Design
The bottom of a modern ice skate blade, unlike the blade of a knife, has a crescent-shaped hollow, creating two sharp edges on each skate. Ideally, the two edges of a blade are parallel, but poor maintenance practices, such as improper sharpening or lack of consistent sharpening, can often result in oblique edges. These "bad" edges can affect skating ability significantly. The depth of this hollow is known as the Radius of Hollow (RoH). The Radius of Hollow is typically between 1/4" and 1" depending on the type of skates and the user. The optimal depth depends on factors such as the skater's weight, ability, strength, sporting activity, and (for ice hockey) style of play. The skater uses these edges in different combinations in order to maneuver. When ice skates are sharpened the blade is ground with a stone with a curved surface, dressed to either restore the hollow or provide a different radius.
Speed skates and touring skates, however, have a completely flat bottom. There is no hollow, only a squared off bottom with 2 edges. This improves glide time, by not cutting into the ice.
Inexpensive skates for recreational skaters usually resemble either figure skates or hockey skates, but recreational ice skates resembling inline skates with a molded plastic boot are also available. These recreational skates are the form which can be rented from ice rinks for beginners who do not own their own skates. In the non-American English-speaking world they are sometimes called 'death wellies' by skaters who own their own equipment because of their appearance and their reputation for giving people blisters. People who own their own skates may further reduce the risk of blisters by adding a friction management patch to areas inside the skate that could rub or chafe.
Read more about this topic: Ice Skate
Famous quotes containing the word design:
“Westerners inherit
A design for living
Deeper into matter—
Not without due patter
Of a great misgiving.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Teaching is the perpetual end and office of all things. Teaching, instruction is the main design that shines through the sky and earth.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“For I choose that my remembrances of him should be pleasing, affecting, religious. I will love him as a glorified friend, after the free way of friendship, and not pay him a stiff sign of respect, as men do to those whom they fear. A passage read from his discourses, a moving provocation to works like his, any act or meeting which tends to awaken a pure thought, a flow of love, an original design of virtue, I call a worthy, a true commemoration.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)