I just bought my daughter new skates. She is 5 and in snow plow and really just beginning to learn to skate. She has been using the rental skates for her lessons. Would it be ok if we held off having them sharpened for a while? Would this help or hurt her? We are very new to skating so I don't have a clue about this whole thing.

Niki

Why would you want to hold off for a while?
My usual pro shop only charges $8/pair for sharpenings, even if you bought the skates elsewhere.
The first sharpening of a new pair is free.

The factory sharpening usually isn't very good and only lasts a short time. Most factories don't even sharpen the skates because it just adds labor cost and quality control issues. Instead, they put on a label telling the buyer to get the skates sharpened, or sell through pro shops that know to sharpen the skates when the skates are sold.

If they haven't been sharpened, get it done before using the skates. Dull skates cause a lot of accidents in beginners. Their feet slide sideways while they're trying to skate. The rentals are usually dull, so there is an adjustment period, but better safe than sorry.

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I was always told to never send a kid on the ice in factory sharpened blades. It was compared with sending them on dull blades, which can hinder their learning and cause accidents that could hurt them.

If you are nervous about your daughter struggling with very sharp blades, tell the sharpener she's a real beginner - they can sharpen them a little less. I always write "not too sharp please - nervous adult ice dancer!" on the label when I hand mine in, because if they're too sharp I can't stop for weeks!

Thank you for your replies. I was worried about them being too sharp. I am sure that the rentals were probably never sharpened and I don't want the new skates to be too drastic a change for her. Also, the rink we skate at does not have someone there all the time for sharpenings so I would have to leave the skates for a day or so and she (my daughter) is so eager to wear them (especially for her next class).

Call (or stop in) and make an appointment to get the skates sharpened while you wait.
Ask the sharpener to "stone down" the edges so they won't be too sharp for your DD.

Good luck!

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Heh, this puts me in mind of my dilemma this week--I dropped of my skates to be sharpened, & talked to the kid behind the counter, not the sharpener himself. I wrote the tag, but as I was leaving, as an afterthought, said, "Oh, could you tell him to make them just a tiny bit deeper? Just a little." He said sure.

So, I get my skates the next day & they're so deep/sharp I literally cannot stop, even after an hour. I look at the tag, and what the kid added to the note was, "Hollow needs to be deeper!!" (exclamation points his, not mine). So I'm rubbing my blades across the wooden benches trying to blunt them a little so I can actually skate my program, which has a total of 3 stops throughout, as highlights, and which I can no longer do.

LESSON LEARNED: Never give verbal direction to anyone but the actual sharpener. Write it down, or wait to talk directly to the right person.

Believe me, the rentals get sharpened. I work at a rink that sharpens the rentals all of once a season, and it's outdoor ice. By about the third week, we start seeing kids whose skates are sliding sideways because the blades are totally flat on the bottom. It's almost impossible to even stand up straight on flat blades, so if your daughter has been making any progress at all in the rentals, then they do have edges.

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