Pro Filer Skate Sharpener

The Pro-Filer is a hand skate sharpening kit for skate blades. Because I once had a "professional" sharpening ruin a pair of blades, I've since been suspicious of sharpening services offered through a rink. I sought a way to do it myself, and I read about the Pro-Filer hand sharpener on the rec.sport.skating.ice.recreational newsgroup on the Internet.

I've been using this system to sharpen my figure skates for about four years with good results. I initially purchased a 3/8" radius of hollow to start with. That proved to be too extreme for my skill level back in 2002 and I couldn't do hockey stops. I later purchased the 1/2" radius Pro-Filer kit and found it suitable, but as my skills progressed over the years, I returned to a 3/8" sharpening. The only other radius option from Pro-Filer is a very extreme 5/16" radius that is said to be suitable for thinner dance blades. The blade gap in my two sharpeners (3/8" & 1/2") is fixed for freestyle blade thickness, so I don't know how these work with dance blades.

Each kit comes with two round stones in extruded aluminum guides. One stone is advertised to be a diamond abrasive for the rough cut, and the other stone is a finishing stone to remove the minor grooving left by the rough cut.

The kit also contains a flat stone for removing burrs from the side of the blade, packaged together with thin cutting oil, a wiping cloth and masking tape to protect the side of the blade. I've found that Scotch Magic Tape works better than the masking tape. It has a smoother surface and the sharpener glides easier over the Scotch tape.

It takes about an 1/2 hour to an hour for me to do a pair of skates. I sharpen about once or twice each month when I'm skating regularly. If I sharpened more frequently, it would probably take a little less time to do.

Here are some pictures of the 1/2" radius kit. Click on a thumbnail to see a larger version.

The diamond abrasive is adhered to a thick-wall steel tube shown in the end view of the diamond stone. The fine stone is a solid cylinder of an abrasive substance.

Usage
I tape the sides of the skate blades about 1/8" down from the skating edge to protect the blade's finish from the sharpener. I use Scotch tape instead of the masking tape supplied in the kit because it lets the sharpener glide easier.

Next I slide the flat stone along the side of the blade to remove burrs caused by nicks. Then I put a drop of the supplied cutting oil on the round diamond stone sharpener, and slide it with moderate force along the blade for about a dozen times. I rotate the stone in the holder (so it doesn't wear unevenly) and again make about a dozen passes over the blade. Repeat a bunch of times until the edge feels sharp again.

On average, I use the diamond stone for about 5-10 minutes, then clean the blade with a paper towel, and switch to the fine stone for another 5-10 minutes. You will get messy fingers. The cutting oil carries away the removed material, and it gets very black. Don't wear your finest clothes. Note: Since the cutting oil mixed with metal shavings is abrasive, prickly, and hard to clean afterwards, I now wear a latex glove on my sharpening hand.

Summary
If you're patient, this system might be a reasonable substitute for professional sharpening - especially if you have no choice. If you are mechanically challenged, this might not be the system for you. Seek a professional skate sharpener in whom you have trust. However, the Pro-Filer works fine for me.

Note also that they are designed to work with flat-sided blades. I don't know how they would manage to work with blades that have a "parabolic" profile, or other unusual treatment.

Here's a link to the web site of the company. They sell directly to the consumer.

Footnote 1:
I was curious about how much material is removed by the ProFiler during a sharpening, so I performed an experiment to measure the rate of metal removal. I hadn't sharpened my skates for several months (from August through mid-October of 2003) so the edges felt very dull to the touch. When skating I was also skidding a bit more than desired.

I knew that I would have to perform a marathon sharpening session to restore the edges. The right inside edge was the dullest to the touch -that makes sense because I'm right footed and perform many times more three-turns, brackets, etc on the right foot.

I taped the edges of the skate for sharpening, and made a mark so that I knew where to take measurements during sharpening.

Measuring the blade.		Sharpening TIme:	Metal Removed from Edges:	Metal Removed from Hollow:
Measuring the blade.		2 hours (right skate) - (This is much longer than usual to be able to measure the results.)	0.003 inch	0.004 inch

I began sharpening with the 1/2" ROH diamond stone, taking measurements periodically over a two-hour period with a Starrett 1-inch micrometer. I measured the blade section to the edges and to the inside of the hollow. I used a steel BB (0.173 dia.) to reach into the hollow and merely subtracted 0.173 from the total reading to find the distance to the hollow.

When I was finished with the fine stone (determined by a good sharp feel to the edge of the blade), the blade had 0.003 inch removed from the overall section to the edges, and 0.004 removed from the hollow. It makes sense that the hollow needs more metal removed because the edges wear down more compared to the hollow. Calculations show that the worn blade's ROH had become a shallow 1" radius before sharpening.

The starting blade section was 0.797 inch, and after sharpening it was 0.794 inch. It would take quite a few sharpening sessions like this one to remove significant material from the blade.

I still have the same Coronation Ace ice skating blades after 4-1/2 years. A friend bought a new pair of Coronation Ace blades over the summer of 2006. I was curious how my skate blades, after 4-1/2 years, had maintained their rocker using the Pro-Filer hand sharpening. We traced our blades onto a sheet of paper to compare their shape. Using Photoshop, I brought the two tracings together for comparison and the results are shown below.

The other person's skate blades had been machine sharpened about 3 times since new. The tracings are very close and within about one pencil line of each other.

*I've done dozens of hand sharpening using the Pro-Filer plus two machine sharpenings (once when new, and another time when I sent the boots for rebuilding).


Kit contents (slightly used)	Rough and fine stones	End view of stones


End view of diamond stone	End view of fine stone	Diamond abrasive surface