This little handheld sharpening device was patented in 1920 by George H. Berghman of Chicago, IL. You squeeze the handles together at the top to open it. When you release the pressure, it clamps onto the sides of the blade. Then you slide it back and forth and the grinding stone inside does its work. The stone’s diameter is one inch, which means it puts a 1/2″ radius of hollow on your blades.
Side view showing the grinding stone.
There are loads of these available on eBay and other internet sites for pretty low prices (though not as low as the original—$2.50 according to the price tag on mine, but only $1.25 according to advertisements in Boys’ Life. I guess girls are not supposed to use it.
Boys’ Life vol. 10, no. 12 (December, 1920), p. 67.
The device seems a bit unwieldy. When I squeeze mine, it feels pretty wobbly—You have to be careful to keep the blade opening even along its entire length. And in mine, the stone is stuck to one side. I think this is a defect in my particular one rather than part of the design because the back of the box says to rotate the stone frequently by “turning the stone with thumb and forefinger.” Mine won’t budge.
The stuckness of my stone means that only one side of the holder opens with respect to it, so the stone will never be centered on the blade. This would cause uneven edges and really mess up my skating if I relied on it! But if it weren’t stuck, I suspect alignment would be rather difficult because there would be one more moving part.
To conclude, here’s an advertisement directed at hardware stores that promises the sharpeners “do a good sharpening job… and give you a good profit.”
It also features a sharpening machine: a bench grinder with an 8″ wheel and a skate-holding jig. The 8″ wheel implies a 4″ radius of hollow since it is set up to cross-grind.
McFarland, my publisher, is offering 40% off when you shop with code HOLIDAY22 through November 28. That means you can get my bone skates book for $27 instead of the usual $45. After that, the code will get you 25% off for the rest of the holiday season. The code is good storewide. They have other nice books too.
Back in the days when all serious skaters did both figures and freestyle, everyone had two pairs of skates, one for figures (called “patch skates”) and one for freestyle. But having two pairs wasn’t a requirement to begin skating. Everyone started out with only one pair. A second pair wasn’t considered necessary until second test or thereabouts. Today, experienced freestylists getting started with figures may find them very difficult. For one thing, they leave too many flats to pass any test. Why did it work back then? I think a big part of the answer is the way skates were sharpened. Back then, skaters with only one pair of skates used combination grind, which seems to have been forgotten.
Flats occur when both edges of the blade touch the ice. When you get the light to hit the ice at the correct angle, the tracings left look like two lines separated by the width of the blade. This happens even if you are skating on a curve! In contrast, when you’re on an edge, your blade leaves only a single line. Whether your skate leaves a single line or a double line depends on how far to the side you lean as you glide: you have to lean far enough to get the other edge off the ice. How far you have to lean is determined by the centripetal force as you go along a curve, which is a function of your velocity. Having a flatter hollow on your blade means you don’t have to lean as far to get your other edge off the ice, enabling you to go slower on a single edge. Sid Broadbent has a good discussion of this in Skateology.
Today’s freestyle skates are typically sharpened to a fairly deep radius of hollow. 1/2″ is quite common, and some skaters go as deep as 3/8″. For figures, you want a much flatter hollow. 1″ is the usual starting point; they went up from there. A shallow hollow digs into the ice less, helping you avoid flats and glide for longer from a single push. It also makes turns easier. But it means you have to skate correctly: if you’re not right on the edge, a patch sharpening will skid when a freestyle hollow would feel secure.
With such a big discrepancy, it’s no wonder freestyle skates don’t work well for figures. I think people have forgotten about combination grind. Skaters who did figures and freestyle with a single pair of skates typically used an in-between hollow, something like 3/4″ or 5/8″. This worked adequately for the lower levels of both disciplines. But once they became more skilled, these skaters needed a deeper hollow for control in freestyle and a shallower hollow for good figures. Hence the two pairs of skates.
The outcome is: If you are trying to do figures and find that you have way too many flats, try asking for a flatter hollow next time you get your skates sharpened. It should help you get rid of flats, but will feel very strange and possibly mess up your non-figure skating.
The two other main differences between patch and freestyle skates are:
Soft boots allow the ankle mobility necessary for fine edge control. Back when everyone did figures, boots were much less stiff. Skaters didn’t need super-stiff boots because they weren’t doing all the big jumps seen in competition today. Even beginner boots are awfully stiff for figures today.
Skaters often shaved off the bottom of the toe pick on their patch skates to avoid extraneous marks on turns. Blades designed for figures came with this modification out of the box. At the lowest levels, this isn’t necessary.
IJlst, stad van schaatsenmakers by Edsko Hekman. IJlst: Visser, 2002.
Today’s book report is on IJlst, stad van schaatsenmakers by Edsko Hekman. IJlst is a a city in Friesland where lots of skates were made in the nineteenth century. This short book (only 64 pages long) is about the 24 IJlst skate-makers. Several of these made skate-making a multi-generational family affair, passing their knowledge on to their children and grandchildren. The skates they made were the traditional type: long low metal blades with wooden footbeds.
The first was a blacksmith called Jacob Thomas Faber born in 1804. His family’s blacksmithing business is dates back to at least 1749. His sons Thomas Jacob and Cornelius Jacob continued the business into the twentieth century.
Other skate-making dynasties included the Nauta, Douma, and Planting families. The latter continued producing skates until 1980. But the biggest businesses were the Nooitgedagt and Frisia skate factories, founded by Jan Jarigs Nooitgedagt in 1865 and Klaas Eeltje de Vries (a former Nooitgedagt employee) and his son Willem in 1922, respectively. Neither was devoted solely to skate-making; other activities were necessary to pay the bills. Frisia lasted the longest, into the 1990s, but Hekman spends more time on Nooitgedagt.
The book concludes with a “nostalgic walking tour of IJlst skate-makers”: a map and directions for visiting 14 sites of skate-making activity.
I’ve finally gotten hold of Oleg Oleynikov’s paper on the bone skates from medieval Novgorod. It came out last year, but only recently appeared in the online archive of Russian Archaeology (2021, issue 4, pages 102–118). It’s in Russian, and I don’t know Russian, so I have been looking at the pictures and references and using Google translate. This post is a summary of what I thought was interesting.
The paper describes 44 skates and 7 skate blanks. Virtually all the skates date to the period between the second half of the eleventh century and the beginning of the thirteenth century. There are no thirteenth-century skates (possibly due to a plague between 1216 and 1230?) , and three skates are later, two from the fourteenth century and one from the fifteenth. They’re made from horse and cattle bones, distributed as in this table:
Horse
Cattle
Radius Metacarpus Metatarsus
18 12 13
0 5 3
Bone types used at Novgorod.
Oleynikov thoughtfully includes the dimensions of the bones and remarks that ones in the 17–20 cm length range were sized for children. Seven of the skates qualify, plus five fragments that could have been under 20 cm as complete skates (I don’t know how much is missing). There are also five skates (including one fragment) that are just over 20 cm (less than 21 cm). That seems rather low to me; there are a lot of big skates in the collection, including some over 30 cm long. The biggest is 39 cm, surely an adult size, but there’s also a 29.8 cm long horse radius that could have been even bigger before it broke! It would be interesting to compare the distribution of skate sizes to the ones Edberg & Karlsson found for Birka and Sigtuna.
Moving on, Oleynikov classifies the skates into two main types based on whether they have holes for bindings or not. Most of them (23) are type 2, which means no holes. Eleven skates are type 1 (with holes); the other 10 skates are fragmentary with the epiphyses missing, making it impossible to tell whether they had holes. The remaining 7 are blanks. Oleynikov goes on to discuss the different types of holes in detail, coming up with 10 different skate types based on the placement and orientation of the binding holes.
The other classification dimension is group A or B. Most of the skates belong to group B, what I think of as “regular” skates—like the ones described in my book. The four group A skates seem to be “split bones“, a skate type that was apparently unique to Scandinavia (Thurber 2020, 106), now found in Russia! But it makes sense because Novgorod was known to be home to many Scandinavians.
Towards the end of the paper, Oleynikov mentions the two main skating techniques (pole-pushing while standing on two skates and skateboarding—standing on one skate and pushing with the other foot) but adds some ideas that I found interesting:
He suggests that pole-pushing was better with attached skates because skating with unattached skates would have required better balance. I’m not sure about this; I found it quite easy to pole-push with unattached skates (though Küchelmann and Zidarov had some trouble). He adds that the reason it’s so hard to identify the metal points from the tips of skating poles in the archaeological record is that they were made from random scraps, which seems possible.
He suggests that the skateboarding technique would have been better with unattached skates because it was easier. Personally, I found it much more difficult than pole-pushing, attached or not.
The paper concludes with the extremely interesting observation that the Russian word for skates (коньки) is a diminutive of the word for horse and that the pole-pushing technique looks kind of like riding a hobby horse. This connects with the idea of a link between bone skates and horses suggested by Choyke & Bartosiewicz that I included in Skates Made of Bone.
References
A. M. Choyke & L. Bartosiewicz. 2005. Skating with horses: Continuity and parallelism in prehistoric Hungary. Revue de Paléo-biologie, spéc. 10:317–326.
Cross-grinding refers to sharpening skates with a grinding stone whose axis of rotation is parallel to the skate blade. This means that if you hold the skate sideways (blade parallel to the floor), the grinding wheel rotates down. This is how the ordinary bench grinders from the hardware store are set up.
A bench grinder. It’s better not to sharpen your skates on one of these. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
In contrast, most skate sharpening machines have the grinding wheel oriented parallel to the blade. Its axis of rotation is up and down, 90 degrees from the axis on this bench grinder.
The usual skate sharpening machine setup. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Such machines generally have a cross-grinding wheel as well as the main sharpening wheel. The people who do the sharpening may use the cross-grinding wheel to remove excessive rust or try to even the edges on new or poorly sharpened blades.
Sid Broadbent, who makes skate sharpening machines, has this to say about cross grinding:
We realize in the case of tabletop machines, their cross grinding capability is certainly advantageous for badly damaged hockey skates, but much of the time it is used whether needed or not. Excessive material is removed, a perfectly accurate groove is destroyed which then has to be reestablished. This excessive metal removal does not affect the overall geometry of a hockey blade since it is removed uniformly over the entire length of the skating surface—or should be. When this approach is used on figure skates, their effective life is reduced to about six sharpenings! An enormous and unnecessary waste of an expensive skate.
Broadbent, Skateology, VII:7
It seems to me that the problem here is more misuse of cross-grinding than use of it at all. I think what Broadbent is hinting at is that some skate sharpeners have this as their standard procedure:
Cross-grind to make the blades “flat.”
Put the right hollow on with the parallel stone.
I put “flat” in quotes in #1 because I want to bring up a point about cross-grinding that seems to have been forgotten: When you cross-grind a skate blade, the hollow does not become flat. It takes the radius of the grinding wheel. So, on the bench grinder pictured above, you may end up with a 3–4″ radius of hollow. Of course, this will change as the wheel wears down. But if you want, say, a 1/2″ hollow, and you happen to have a grinding wheel with a 1/2″ radius, you can get what you want by cross-grinding. Plus, you’ll be able to sharpen all the way up to the toe pick! A parallel sharpener can’t reach a small area just behind the toe pick because the diameter of the wheel is too large.
If you follow the procedure above, you’ll end up with uneven edges unless you’re careful to hold the blade perpendicular to the radius of the cross-grinding wheel. It’s tempting for sharpeners to think of the result of cross-grinding as “flat” and go from there when they put the final hollow on. But because the hollow is not actually flat, a new hollow that looks centered will actually be slightly off-center. That’s because sharpeners use witness marks to align the blade in the holder for sharpening described by Broadbent (VII:1–VII:5). These are marks made on the groove of the blade by lightly touching it to the grinding wheel. When they’re centered, you have the blade aligned…as long as the original groove was centered! If it wasn’t, you need to make a correction.
Determination of the amount of height correction to remedy a specific out-of-squareness error is a matter of experience and experimentation. In any case the effect of any correction would be assessed at intervals throughout the sharpening process by removing the carriage and checking edge squareness with the precision square … then making any further necessary height adjustments.
Broadbent, Skateology, VII:4
That makes sharpening much more complex. And you don’t realize that the the blade is out of square (or the edges are uneven) because you think the cross-grinder made them flat, they’ll never become even. For a figure skater, having uneven edges feels like one side is too sharp and the other side is too dull.
Don’t cross-grind unless you’re careful about not taking off too much blade and making sure the edges are even. But when done properly, cross-grinding can actually work out well.
I think I just found the first reference to forward crossovers in the skating literature.
In 1788, Gerhard Ulrich Anton Vieth gave a lecture to a group of (what he called) friends. That lecture was published in Neue Litteratur und Völkerkunde and, in 1790, reprinted as a book with the title Über das Schrittschuhlaufen. It’s a little book that was lost to skating historians for quite a while, in part because people kept getting the title wrong by substituting Schlittschuhlaufen (the current German word for skating) for Schrittschuhlaufen. In the 18th century, Schrittschuhlaufen was the correct term for skating. But that’s a topic for another time. Both versions are now readily available in Google books.
Here’s the crossover:
Vieth (1789), 123.
And here’s my (rough) translation of it:
On the contrary, if something of the centripetal force still remains after the centrifugal force has already become equal to zero, then this results either in anxious and uncomfortable gripping with the hands, to find a stable point for the center of gravity, or, in those who know how to help themselves a little better, stepping over the skating foot with the free foot, which is also not entirely compatible with beauty, whereby the remaining centripetal force is suddenly and somewhat violently made equal to zero. Such sudden transitions are never graceful, and in this case there is still a danger of getting the skates entangled when stepping over, in which case the whole body plays a very poor role.
It seems that forward crossovers were originally mistakes made by beginners trying to keep their balance while skating.
Plimpton’s “improved parlor skate” at the National Museum of Roller Skating.
The tag on it says:
The improved James L. Plimpton parlor skate introduced in 1866 combines rollers and an ice blade. The silver brass swans attached at the front show what the skate would need to become an ice skate and the wheels in the rear demonstrate the roller skate idea. Plimpton suggested four edges as opposed to the traditional one blade (swan) so that the skate would be turned or reversed as the edges become dull.
Gift of Budd Van Roekel
Van Roekel Patent Model Collection 84.40.3
National Museum of Roller Skating
The patent (US55901), which I found via Google Patents, supports this claim, saying:
The runners…have smooth running surfaces, with angular edges, so that they may be reversed when the inner edges lose their angularity by wear, and a fresh, sharp edge obtained; and when both edges of one surface become worn the runner may be inverted and two more angular or sharp edges obtained. Thus, each runner has four angular edges, which may be successively used before the runner will require to be sharpened.
US patent 55901
Plimpton made the runner-holders swan-shaped. In the patent, he notes that they “may be of any ornamental design.” His choice of a swan echoes the swan ice skates that were popular around the same time. E.J. Brakmaan wrote a little pamphlet about them [in Dutch].
In the patent, Plimpton claims that these skates give the skater
perfect command over the skates, and is enabled to perform curves, gyrations, and evolutions with the greatest facility.
US patent 55901
The skates may have worked well wheels attached—Plimpton’s basic design is still used with quad roller skates today— but I have serious doubts about how well the double-runner/truck system worked on ice.
James Hines, author of the great big skating history book, has come out with another book. This one is billed as focusing on figures and has been made much of by US Figure Skating: Sarah Brannen reviewed it on the USFSA site and the August 2022 issue of Skating mentioned it. It’s a self-published limited edition. I have copy 27 of 100.
The cover of HInes’s new book.
Despite its billing, I didn’t think this book was primarily about figures. Part 1 is called “The Development of Figures: A Brief History,” but is really about the development of figure skating, not just figures. It summarizes the early literature on skating. In this literature, the word “figure” was not used as specifically as it is now. Figures were drawings on the ice, but also body positions and patterns made by the motions of people across the ice. A study of what “figure” meant over time and how it came refer specifically to tracings on the ice would be very interesting!
Part 2 is called “The ISU and the Compulsories.” It is roughly half about figures and half about pattern dance. I was excited to see tables of numbers showing how world champions placed in figures and free skating, both before and after the introduction of the short program.
Part 3 consists of three appendices: a schedule of compulsory figures that appears to be taken from an old skating book (it looks exactly like the one at the back of the second edition of T.D. Richardson’s Modern Figure Skating (London: Methuen, 1938), down to the font and pagebreaks, except that Richardson heads the factor column “Factor of Value Today.” and includes his proposed new values in another column), an Lynn Thomas published in Skating in May 1968 (the title is not given in the book, but I was able to dig it out of the online archive: it’s called “Who needs figures?”), and a list of pattern dances showing when each dance was invented and added to the schedule.
The book’s main strength is the amount of detail included. It is very precise, giving facts clearly and concisely. However, ensuring that so many precise details are also accurate requires extremely careful editing and proofreading. Unfortunately, the book has suffered in that regard. I noticed a number of typographical errors, including in the names of skaters. For example, Lily Cheetham’s last name is spelled “Cheatham” (p. 52) and Carl von Korper is called “Carl von Corper” (p. 59); Henry Crofton Lowther is called “Henry Cecil Lowther” repeatedly, but that seems to be a misidentification rather than a typo.
The book’s main weakness is one Hines has been criticized for before: lack of engagement with the secondary literature. The sources listed in End‘s bibliography are all either old handbooks on figure skating or popular histories by the likes of Dennis Bird, Nigel Brown and Ben Wright. Erica Rand and Cat Ariail both point to this in their reviews of Hines’s Figure Skating in the Formative Years. There is a very rich body of literature on sport history, especially women’s sport history; engagement with that body would add a lot to the study of compulsories.
Despite these flaws, I enjoyed reading the book and looking at the numerous illustrations. Its level of detail provides a good entry point for more analytical studies of figures and dance through history.
It is a relatively small museum housed at the headquarters of USA Roller Sports, but it is packed of amazing stuff. There are many miscellaneous old skates in display cases without labels) on the entryway. Signs lead through the Hall of Fame, a hallway whose walls are covered in plaques commemorating the famous.
The museum proper is just one room. It begins with a display case on the earliest roller skates, especially the ones with patents. It includes some sample skates, like this one:
The first patented roller skate (1819).
James Plimpton gets his very own display case:
The father of the modern roller skate.
It includes some of his prototypes and early skates, with the accompanying patents and descriptions.
Some of Plimpton’s prototypes.
I especially liked this one, which converts to an ice skate. I suspect it didn’t work very well.
Moving on, there were lots of other interesting things in the museum, including several powered skates—one with an engine carried on the skater’s back and another with a chainsaw motor mounted on the toe. There was even a selection of roller skates made for animals—bears, horses, birds, etc.
As you’d expect, there were also exhibits on more usual types of skating—dance skating, shows of various types, roller derby, hockey, and figure skating. Gloria Nord’s traveling trunk seemed like a popular artifact, though I was more interested in the weird skates. The exhibit on figure skating included both singles (freestyle) and figures. Check out the picture in the upper right below: they used to put rosin on the floor to let roller skaters make tracings when they did their figures.
I took many more pictures and spent some time reading old magazines. More of that will make its way into blog posts in the future. They also have plenty of stuff that is not on display because they just don’t have the space to put it out. It was a fun museum to visit.
