The snow skates I’m thinking of have metal blades an inch wide or a bit more. They’re about as long as the skater’s foot and tie on to the shoes. A good example is the one I found in an antique shop. In that post, I wondered whether such skates actually work. So I made a pair and tried them out.
My snow skates.
I cut out the wooden pieces from a maple board using various power tools (table saw, band saw, belt sander, drill press, etc.) and glued them together. I made the runners by cutting sheet metal to shape and heating it in the forge to bend it. Getting the wood and metal to match up was extremely difficult. It’s hard to see here, but the blades have a radius of hollow of about an inch and a half.
Last winter, I took them out several times and tried to skate on snow. It didn’t work at all. When the snow was deep, they sunk through and got stuck. When it was not, they just got stuck. They did not slide at all well. In fact, the skates slid against the soles of my boots better than they slid across the snow. That’s probably why the one from the antique shop has a rubbery layer on the top.
The takeaway is that, in my experience, snow skates don’t work. But then, Sven Kjellberg and others have said that bone skates didn’t work, so maybe there’s more to it.
In 1852, George Anderson, a member of the Glasgow Skating Club, published the following advice on skate sharpening under the pseudonym Cyclos:
The edges should … be kept sharp by occasional grinding, perhaps once in a season, or even less; and in doing it, the iron should be held across the face of the grindstone, which, by giving an almost imperceptible concavity, ensures a sharp edge.
Cyclos 1852, 34
A grindstone, or grinding wheel in today’s metal shops, is the abrasive stone that forms the core of a bench grinder. The stone spins fast, grinding down the surface of whatever it comes in contact with (keep your fingers away!). This produces lots of hot sparks when grinding metal (including skate blades).
To sharpen a skate on this grindstone, you’d hold it sideways, with the toe pick pointing to the left and the heel of the blade pointing to the right, perpendicular to the stone. Then, you’d turn the crank (or have an assistant turn it) so that the wheel rotates counterclockwise. As the wheel spins, you’d slowly push the blade across the stone from left to right, starting with the toe and ending with the heel, then lift it up and repeat. After a number of strokes, the blade would match the curvature of the stone.
The radius of hollow this produces depends on the size of the stone. The one in the photo has a radius of about five inches. Five inches sounds like a really shallow hollow—too shallow even for figures, by today’s standards—but keep in mind that blades were wider then. Cyclos writes,
The lower surface of the iron should be a quarter of an inch broad or thereby.
Cyclos 1852, 34
The width of the blade makes a difference. (This is why ice dancers use deeper hollows than freestyle skaters—dance blades are narrower.) According to Sidney Broadbent, what you feel when your blade hits the ice is the bite angle, not the radius of hollow (ROH). This is the angle created at the corner of the blade by sharpening. Make it too small, and you skid. Too large, and you can’t stop. Broadbent gives an equation relating the ROH (R), blade thickness (T), and bite angle ($latex \theta$).
$latex \sin\theta = \frac{T}{2R} &s=4$
Broadbent 1997, I:2
T is the thickness of the blade, and R is the ROH. Today’s freestyle blades are about 0.15″ wide, so with a pretty normal 0.5″ ROH, the bite angle is about 8.6 degrees. For a patch blade with the same width and an ROH of 1″, the bite angle is about 4.3 degrees. Dance blades are narrower, about 0.11″ wide, so a 0.5″ ROH on a dance blade produces a bite angle of 6.3 degrees. This is why ice dancers prefer a deeper hollow.
Cyclos recommends blades that are much wider—0.25″. A five-inch ROH on a quarter-inch blade yields a bite angle of about 1.4 degrees, which is very shallow. It corresponds to a three-inch ROH on a modern patch blade, which is what Robert Ogilvie recommends for high-test skaters (1985, 111).
Conclusion: Cyclos’s recommendations are in line with late twentieth-century thinking on patch sharpening when differences in equipment are accounted for. I’ve neglected differences in ice, though, which do play a role.
To end, Cyclos warns readers of the dangers of learning on grooved skates, like those used for freestyle, dance, and recreational skating today:
it ought not to be grooved, as is sometimes done,—much to the detriment of the beginner, who, after learning on grooved skates, will feel himself like a cat on walnut shells when he puts on plain ones.
Cyclos 1852, 34
Skaters using patch skates for the first time may identify with this remark.
The radius of hollow is very important to skaters because it determines how the blades feel on the ice. It’s set during sharpening. When you get your skates sharpened, you can request a particular radius of hollow. What if you don’t know what hollow your blades have? Or if you want to check that the hollow on your blades is what you want it to be?
To answer these questions, use a blade gauge. Blade gauges aren’t readily available commercially, though experienced skate technicians generally have one (or a set, depending on the design). I made my own out of aluminum using the CNC router at CIADC.
Blade gauges for freestyle and figures. The numbers represent the radius of hollow in inches.
To use them, try to fit the arm of the gauge into the hollow on the bottom of the skate blade. Here’s an example.
See how the gauge doesn’t fit all the way into the hollow? One inch is too big for this blade. It’s a freestyle blade.This one fits into the hollow with room to spare. 3/8″ is too small.9/16″ is just about right.
9/16″ is what I asked for last time I got these skates sharpened. The person who sharpened them did a great job!
Dowler blades look like a disaster for figure skating. They’re only slightly wider than modern freestyle blades in the middle, but flare out at the ends, to nearly half an inch wide. Invented in 1879, they enjoyed a brief period of popularity in the late nineteenth century.
Dowler blades with Mount Charles fittings.
These strange blades were immediately endorsed by skating great T. Maxwell Witham, author (with H. E. Vandervell) of the monumental A System of Figure Skating, which defined English skating. He enthusiastically recommended them in The Field in time for skaters to buy their own for the next season:
Towards the end of last skating season Capt. Dowler, a member of the Skating Club, astonished the other members by bringing to the club ice a skate made with concave sides. Several of the members tried it, and it was obvious, not only that it worked well, but that all movements were skated with very much greater ease and power on it than on the old form of blade. I myself gave it a good trial, and was so impressed with its merits that I persuaded Capt. Dowler to go at once to a patent agent and file a specification of his invention.
T. Maxwell Witham (1879, 479).
Dowler did as Witham advised, and his patent was granted. His intention was to make it easier to skate curves by having a blade that approximated one and, according to Witham, he was successful.
Dowler skates became the skates to have for some years after that. In The Babe, B.A., the eponymous character, desiring to skate,
bought himself a pair of Dowler blades with Mount Charles fittings, which he was assured by an enthusiastic friend were the only skates with which it was possible to preserve one’s self-respect, and fondly hoped that self-respect was a synonym for balance.
E. F. Benson (1897, ch. 20).
The popularity of these skates was not long-lived. In the year that The Babe was published, Mrs. Walter Creyke “asked the advice of many of the best skaters” and found that all
agree in condemning the Dowler blade (which I use and like), with one exception, and he told me that the second-class test could be skated on Dowlers.
Mrs. Walter Creyke (1897, 484).
In the earlier year of the twentieth century, the popularity of the Dowler blade waned further. Benson (1908, 16-17) recommended against purchasing Dowler blades despite their recommendation “by a shopman or by an enthusiastic friend.” H. E. Vandervell went further in The Figure Skate. After a full discussion (52–55) of the blades, he described his analysis of both convex- and concave-sided blades (55–69). After all that, he could
really see nothing in the convex or concave, after this searching inquiry, to dethrone the parallel [blade] from its well-deserved position, but on the contrary everything to enhance its value as far and away the best form of blade for curvilinear skating.
H. E. Vandervell ([1901] 2020, 69).
The Dowler skate went out of use not long after its invention. Today, it has largely been forgotten.
Mount Charles fittings may be a subject for another day. They are the two plates that attach to the boot and allow the blade to be screwed in. You can see them in the picture.
Jackson Haines in 1866. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Jackson Haines is often credited with inventing modern figure skating. American by birth, he traveled to Europe in the 1860s and performed in various countries. His skating proved particularly inspirational to the Viennese. There, dancing on ice took off and, going down a long and twisty path, eventually resulted in today’s figure skating. The focus of this post is on his skates.
Haines’ first stop was London. On September 3, 1864, Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle noted his arrival of Jackson Haines:
Mr Jackson Haines, the champion skater of America, has just arrived in this country with a view of giving us a taste of his qualities. It might seem strange that he should have selected this time of year for his exhibitions did we not know that he is quite as much at home on terra firma, with his parlour skates, and can accomplish as many tours de force as he can in ordinary skates on the ice. Mr Haines is in treaty for an engatement with several London managers, and, we doubt not, will shortly be before the public.
Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle, Saturday, September 3, 1864, p. 8.
What were these “parlour skates”? A later article clarifies:
The patent skate used by Mr. Haines runs on three indiarubber wheels, and the effect under his sway was almost to lead the spectator to believe the Palace was an ice-house and the platform in front of the Shakespere-house frozen over. The rapidity with which he moves in his dances is exceedingly pleasing, and indeed marvellous.
Express (London), Tuesday, September 27, 1864, p. 2.
Were these the first artistic inline skates? I haven’t found a picture of them, but there are some pictures of Haines on inline skates with four wheels. The fourth wheel may have been added in a later version of the design.
Incidentally, the Express‘s description of Haines’ performance as “exceedingly pleasing” and “marvellous” contrasts with the usual story of Haines’ reception in England, but that’s a story for another time.
Prikschaats is the Dutch name for a type of medieval skate that includes a spike at the toe. It translates to “prick-skate.” I’ve already written about prikschaatsenhere and here. I also made a pair.
My prikschaatsen.
I made them out of part of a regular old 2×4 and some 3/8″ square bar stock (mild steel). The methods I used weren’t entirely historically accurate. The ordinary power tools and propane forge were analogous to medieval methods—the same workflow, with less soot and exercise. But I did use electric welding, which was definitely not available 500+ years ago, to attach the toe picks.
I’ve skated on them and they do work. After a bit of practice, I was able to skate by pushing with the toe picks. Since the blades are wide and flat (not hollow-ground like modern figure and hockey skates), they tend to slide sideways, which makes it difficult to push off an edge like modern skaters do. Skating on them feels more like walking than skating on modern skates does. For an intermediate step between pole-pushing and edge-pushing, this seems quite reasonable.
I finished putting the wood and metal parts together by scoring the end of the blade with a band saw, putting the skate in a vice, and hammering away. The wood part cracked a bit, but some glue fixed it well enough. Next time, harder wood and a thicker footbed are called for. The archaeological specimens are made from poplar and alder, which are both somewhat harder than the pine I used.
Once they were done, I tried them out on the ice. For boots, I used an old pair of Harlicks (not historically accurate, but quite practical). I tied them on with hockey skate laces.
The first skaters to use metal-bladed skates would have been familiar with bone skates and pole-pushing, not the foot-pushing technique used with modern skates, so pole-pushing seemed like a good way to begin. Pole-pushing works just fine.
Foot-pushing doesn’t really work. The skates feel like they don’t have edges—they don’t bite the ice when I try to push like modern skates do. The bottom of the metal runner is pretty flat, which I think is probably historically accurate.
These skates have more friction than bone skates, but also corner much, much better and feel more stable to stand still on. They’re less likely to slide out from under me when I’m not trying to slide anywhere.
This is a follow-up to my post on the Amsterdam skate, a skate dating to c. 1225 that was found in Amsterdam. In that post, I wrote about making the metal part. The skate also has a wood part, which this post is about.
Unfortunately, the wood part didn’t really survive its centuries in the ground, as you can see in this picture. I used the pictures of the Dordrecht skate to get a better idea of how it might have looked. And I tried to make it simple but structurally sound.
I ended up with a two-part design: a flat area for the foot and a block of wood to hold the blade. For wood, I used the leftover bits of a two-by-four. Pine lumber is not historically accurate (the skates were actually made from poplar and alder (Blauw 2001, p. 57)), but is easy to work with.
I used a band saw to cut out the footbed, which was inspired by my Buddy Snow Skate and the shape of my foot. The bottom piece, which held the blade, is a block from the remaining part of the two-by-four with a 3/8″-wide groove routed into the bottom for the blade to fit into and a bit of shaping done with hand tools. The holes for laces are just shallow cuts made with the table saw.
Reconstructed Amsterdam skates: wooden footbed and metal blade.
I glued the two pieces together with standard wood glue. To avoid water damage, I finished the skates with a modern lacquer.
Next, I have to grind the blade so it’s nice and shiny (and sharp!) and put the metal and wood parts together permanently. Then I can try them out on the ice.
Reference
Wiebe Blauw. 2001. Van Glis tot Klapschaats. Franeker: van Wijnen.
It’s often said that Sonja Henie was the first to wear white boots for figure skating. She may have been responsible for setting the trend because of her popularity, but she wasn’t the first to do it.
Julian Fitzgerald’s Skaters History on Ice and Roller Skating—published in 1916, when Henie was just four years old—includes many pictures of skaters. Some of them are wearing white boots. Among the women are Ray Collins (p. 74), Isabel Butler (p. 75), June Rodger (p. 77), the El Ray sisters (p. 81), Grace Allen (p. 84), Adelaide D’Vorak (“America’s foremost skater,” p. 184), and five women of Baptie & Lamb, Co., who surround a man in black skates (p. 66).
Today, white boots are the norm for women, but men are rarely seen in them. That appears not to have been the case in Fitzgerald’s day. Judging from his pictures, it was not unusual for male and female skating partners to wear matching skates, whether white or black. Cathleen Pope & George Kirner (p. 63), Grace Helaine & Edward Bassett (p. 68), Ellen & Orrin Markhus (p. 70). Helen Carlos & Howard Fielding (roller skaters, p. 131), and the Rexos (roller skaters, p. 132) are all shown in matching white skates.
Edward W. Bassett & Miss Grace Helaine in matching white figure skates. From Julian T. Fitzgerald, Skaters History on Ice and Roller Skating (1916), p. 68.
Men without partners are also shown in white figure skates: Roy H. Fink (p. 69) and W. T. Carey (p. 87). Here’s Roy Fink in his white skates.
Skaters seem to have picked their skate colors as part of their costumes. The skaters in white skates are generally shown in light-colored costumes. It’s hard to say whether they were wearing all white because the pictures are not in color. But there’s another reason for white skates, one that goes back even further. In 1897, Caroline Creyke noted that
Women who are at all awkward in their movements should be careful not to wear white gloves, or white lace ruffles at the end of long dark sleeves, as every gesture is accentuated by the spots of white waving against the dark background of people. White boots, on the contrary, make the feet look smaller than black ones, as their outline is lost on the white of the surface ice.
Caroline Creyke, Skating on Artificial Ice. The Nineteenth Century: A Monthly Review, 41 (1897), p. 483.
There you have it. Sonja Henie couldn’t have come up with the idea of wearing white skates because it was around fifteen years before she was born.
References
Caroline Creyke, 1897. Skating on Artificial Ice. The Nineteenth Century: A Monthly Review 41: 474–486.
Julian T. Fitzgerald, 1916. Skaters History on Ice and Roller Skating. Chicago: Julian T. Fitzgerald.
A very interesting ice skate I found at an antique shop.
Last month, I found a very interesting old ice skate at an antique shop. The label is partly worn off, but was sufficient for me to identify it as a Buddy Snow Skate from Falcon, NY.
In my quest to learn more about this skate, I found its patent. This type of skate was invented in the early 1920s by John C. Miller and Robert H. Fayfield of Buffalo, NY. Their goal was to produce cheap, easy to make skates that worked well on snow. In the patent, they stress that the runner—a piece of sheet metal riveted to the bottom of the wood part—must be concave “to prevent side slipping of the skates when in use” and wide enough “to effect a firm contact with relatively soft snowy surfaces.” The runner on my skate is about 2.2 cm wide.
These skates were meant to be used by children on snowy ground. The footbed on mine is about 22.3 cm long, which is definitely child-sized. I wonder how well these skates actually worked. Today’s snow skates seem to work reasonably well.
The only depiction of this type of skate in a book that I’ve found so far is in Jean-Marie LeDuc’s Lace Up. LeDuc dates it to c. 1880 (p. 33), which seems pretty unlikely since it wasn’t patented until 1926.
References
Jean-Marie LeDuc, Sean Graham, and Julie Léger (2017). Lace up: A history of skates in Canada. Toronto: Heritage House.
John C. Miller and Robert H. Fayfield. Snow skate. US Patent 1,569,520, filed May 16, 1924, and issued January 12, 1926.
