Query
10-13-2007, 10:12 AM
Towards an Ideal Figure Skating Boot: Revision 1
I can't make boots. Neither can I find exactly what I want.
Lots of people are in the same situation.
Judging from the amount of complaining many do about it, there should be an excellent market for one.
So let's start a thread on what the ideal boot would be, and see if someone will make it.
Here are my ideas. I haven't patented them.
1. Should fit washable moldable liners, like good ski and speed skating boots do. Heat it with a hair dryer or a microwave, put it on your feet, put the feet in the boot, stand on one foot with support, and wait for it to cool and conform perfectly to the foot and boot. Or use electro-setting plastic. For kids, the liner needs to be able to expand upwards, and there should be different thickness liners, so they can grow for a while with the same boot. The liner should be removable and machine washable, and be used instead of a sock. It is essential the liner not slip against the boot in use. Possibly high friction surfaces, or grooves to hold it.
2. The liner could incorporate a moldable foot bed (must mold both to the whole foot bottom and the skate bottom), or that could be separate. There should be compressible foam under the arch, so it can collapse a little to absorb impact. Different people need different amounts of stiffness.
3. To a large extant custom boots are not required with a moldable liner, but to some extant they help. The right way is to make a real cast of the foot (and part of the leg, so you can align the foot bed right), with something like zippers so it can be removed intact, and mold a last inside it, around which the boot is itself molded (perhaps with the liner and footbed inside). (Most foot problems are the result of ill fitting boots, and are completely solvable. Have you seen how unhealthy some skater's feet look?)
4. The hinged boots are a step in the right direction, but don't go far enough. Should have 8 adjustable degrees of freedom to control motion in the four major directions of foot motion: left, right, forward, back. 4 degrees of freedom control the range of motion for safety, 4 control the amount of resistance as you approach that range of motion. After choosing today's skating style (dance, jumps,...), you adjust the skate for it.
Some sort of lacing system could control the range of motion.
Resistance to motion is harder to control. Control can be achieved by altering its flexibility in at least two ways: (1) Two some extant the material can expand at the outside of a bend, contract at the inside of a bend. The only way I can think of to control this is through electro-chemistry - you need to be able to create and destroy cross-link bonds. Not sure that control mechanism is practical. (2) You can have sheer (slippage) between layers of leather or plastic. I picture a different lacing system, that binds together layers of leather or plastic, reducing the slippage (sheer) that can occur between layers.
5. Fast easy lacing would be nice - how about a cleat system.
6. Try to make it breathable.
7. Organizations like USFSA require figure skating boots to look like figure skating boots, and insist on approving them for testing and competition. Almost everyone agrees this is the largest limitation on skate design, in terms of athletic performance, fit, and injury prevention. So we may need a thin flexible outer layer that looks like a skating boot. Or all the adjustable and moldable stuff could fit inside a really thin cheap flexible figure skating boot, so it doesn't need a master boot maker to create the inside, and USFSA will already have approved the outside boot.
8. The Jackson interchangeable blade system is a nice idea. Is it proprietary? If so, we need a non-proprietary substitute. Make sure it is sturdy, steady, fast, reliable, and will always bring the blade back to the same position. Lots of companies could make blade (runners) to fit it. (Jackson doesn't make enough styles. Like, none of their blades are as fast and narrow at the working end as Pattern 99 or MK Dance.) So you can choose your blade by the style you are skating today, and you can have one blade sharpened while you skate on another. And you don't feel as bad if you chose the wrong blade - it didn't cost that much and is quickly remedied. Easier to sell your used blades too.
9. It should be reasonably easy to adjust the blade position. But you shouldn't have to re-adjust this when you mount a different blade runner. You need side to side adjustment, front-to-back adjustment, and rotation adjustment in the horizontal plane, so you can place the blade under the fundamental arch of the foot, and the sweet spot under the ball. (All blades should place the sweet spot in the same spot relative to the mounting holes.) You don't need rotation in other planes - a proper liner fit takes care of aligning the blade vertically, and also eliminates the need to offset blades from the fundamental arch line. (The fundamental arch of the foot is essentially that line through the heel and somewhere between the big and second toe from which the upwards curve of the foot deviates most, and is more or less the line of greatest structural support.) Must be extremely sturdy and steady.
10. A little pin in the blade that comes out and centers spins when you push a button. OK, I admit it, skating organizations would probably ban this. (Besides, it would take a lot of wear and tear.) Just an idea.
I can't make boots. Neither can I find exactly what I want.
Lots of people are in the same situation.
Judging from the amount of complaining many do about it, there should be an excellent market for one.
So let's start a thread on what the ideal boot would be, and see if someone will make it.
Here are my ideas. I haven't patented them.
1. Should fit washable moldable liners, like good ski and speed skating boots do. Heat it with a hair dryer or a microwave, put it on your feet, put the feet in the boot, stand on one foot with support, and wait for it to cool and conform perfectly to the foot and boot. Or use electro-setting plastic. For kids, the liner needs to be able to expand upwards, and there should be different thickness liners, so they can grow for a while with the same boot. The liner should be removable and machine washable, and be used instead of a sock. It is essential the liner not slip against the boot in use. Possibly high friction surfaces, or grooves to hold it.
2. The liner could incorporate a moldable foot bed (must mold both to the whole foot bottom and the skate bottom), or that could be separate. There should be compressible foam under the arch, so it can collapse a little to absorb impact. Different people need different amounts of stiffness.
3. To a large extant custom boots are not required with a moldable liner, but to some extant they help. The right way is to make a real cast of the foot (and part of the leg, so you can align the foot bed right), with something like zippers so it can be removed intact, and mold a last inside it, around which the boot is itself molded (perhaps with the liner and footbed inside). (Most foot problems are the result of ill fitting boots, and are completely solvable. Have you seen how unhealthy some skater's feet look?)
4. The hinged boots are a step in the right direction, but don't go far enough. Should have 8 adjustable degrees of freedom to control motion in the four major directions of foot motion: left, right, forward, back. 4 degrees of freedom control the range of motion for safety, 4 control the amount of resistance as you approach that range of motion. After choosing today's skating style (dance, jumps,...), you adjust the skate for it.
Some sort of lacing system could control the range of motion.
Resistance to motion is harder to control. Control can be achieved by altering its flexibility in at least two ways: (1) Two some extant the material can expand at the outside of a bend, contract at the inside of a bend. The only way I can think of to control this is through electro-chemistry - you need to be able to create and destroy cross-link bonds. Not sure that control mechanism is practical. (2) You can have sheer (slippage) between layers of leather or plastic. I picture a different lacing system, that binds together layers of leather or plastic, reducing the slippage (sheer) that can occur between layers.
5. Fast easy lacing would be nice - how about a cleat system.
6. Try to make it breathable.
7. Organizations like USFSA require figure skating boots to look like figure skating boots, and insist on approving them for testing and competition. Almost everyone agrees this is the largest limitation on skate design, in terms of athletic performance, fit, and injury prevention. So we may need a thin flexible outer layer that looks like a skating boot. Or all the adjustable and moldable stuff could fit inside a really thin cheap flexible figure skating boot, so it doesn't need a master boot maker to create the inside, and USFSA will already have approved the outside boot.
8. The Jackson interchangeable blade system is a nice idea. Is it proprietary? If so, we need a non-proprietary substitute. Make sure it is sturdy, steady, fast, reliable, and will always bring the blade back to the same position. Lots of companies could make blade (runners) to fit it. (Jackson doesn't make enough styles. Like, none of their blades are as fast and narrow at the working end as Pattern 99 or MK Dance.) So you can choose your blade by the style you are skating today, and you can have one blade sharpened while you skate on another. And you don't feel as bad if you chose the wrong blade - it didn't cost that much and is quickly remedied. Easier to sell your used blades too.
9. It should be reasonably easy to adjust the blade position. But you shouldn't have to re-adjust this when you mount a different blade runner. You need side to side adjustment, front-to-back adjustment, and rotation adjustment in the horizontal plane, so you can place the blade under the fundamental arch of the foot, and the sweet spot under the ball. (All blades should place the sweet spot in the same spot relative to the mounting holes.) You don't need rotation in other planes - a proper liner fit takes care of aligning the blade vertically, and also eliminates the need to offset blades from the fundamental arch line. (The fundamental arch of the foot is essentially that line through the heel and somewhere between the big and second toe from which the upwards curve of the foot deviates most, and is more or less the line of greatest structural support.) Must be extremely sturdy and steady.
10. A little pin in the blade that comes out and centers spins when you push a button. OK, I admit it, skating organizations would probably ban this. (Besides, it would take a lot of wear and tear.) Just an idea.