used the coarse one then the fine one and was confident any remaining drag on my left foot would be gone when I tried them on the ice again. I still couldn't glide in a straight line on my left skate alone. I turned both skates upside down and compared them and, to my horror, found that the left skate had not been properly aligned when riveted onto the sole of the boot.

This photo shows my initial efforts to fix the problem. I set about this myself partly because I had lost faith in others, and partly for pragmatic reasons. The hassle and expense of sending them back was unthinkable.

The rivets I removed resembled tubes at the other ends, split in 6 and folded back to overlap and grip the holes in the sole. Brute force with side cutters levered them off. The photo shows the 3 nuts and bolts I used at first. I had left one rivet in the heel to pivot the skate around.

This picture shows what will probably be the finished job. The steel nuts and bolts I used were stronger than the rivets so I omitted 3 out of 8 at the front and 2 out of 6 at the heel.

The Powerslide website is very slick on a fast computer and uses terms like Trigonomic Fit, HSS-Heat Storing System, thermoregulations, Anatomical EVA foot bed - and Razor Blade made of stainless steel.

Unfortunately it fails to explain what these grand sounding technicalities actually mean. Nor does it mention the very important fact that the blades, whilst resembling hockey skates are actually considerably thicker. This makes a difference to their performance but goes unmentioned. Yet another website that places style before substance!

I measured my skates thickness with an electronic caliper:

Nike skates TUUK blades 2.88mm or 0.11in thick

Powerslide skates blades 3.44mm or 0.135in thick

They are halfway between a hockey skate and a figure skate as regards thickness of blade. This may be advantageous to my style of skating - but it would have been helpful if the website had mentioned it. As far as engineering is concerned, the basic design is mostly quite good.

I replaced the supplied laces with cotton bootlaces from Timpson's and threaded them through backwards, knotting them at the toe and leaving a large loop at the other end. I had already fitted springloaded stoppers over the laces, so to tighten them I just pull the loop and slide the stopper down against the boot. This avoids having to tie a bow whilst trying to pull tight at the same time. The top eyelets are supposed to lock the laces but they don't work at all, unlike the ones on my Hypno inline skates.

The boot could have been softer allowing more forward flexing of the ankle; the hinged cuff gives excellent lateral support. The price was a fairly modest 60 UK Pounds. The (presumably) German design is good for the money - but, like 99% of everything they're made in China. Quality Control? What's that?

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