When we’re in the field demoing our sharpener, we’ve noticed two clear trends:

1. Most skates have not been sharpened in the last 6 hours of skating. Players and parents are letting their skates get to the point where they are falling down and losing edges in the corner before they have their skates sharpened.


2. The majority of skates also have uneven edges. While we don’t have an exact count, we’d say it's more than one out of every two pairs that have at least one skate with uneven edges. 


How the Sparx Sharpener Solves these Two Problems

Before sharpening with Sparx, it is likely that you have at least one of the two problems described above coming into play every other week. But, once you begin sharpening with Sparx, and become part of the Sparx ecosystem, you will very quickly eliminate them both. Being in the Sparx ecosystem means you are sharpening with the Sparx Sharpener exclusively. It’s is something we talk about a lot, and when deciding on how many cycles to set as the sharpener default (4 is standard), we took this into account.

There is one caveat to the default setting of 4 cycles per skate. If you’ve waited too long since your last sharpening or you have uneven edges, you’ll need to run a few more cycles to reset the blade surface. You need to get those edges back to even and get out all the deeper nicks so a little extra work will be required.

The Marker Test

Enter the Marker Test. You can find reference to this in your Sparx Operating Manual under Operations: Sharpening New Steel.

Before placing your skate into the Sparx Skate Sharpener follow these three steps:

Step 1: Take a dark marker (we prefer a black Sharpie) and fill in the bottom of the blade like so. Be sure to cover the entire bottom surface from toe to heel.

Step 2: Select 10 cycles on the keypad and sharpen the skate.

Step 3: Inspect. If it’s completely removed, you’re all set! If there’s still marker showing anywhere on the bottom of the blade, run for an additional 4 cycles until you’ve completely removed it. Repeat if necessary.

Conclusion

After completing the marker test, you can be assured that your uneven edges are gone and that most of those deep knicks should be gone as well. Now that you’re in the Sparx Ecosystem, you should no longer have to worry about your skates being out of whack. Monitor your edges carefully, take care of them and sharpen often (or at least don’t wait until something bad happens to sharpen).