Adventures in skating historiography
As far as I can tell, the answer is no. 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,… Continue reading Did snow skates work?
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,… Continue reading Skate sharpening in 1852
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… Continue reading Blade gauges
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.
Jackson Haines is often credited with inventing modern figure skating. The focus of this post is on his skates.
Prikschaats is the Dutch name for a type of medieval skate that includes a spike at the toe. It translates to "prick-skate." I made a pair, and they work.
The skates work!
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.
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.
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.