Have any of you good spinners experimented with blade offsets to see how it affects your spin balance?



Many of you have already have seen my theories of balancing skates by internal boot modifications, but to recap:

If blades are mounted completely wrong, you can't balance while skating on one foot without using more muscle on one side of the body than the other. You can always balance by changing your vertical alignment a little. But you may need a lot of muscles, in the foot or hip, to hold that position. For example, you may feel you need muscles to tilt your foot, because the two sides of the insole at the bottom of your boot don't press equally on the two sides of your foot, which in turn may take a lot of continuous asymmetric muscle use in your legs and hip.

Most boot fitters adjust the sideways blade position ("offset") so that you don't have to use more muscle on one side or the other. This is a minimal standard to which any decent fitter is held, or to which you should hold yourself if you mount your own blades.

The problem is, some people are still left with asymmetric weight support on the two sides of your foot, which still makes their foot sore. [Note this applies separately to each foot - offset is often different on each foot.] This was true for me.

You can also achieve the goal of balance without excessive muscle by changing the shape of the insole with tape, and/or internal boot shape modifications, as I discuss in my web page.

I ended up re-mounting my own blade (on each boot) so that it lies under the line between the center of my heel with a point midway between my big toe and the next toe over. Once the appropriate insole and boot modifications were made, my weight is most comfortably supported in that position, with approximately equal pressure on the bottom of both sides of the foot.

I think my spin balance was also slightly improved this way. But it is hard to be completely certain, because I'm not a very good spinner no matter what I do with the skates.

I believe that any really good boot fitter should do the same thing. Of course, small blade offsets of a couple mm doesn't affect weight support comfort much, so I see nothing wrong with that, but when fitters go beyond that, I think they are taking the easy way out, at the expense of making your feet and various connected body parts sore, and maybe affecting long term foot health.



I've thought for a long time that blade mount offsets affect spin balance.

The physics are very complicated. To spin well, you balance the lower body asymmetry needed to skate on one foot, together with the sideways force from skating on an edge, with a strategically chosen upper body asymmetry and an overall orientation with respect to vertical.

Most skaters get it slightly off, in that they glide along a small circle as they spin, rather than staying exactly on one point. If the circle is small enough, everyone says it's OK.

But the size of the circle you can optimally achieve should be affected by the amount by which your blade mount is offset. In addition, it is sometimes desirable to make the upper body look as symmetrical as possible - e.g., the two hands and arms at the same height and at the same distance from the body.

But even if you do internal boot modifications, it isn't necessarily the case that the offset of optimally comfortable weight support will produce optimal spin balance, for a given human body.

So again, have any of you good spinners experimented with blade offsets to see how it affects your spin balance? What were the results?

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Mitch Grunes ModifyingBoots FallingGently HomePage

Well, I'm not a good spinner but have offset my blades so they help me spin...before I adjusted them to "fit my body" and where my weight is placed on the boot/blade, I could not center at all. I do believe that everyone places their weight on a different part of the foot, whether it's more to the inside, or outside and again different front to back. Finding the right spot can be frustrating as all get-out! Once I moved my right blade in (and it only took 1/8") I was able to get my backspins.

I'm thinking of adjusting my left blade. Since my injury and subsequent rehab, I know my body alignment is different (I feel it mostly when I do LFO 3-turns).

Trying to find the correct way to wig the blade....that doesn't take drilling tons of holes in your skate? I'd like to know how LOL!

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Skate@Delaware
Ah, show skating!!! I do it for the glitter!

I had to move my blades like 10 times, and it's still not perfect... But I'm looking forward to getting new (gonna go to customs) boots and blades (Ditching the MK Pro i.e. rocking chair).

Use the slotted holes?

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Mitch Grunes ModifyingBoots FallingGently HomePage

Sometimes the slots aren't wide enough for some of the offset that I do. I did re-drill holes in my right boot as I had to move it over just a bit more than the slots extended.

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Skate@Delaware
Ah, show skating!!! I do it for the glitter!

I'm not good with power tools, but maybe someone with a router, or even something like a Dremel Tool or power drill with a cylindrical sanding bit of about the right diameter, could probably extend the hole. Maybe someone who knows tools could comment?

If you could find a cylindrical file of about the right diameter, you could probably do the same thing by hand.

Do you feel such a wide offset that the slotted holes aren't big enough to spin right? Static balance you can fix first with tape inside the boot.

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Mitch Grunes ModifyingBoots FallingGently HomePage

A router won't work for steel - the speeds are way too high and you'd burn up even a carbide bit. A Dremel with a round abrasive bit would be the best/cheapest way for the average handyman or handywoman.

But...

On my skates, the slotted holes on the front plate extend within 1/16" of the edge of the sole plate, and you can't enlarge a slot outward much without cutting through the edge. If you think about the problem before you even attempt a trial mounting, there's a way around that issue - enlarge the slots only inward, then make the screw holes so that they center on the newly enlarged slots.

If you have already mounted blades using the slots, this may prove awkward because the existing screw holes centered on the old slots will be close to the new ones. However, I doubt that anyone will attempt this, so it's probably a mute point anyway.

Also, because of water trapped around screws, the sole plate seems to rust easily. The chrome plating reduces rust, so removing it from the edges of the holes would be something else to consider.

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Bill Schneider