One of the oldest metal-bladed skates found to date was found in Amsterdam. It dates to around 1240 and consists of a metal bar wrapped around a chunk of wood. More about the skate, including pictures, can be found on schaatshistorie.nl. I’m working on reconstructing it using the equipment at CIADC. This post is about making the blade.
Based on the pictures, it looked to me like the blade was about one square centimeter, so I started with a piece of 3/8″ bar stock. I stuck it in the forge to heat it up and then, pounded away to get it into the shape shown in the pictures.
Bar stock in the forge.The heated skate blade, ready for shaping.Mostly finished. When I’ve made the wood part, I’ll finish up the heel (left) end and grind the whole thing smooth.
Making the blades turned out to be very easy despite my lack of experience. It makes me wonder whether the Amsterdam skate could have been made by an apprentice. It’s quite small—only about 20 cm long—and children are known to have made their own bone skates. Making metal blades would have been more difficult 800 years ago, because the nice bar stock that’s readily available today didn’t exist back then. The most difficult part was probably shaping the metal into the bar that was bent into the blade.
Next, I need to make the wooden base that connects the metal blade and the skater’s shoe. That will be part 2.
In his Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus (Description of the Northern Peoples), Olaus Magnus describes races on bone skates that are “8–12 Italian miles” long (p. 42). The question is, how long is that?
The header for Olaus Magnus’s chapter on skating races. Someone on bone skates is in the upper left. Source: Magnus 1555, p. 42.
The Italian mile is probably pretty close to a modern mile. It’s thought to be based on the Roman mile (1000 paces), but there was a lot of variation from place to place. The general value Wikipedia gives is 1820 meters. A modern mile is 1600 m.
To calculate how long the races were, take 8–12 Italian miles and multiply by however many kilometers you think there were per Italian mile. Using Wikipedia’s value of 1.82 gives about 15–22 km or 9–14 modern miles.
Fisher and Higgens give the value 12–18 km in a footnote to their translation of Olaus Magnus (p. 86). That’s what you get when you use the modern value of 1.6 km per mile.
The value 8–12 km was calculated by Gösta Berg back in 1943 (p. 84) and has made its way into the literature on bone skates. I think he made a math error, because that’s what you get when you divide instead of multiplying.
The answer is, it depends on how long an Italian mile was in the sixteenth century. Since units of measurement weren’t standardized, it’s hard to say for sure. But it’s clear that the races were pretty long, probably in the 15–18 km range or around 10 miles
References
Gösta Berg (1943). “Isläggar och skridskor.” Fataburen, pp. 79–90.
Olaus Magnus (1555). Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus. Rome: J. M. de Viottis.
Olaus Magnus (1996). Description of the Northern Peoples. Ed. P. G. Foote, trans. Peter Fisher and Humphrey Higgens. London: Hakluyt Society.
My book on bone skates is available for pre-order! You can get it directly from the publisher, McFarland, from Amazon, or from whatever bookstore you like best.
This book is the result of nearly 20 years of research, though there were many distractions during that time, some of them quite substantial—like a PhD in an unrelated field. The first book-length study of bone skates, it brings together literary and archaeological evidence to provide a comprehensive description of how bone skates were made and used and fits them into the larger context of European history.
I recently ran across an explanation of how to sharpen skates from March, 1919—just over 100 years ago.
Don’t try to draw file at first, … Cut right across the runner first, filing in the usual manner and watching closely the file marks, see that they do not cut down over the corner of the runner. In this manner work down the entire length of [the] runner until all the rounded corner has removed; then take the file in both hands and draw file all the cross marks off. This will enable you to see exactly what you doing to the skate runner; show where to file and where not to.
Perhaps it may be well to file and then draw file two or three times in succession before the skate has been sharpened to suit. By working alternately thus the skate runner can be brought down to a straight or slightly curved bottom, with square, sharp corners, so much desired in skates to enable the skate to `bite’ the ice. The skate may be grooved with a round file if desirable, but skates so grooved, while good for beginners, are not capable of making as much as when worked off flat on the bottom.
Hobart 1919, 12.
I think it’s interesting that hollow grinding, which is so important to skaters today, was considered only suitable for beginners. This goes all the way back to Robert Jones, who says “fluted skates” are “so bad, that they are not fit to be used” (37). Today, only speed skaters have their skates sharpened flat across the bottom.
Hobart continues with a little more advice:
…when you can sharpen skates with a file you may regard them as not being first class skates The runners of really good skates are so hard a file will not touch them and the sharpening must be done with a grinding wheel of emery, carborundum or something similar. But you can use the same method of alternate cross and lengthwise grinding so as to ‘see what you are doing’ to the runner, and not to grind off too much at one place and little at another.
Ibid.
Using a grinding wheel is the modern technique, but cross grinding (grinding with the wheel perpendicular to the blade instead of parallel to it) is generally frowned upon because most cross-grinding wheels are of a very large diameter. Cross-grinding makes the blade’s radius of hollow equal to the radius of the grinding wheel—something like 5 inches—which is generally not what modern skaters want. The parallel grinding wheel then puts the right radius of hollow on the blade. This process takes off a lot of metal, which shortens the life of the blade. But if the grinding wheel has the radius of hollow you want (and back then, people wanted large ones), it’s less of a problem.
This is the anchor for a series of posts about skate sharpening.
When you get your skates sharpened, the skate technician passes your blade across a grinding wheel in a sharpening machine. In most machines, the grinding wheel is parallel to the skate blade, like it is in this video:
The video mentions dressing the wheel. This means that, before the skate is sharpened, the edge of the wheel is shaped to a portion of a circle with the desired radius. This is called the radius of hollow. About half an inch is common for both freestyle and hockey. Figure (i.e., patch) hollows start at an inch and go up from there. A larger radius of hollow produces a shallower groove on bottom of the blade that feels less sharp. A smaller radius of hollow produces a deeper groove that feels sharper.
Patch skates, which have a shallow hollow, feel very dull and tend to skid, but glide very well and produce few flats (double lines, which occur when both edges touch the ice). This is desirable behavior for figures. Freestyle skaters prefer a deeper radius of hollow, which lets them grip the ice better, making it easier to land jumps and do other tricks.
The optimal radius of hollow depends on the skater’s size (a larger skater should use a shallower hollow) and the ice conditions (a deeper hollow is better for harder ice). The width of the blade also makes a difference. Ice dancers with dance blades generally prefer a smaller radius of hollow (typically 3/8″) because dance blades are narrower than freestyle and patch blades. The narrowness of the blade means a deeper hollow is necessary to get the same bite angle, which is what you feel when you skate. It’s the angle at which the edge hits the ice.
A seemingly small difference of 1/16″ in the radius of hollow can make a big difference in how the blade feels. When you can’t stop after getting your skates sharpened, it may be because the radius of hollow is just a little smaller than what you’re used to. If your blades still feel dull, it’s possible the radius of hollow is a little larger. Or your edges could be uneven.
As the person in the video notes, it’s important for the sharpener to align the blade so that the hollow is centered. If it’s not, the edges will be uneven and have different bite angles. When this happens, your skates may feel ok at first, but soon you’ll be skidding off one edge while the other grips the ice very hard. You can check the levelness of your edges by holding the skate upside down and putting a quarter or other flat object across the blade. If it’s perpendicular to the blade, your edges are level. If it tilts, you need to get your blade fixed. There are also special tools, like this one, for measuring edge levelness.
Next time you get your skates sharpened, ask what radius of hollow your sharpener uses. Then, you can keep asking for that number to make sure you get the same thing every time. Or, you can try changing it to see what works best for you. If you want to really get into the details, read Sid Broadbent’s Skateology: A Technical Manual for Skaters Regarding Skates, Skating Fundamentals, Skate Sharpening. It’s available on his website.
Skate sharpening has changed over time, and future posts will focus on different aspects of sharpening. The radius of hollow needed its own post because it’s so important.
I first met this book at the 2018 World Figure Championship when Eddie Shipstad, Jr., showed me a copy he found among his uncle Roy’s things. It’s a little book published by the author, Julian T. Fitzgerald, in 1916.
After the competition, I came home and looked for a copy of my own. It turns out it’s pretty rare: OCLC Worldcat only lists two libraries that have copies. I also didn’t find a scan or used copy in the usual online places. But, I did discover that the National Museum of Roller Skating reprinted it in 2011! It’s $15 in the online gift shop. This edition is enlarged by 25% for readability and includes a new forward by George Pickard.
The book starts with administrative documents from various skating governing bodies, but mainly consists of short biographies of roller and ice skaters and rink managers, with pictures of many. The order appears random and is not explained. Some of the interesting skaters profiled are Edward C. Hill, inventor of the ball of twine (53), John F. Davidson, “The World’s Greatest Stilt, Acrobatic and Trick Skater” (62), Harry G. Schroeder, pictured on his motorcycle-based ice-clearing machine (88), Fred J. Robson, “Former Canadian Champion,” who is pictured wearing so many medals he ran out of space on his shirt and had to hang them from his pants (117).
The pictures of ice skaters show some of the women and men wearing white boots. This is interesting because Sonja Henie is often credited with popularizing (and something with innovating) white boots among female skaters. When the book was published, she was only four years old. These pictures show that she wasn’t really responsible for this fashion trend.
In the middle of the book (pages 96-108), there’s a section called “Figure Skating Program for Ice and Rollers and How to Learn It” by Allen I. Blanchard. It covers the usual basic figures and turns, plus moves that are less common today, like grapevines and crosscuts. It ends with a list of “Hints to Skaters,” starting with the advice to
Never look down at your skates as it gives you an ungainly appearance; look about thirty feet ahead
Skaters History on Ice and Roller Skating, 108
This is still good advice today—as long as you’re not trying to trace a figure.
The book ends with a list of records in speed skating and events that are no longer held: hurdle jumping, barrel jumping, high and long jumps, and backward and one-foot skating. The barrel jumping record was set by Edmund Lamy, who jumped 12 barrels in a row in 1913. He also set the record for the longest jump on skates, 25 ft 7 in, on the same day.
Overall, it’s a nice book that people interested in skaters from the turn of the last century will enjoy. Its strengths are in the wide variety of people included—rink managers as well as skaters, and show skaters and innovators as well as competitors—and the pictures and lists of records.
Bibliography
Julian T. Fitzgerald, 1916. Skaters History on Ice and Roller Skating. Chicago: Julian T. Fitzgerald. Reprinted in 2011 by the National Museum of Roller Skating, Lincoln, NE.
When I put together a new edition of an old skating book, I like to include some biographical information about the author in the introduction. Henry C. Lowther, the author of the three little books I’m working on now (Edges and Striking, Principle of Skating Turns, and Combined Figure-Skating) is turning out to be a rather slippery subject.
There were two Henry C. Lowthers alive at the right time to have written the books: Henry Crofton Lowther (1858-1939) and Henry Cecil Lowther (1869-1940). In addition to similar names, they had similar lives. Both were knighted, and both married women named Dorothy. In this article, I’ll call them by their middle names to make it easy to keep track of who is who.
I haven’t been able to find a relationship between the two Lowthers. Cecil was the nephew of the Earl of Lonsdale, and Crofton was the son of Reverend Brabazon Lowther (who was not rich) and Ellen Jane Legh, the only surviving child of Ellen Turner of Shrigley Abduction fame (Ashby and Jones, 189-190).
The big question is, which one wrote the skating books?
In the bibliography to The English Style, James Hines lists the books under the name “Henry Cecil Lowther,” which means he thought Cecil wrote them. Hines doesn’t discuss Lowther in this book or any of his other books, so I can’t say why he picked the Henry he did. I suspect he simply looked the books up in a library catalog, like OCLC WorldCat. WorldCat Identities has the books listed on Cecil’s page. Crofton does not appear in WorldCat.
Elaine Hooper, historian of the National Ice Skating Association—the body that governs figure skating in the UK—thinks the skating Lowther is Crofton because his knighthoods match the knighthoods listed in his membership records exactly (Cecil received different knighthoods) and because two addresses in the NISA’s records match addresses associated with Crofton.
Frances Glover, secretary of the Royal Skating Club, confirmed the identification through membership records. The skating books note that Lowther was a member of the Skating Club, which merged with another club to become the Royal Skating Club in about 1930. The old membership lists include “Sir Henry Crofton Lowther,” who is definitely not Cecil!
So, Crofton wrote the books, but it seems like he has been lost to time. His books have been attributed to Cecil, another man who lived a similar life. It’s time to separate the two men and bring Crofton into the light. Here’s a picture of Sir Henry Crofton Lowther, diplomat, expert skater, and author of three books on skating.
Sir Henry Crofton Lowther, by Cyril Flower, 1st Baron Battersea. Platinum print, 1890s. NPG Ax15684. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London.
The confusion in WorldCat makes me wonder whether Crofton is actually responsible for any of the other books attributed to Cecil. From Pillar to Post and The Scots Guards in the Great War 1914-1918 were definitely by Cecil, and Old English Silver is about Cecil’s collection. Among the Liars is a short article listed under H. C. Lowther in WorldCat; the index reveals that Cecil wrote it. But some of the others invite questions.
There’s a Report on the Railway Systems of Brasil published in 1904 by H. C. Lowther. Crofton was part of the diplomatic service in Brazil at that time; he could have written it.
The Handbook of the Danish Army(1904) is harder to attribute: Cecil, a military man, and Crofton, the British Minister to Denmark, both seem like possible authors. But Crofton was busy in Brazil at that time; he didn’t take up his post in Denmark until 1913. Cecil was part of the War Office, to which the publication is attributed, which makes him the more likely candidate.
Separating Crofton from Cecil is a good start, but there’s more to the problem. The plot thickens with Geology of the Alexo Mine area, Clergue-Dundonald Twps., District of Cochrane, Ontario, published in 1950—after both Cecil and Crofton had died—by what seems to be yet another H. C. Lowther. Perhaps this is the Colonel Lowther mentioned by Irving Brokaw in connection with Canada and the Connaught Cup (192). How does he fit into the story?
Bibliography
A. Ashby and A. Jones, 2003. The Shrigley Abduction: A Tale of Anguish, Deceit, and Violation of the Domestic Hearth. Stroud: Sutton Publishing.
I. Brokaw, 1925. The Art of Skating. New York: American Sports Publishing.
Christie, Manson, and Woods, 1930. Old English Silver. London: Christie, Manson, and Woods.
J. R. Hines. 2008. The English Style: Figure Skating’s Oldest Tradition. Westwood, MA: Neponset River Press.
H. C. Lowther. 1900. Principle of Skating Turns.London: Horace Cox.
H. C. Lowther. 1902. Edges and Striking. London: Horace Cox.
H. C. Lowther. 1902. Combined Figure-Skating. London: Horace Cox.
H. C. Lowther, 1904. Handbook of the Danish Army. London: H. M. S. O.
H. C. Lowther, 1904. Report on the Railway Systems of Brasil. London: H. M. S. O.
H. C. Lowther, 1911. From Pillar to Post. London: Edward Arnold.
H. C. Lowther, 1925. The Scots Guard in the Great War 1914-1918. London: J. Murray.
H. C. Lowther, 1950. Geology of the Alexo Mine area, Clergue-Dundonald Twps., District of Cochrane, Ontario.London, Ontario: Department of Geology, University of Western Ontario.
This fanciful move goes all the way back to the eighteenth century. In the first book on skating (or at least, the earliest one that survives), Robert Jones described it like this:
…to perform the attitude of a flying Mercury, is nothing more than the spiral line, except that the arms are not employed in the same manner; the figure [right] represents the attitude on the right leg, and almost at the conclusion of the stroke; but at the beginning the body must lean forwards pretty much, with the right hand pointing to the ice, and slowly raised with the body, till you are quite upright; when you would finish the stroke, bring down the left leg, and throw it suddenly up before you, at the same time bearing on the right heel; by which means you may spin round two or three times, in order to conclude the spiral line, which should always be formed when in the attitude of Mercury.
R. Jones and W. E. Cormack, A Treatise on Skating, 63.
Readers who learned about Classical mythology may recall that Mercury (or Hermes, his Greek counterpart) had a pair of winged sandals that enabled him to fly from place to place. In fact, the first recorded use of scritscos, the ancestor of Schlittschuh—the German word for ice skate—is a gloss to Mercury’s talaria (winged sandals) in an early tenth-century manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, Auct. F. 1. 16 (Gallée, 162).
This connection has come down through the centuries in German etymology. Goethe, who described himself as a “leidenschaftliche Schlittschuhfahrer” (passionate skater) in his autobiography, thought that skating is not about sliding on little runners, but rather, “like the Homeric gods, strid[ing] over the sea become a floor on winged shoes” (Fowler, 81).
The dust jacket of Sonja Henie’s book (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1940). From my collection.
The connection between skating and flying has endured: Sonja Henie, the three-time Olympic champion who learned to ski before she learned to skate, called her autobiography Wings on My Feet.
…skiing was like flying, and this flying made me winter-drunk, an affliction I have never got over. Later I changed my type of flying, from wooden runners to steel blades, but the state of intoxication remained the same.
S. Henie, Wings on My Feet, 6.
References
G. H. Fowler. 2018. On the Outside Edge: Being Diversions in the History of Skating. Edited by B. A. Thurber. Evanston, IL: Skating History Press.
J. W. von Goethe, Aus meinem Leben. In E. Trunz, ed., 1948. Goethes Werke: Hamburger Ausgabe in 14 Bänden, volume 9. Hamburg: C. Wegner. My translation.
R. Jones and W. E. Cormack. 2017. A Treatise on Skating. Edited by B. A. Thurber. Evanston, IL: Skating History Press.
S. Henie. 1940. Wings on My Feet. New York: Prentice-Hall.
A drawing of the ball of twine. From Browne, A Handbook of Figure Skating Arranged for Use on the Ice, p. 110.
The ball of twine is an awe-inspiring figure that has become an icon for what special figures used to be. Despite its apparent complexity, it is pretty easy to skate. It’s based on two simple skills.
A heel pivot. Browne, p. 110.
The first skill you need is the heel pivot. Put the heel of one skate in the ice and rotate the other skate around it.
The second skill is a sort of swizzle with one foot while the other foot glides along.
Once you have those two skills down, you can skate the ball of twine. Here’s how to do it.
Here are the steps:
Draw a circle on the ice. It should be the size of a comfortable pivot.
To skate counterclockwise, start with your left toe on the edge of the circle and your right foot separated a bit and tangent to the circle.
Swizzle your left foot across the circle, letting your right foot glide along. As it goes across, let it go along the circumference of an imaginary circle in the middle of the circle you drew.
When your left foot reaches the other side of the circle, put its heel in the ice and do a heel pivot until your right foot is back on the circle.
Repeat, making the left foot hit the circle slightly to the right of the previous tracing each time. Eventually you’ll get all the way around the circle and have a ball of twine!
Here’s how it looks from the skater’s perspective.
The ball of twine from the skater’s perspective. Watch how the left foot aims carefully across the circle and places the next vertex just to the right of the previous one.
Beginners may find it helpful to start with only a few spokes in the middle and gradually increase the number. You can start by marking thirds of the circle and aiming your left foot at them. Then try fifths, sevenths, etc., until you’re ready for the real thing.
The finished ball of twine.The ball of twine was invented over a century ago by Edward C. Hill, who was born West Troy, NY. This is him skating it (Fitzgerald, 53).
References
George H. Browne. 1900. A Handbook of Figure Skating Arranged for Use on the Ice. Springfield, MA: Barney and Berry. Explains how to skate the ball of twine on pages 109–110.
Julian T. Fitzgerald. 1916. Skaters History on Ice and Roller Skating. Chicago: Julian T. Fitzgerald. Includes a photograph of E. C. Hill skating the ball of twine and a brief biographical sketch on page 53.
Additional note, 9/29/2019
I taught this figure to several skaters at the 2018 World Figure and Fancy Skating Championships in Vail, CO.
It’s a bit chilly out today. Image from weather.gov.
Did you know that skates squeak when it’s cold enough?
Listen for the squeaking.
I think the squeaking may be related to surface melting. This unsolved physics problem has been attracting a lot of interest because it affects many materials, not just ice. Robert Rosenberg summarizes it in his 2005 article “Why is Ice Slippery?“.
The most common explanation of how skating work is the “pressure-melting” hypothesis: skating is possible because skates melt a thin layer of water on top of the ice to glide on. There are some problems with this explanation. For one thing, if pressure-melting is really behind how skating works, it should stop working at about -3.5 degrees Celsius (25.7 degrees Fahrenheit). It doesn’t (Rosenberg, 50).
In fact, there’s always a thin layer of liquid (or liquid-like) water on top of ice. Michael Faraday figured this out in 1859 when he noticed that when you hold two ice cubes together, they freeze into one. Rosenberg describes a more recent experiment in which researchers measured the force required to pull two ice spheres apart. The colder it got, the less force was required, which means the film gets thicker as the temperature gets higher.
It’s possible that the recent low temperatures thinned the film on the surface of the ice enough to make my skates squeak. When a door squeaks, you put oil in the hinges to lubricate them. Perhaps there wasn’t enough oil (in the form of a liquid-like layer) to keep my skates from squeaking like there usually is.
I’ve observed other skates squeaking at higher temperatures. The layer thickness needed probably depends on several factors: how sharp the blades are, how they’re shaped (including the radius of hollow and the rocker), and the weight of the skater.
References
Michael Faraday. 1859. “Note on regelation.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London10:440–450.
