Ask any short track skater what separates a good session from a frustrating one, and sooner or later the conversation lands on edges. You can have the best boot, the best bend and the best legs in the pack, but if your blades will not hold through the apex of a corner, none of it matters. Sharpening is the one piece of maintenance every short track skater has to own personally. Nobody can feel your edges for you.
This guide walks through the whole process: what sharpening actually does to your steel, why a proper jig matters more than the stone you buy, which tool does which job, how to look after the stones themselves, how to check your work, and how to build a routine that keeps your blades honest all season. It is written with skaters in warm and humid places in mind, where condensation and long travel to the rink cause problems that European guides rarely mention.
What Sharpening Actually Does
A short track blade is not sharpened the way a knife is. You are not trying to create a point. You are trying to create two clean, square, parallel edges running the full length of the blade, with a flat surface between them. Those two edges are what bite the ice. The blade rolls onto one edge or the other as you lean, and the sharpness of that edge decides how much sideways force you can apply before the steel lets go and slides out from under you.
When you sharpen, you are removing a small amount of steel from the flat bottom surface of the blade until the corners where that flat meets the side become crisp again. That is it. Everything else in the process exists to make sure you remove that steel evenly, squarely, and without wrecking the geometry the blade came with.
The whole job is turning the middle and right shapes back into the left one, without removing more steel than you have to.
Why Edges Go Dull
Edges rarely go dull from ice contact alone. Ice is soft. What actually rounds your corners is everything else: walking on concrete or rubber matting without guards, blade on blade contact in a pile up, grit carried onto the ice, and above all microscopic rust. In a humid climate, a blade left wet in a bag will lose its edge sitting still in a cupboard faster than it will from a hard training session.
Why the Jig Matters More Than the Stone
New skaters obsess over stone grit. Experienced skaters obsess over how the blade is held. The reason is simple: a stone can only follow the surface it is given. If your blade is clamped even slightly twisted, or if the bench flexes under hand pressure, you will grind a subtle taper into the steel. You will not see it. You will feel it as a blade that grips at the front and washes out at the back, or one that feels sharp on one side and vague on the other.
This is why a purpose built bench is worth the money. The EHS Short Track and Long Track Sharpening Jig is built around exactly this problem. Its stated purpose is to hold blades perfectly straight through a solid aluminium build with precise mounting points. All parts are CNC machined in the Netherlands for precision, the essential parts are anodised for durability, and material has been removed where possible to keep the weight down.
That last point matters more than it sounds. The jig uses a take apart design and disassembles and reassembles in about five minutes using four central screw knobs. Low weight and easy transport are part of the design brief, which means the thing that keeps your edges honest can travel with you to a competition rather than living permanently on a bench at home. One habit goes with that convenience: tighten those four screw knobs firmly before every use. A jig that is quick to assemble is also quick to assemble carelessly.
Setting Up on a Stable Surface
Put the jig on a table that does not rock. Firm, stable construction is one of the jig's advantages, but no bench compensates for a wobbly hotel room desk. If you are sharpening at a competition venue, take thirty seconds to find a solid surface. Sit down. Get your eye line roughly level with the blade so you can see what you are doing rather than guessing from above.
The Three Tools That Do the Work
Once the blade is clamped straight, the sharpening itself is calm, boring and repetitive. That is the goal. Drama in sharpening means something has gone wrong. Three tools cover the whole job, and each one has a distinct role. Skaters get into trouble mostly by asking one of them to do another one's work.
The Stone That Cuts the Edge
The Zandstra Foss Combination Sharpening Stone is a silicon carbide block measuring 250 by 75 by 20 mm, with a coarse side for cutting a fresh edge and a fine side for smoothing it. It is flattened after production, so the working face is genuinely flat. That flatness is the whole point of buying a proper stone. A block that has dished or worn unevenly hands a rounded edge to your blade no matter how carefully you work.
Use the coarse side only when there is something real to remove: a nick, a rust pit, or a corner you can plainly see has gone round. Coarse work is not a weekly habit. Every pass takes steel you never get back, and a short track blade has a finite life measured in how much material still sits above the mounting cups.
Most sessions should live on the fine side. Lay the stone flat across the blade, keep it in full contact with the whole width of the flat, and take long, even, unhurried passes down the length. Consistent pressure is the game. Skaters unconsciously press harder in the middle of a stroke and lighter at the ends, which slowly grinds a gentle curve into a blade that is supposed to be flat. Counter it deliberately, and let the stone cut rather than forcing it.
The Stone That Removes the Burr
Sharpening pushes a thin lip of steel over the far corner of the blade. That lip is the burr. It feels wonderfully sharp to a nervous thumb and then folds over the first time it meets ice, leaving you with an edge that was brilliant in the changing room and gone by the second lap of the warm up. Removing it is not optional, and it is not the same job as sharpening.
The StayBent Diamond Deburr Stone is a compact handheld diamond stone sized to sit in your palm and made for this one task. Hold it flat against the side of the blade and run it along the full length in a few light, even passes. Then do the other side. You are knocking a lip off, not grinding, so pressure should be minimal.
The Tool That Makes It Fast
Sharpening gives you grip. Polishing gives you glide, and it is the step most club skaters skip. The Zandstra 3M Polishing Triangle is a 25 cm extruded aluminium triangle carrying self adhesive 3M lapping film loaded with micro aluminium oxide. It comes with three grades already fitted: 40 micron in blue, 30 micron in green and 3 micron in pink. Two finer grades, 9 micron in light blue and 12 micron in yellow, are sold separately if you want a longer progression.
Work blue first, moving the triangle slowly back and forth along the runner and using the whole length of the strip. When the friction drops off, after roughly a minute, switch to green. When the resistance eases again, finish with pink. The whole polish takes about 3 to 5 minutes. Look at the gliding surface afterwards: a clean mirror means the job is done, and anything patchy means you repeat the pink stage, or the green stage before it. A polished blade carries speed for longer and holds its edge better than one that has been ground but never finished.
Step two is the one to skip most weeks. Steps four and five are the ones skaters skip and should not.
How to Check Your Work
Forget the thumbnail test people use on kitchen knives. Two better checks. Run a fingernail gently across the edge, not along it, and feel whether it catches consistently from the front of the blade to the back. Then hold the blade under a light and look straight down at the edge. A dull edge reflects a visible bright line, because a rounded corner has surface area to reflect from. A properly sharp edge is invisible. Any bright spot along the length is a flat you have not reached yet.
Looking After the Stone Itself
Here is the part almost nobody is taught. Your stone is a cutting tool, and like every cutting tool it wears. It wears fastest in the middle, because that is where most skaters apply most of their pressure, and it wears while loaded with the steel dust it has just removed from your blades. A stone in that condition quietly stops doing its job, and because the change is gradual you will blame your technique, your blades or your ice long before you blame the block in your hand.
Two things go wrong. The first is loading, also called glazing, where the pores of the stone fill with fine metal particles until the surface stops cutting and starts burnishing. A loaded stone feels slick rather than grippy, leaves a greyish smear on the blade, and takes far longer than usual to raise a burr. The second is dishing, where the centre of the stone has worn lower than the ends. A dished stone cannot grind a flat surface. It rolls the corners of your blade slightly as it rocks across them, so you spend a careful hour producing exactly the rounded edge you were trying to remove.
A stone worn hollow in the middle hands your blade a curve, however carefully you work. The stone has to be flat before the blade can be.
The Straight Edge Check
Checking for dishing takes ten seconds and no special equipment. Lay something you trust to be straight across the working face of the stone, along its length. A steel rule works, and so does the flat back of the polishing triangle, or even the gliding surface of a blade you know is true. Then hold the pair up against a window or a lamp and look at the join. A flat stone shows no light. A dished stone shows a thin sliver of light in the middle that closes at both ends. Turn the straight edge across the width and check that direction too, because stones wear in both.
Ten seconds with a rule and a lamp tells you whether the stone is still able to grind a flat surface.
Do this at the start of every second or third sharpening session, and always before a competition. It is the cheapest insurance in your kit bag, and it explains a surprising number of mysterious weekends where nothing felt right.
Cleaning a Loaded Stone
Get into the habit of wiping the working face before you start and again when you finish, so steel dust never gets the chance to sit in the surface. A stiff brush, an old toothbrush or a scrub with soapy water and a firm nylon pad will lift most of what has settled into the pores, and a rinse and full dry afterwards leaves you with a surface that cuts on the first pass rather than the tenth. Let the stone dry completely before it goes back in the bag. A damp stone stored against tools is an invitation to rust, and it is rust on steel that costs you the most blade over a season.
When to Flatten and When to Replace
A mildly dished stone can often be brought back. The usual method is to rub the worn face against a known flat abrasive surface, moving in circles until the hollow disappears, then rinse the slurry away. A diamond plate is the tidiest tool for this job. Some skaters take the stone to a workshop with a surface grinder instead, which is a reasonable choice for a heavily worn block. Whichever route you take, work the whole face rather than just the middle, and check with the straight edge as you go so you stop as soon as it reads flat.
Replace rather than rescue when the stone has worn thin enough that it flexes or sits unstable in your hand, when it has cracked, or when the dishing is deep enough that flattening would eat most of the remaining block. Both faces of a combination stone wear independently, so it is worth checking the coarse side even if you only ever use the fine one. If the stone in your kit is past saving, the Zandstra Foss combination stone named earlier in this guide is the block to replace it with, and this is one tool where limping along with a worn one actively damages your blades.
The same attention goes to the other two tools. Wipe the diamond deburr stone clean so the swarf does not build up between the diamonds, and keep the lapping film on the polishing triangle free of grit, since a single hard particle trapped under the film will draw a scratch down the whole gliding surface. Replace a film strip when it stops biting rather than pressing harder to compensate.
How Often Should You Sharpen?
There is no universal number, and anyone who gives you one is selling something. It depends on your ice, your mileage and how well you look after your steel between sessions. What is more useful is knowing the signs.
Sharpen when the blade starts sliding out at a lean angle it used to hold, when you find yourself unconsciously skating a wider line through the corner, when you can see bright reflection along the edge, or when you can feel rust pitting under a fingernail. Do not sharpen because a week has passed. Skaters who sharpen on a calendar rather than on feel burn through expensive steel for no benefit.
One practical note for competition: do not sharpen for the first time on the morning of a race. Fresh edges feel different, and finding that out during your first heat is a bad plan. Sharpen a session or two beforehand so you have ridden the edges before they matter. The same logic applies at the start of a season. If your skates have sat through the off season, sharpen and polish them a fortnight before your first proper block of ice, not the night before.
Rust, Humidity and Rink Conditions
This is the part most imported guides ignore, and it is the part that costs skaters the most steel. Rink air is cold and damp, outside air is warm and wet, and a blade that goes straight from one to the other collects condensation instantly. That water then sits in a closed bag for hours on the way home.
The routine that saves blades is short and non negotiable. Wipe the blades dry the moment you step off the ice, using a cloth that lives in your bag for that job alone. Let them come up to room temperature before they go into a soaker, not after. Never store blades in a wet soaker. Never leave hard guards on for storage, because they trap moisture against the steel beautifully. If your blades are going to sit unused for weeks, they should be dry, bare and in open air.
Do this and you will sharpen less often, keep steel on your blades for longer, and spend your money on racing rather than on replacing corroded equipment.
Sharpening and Your Blade Choice
Sharpening habits and blade choice are linked. A blade you are still learning to trust deserves more attention to edge condition, not less, because you will otherwise blame your technique for what is actually a dull edge. Whether you are riding a StayBent JaeBee, a StayBent QCS or a StayBent XC Flex Weapon, the process on the bench is identical. What changes is how quickly you notice a problem, since a blade you know well tells you sooner. You can compare the current range in the StayBent blades collection.
Safety Is Not Optional
A freshly sharpened short track blade is a genuinely dangerous object, and the moment of greatest risk is not while you are stoning. It is while you are unclamping, wiping, or reaching across the bench for something. Your attention is elsewhere and the edge is the sharpest it will ever be.
The EHS jig's own guidance is explicit: always take care when sharpening blades, wear cut resistant gloves, and understand that without protection you can cut yourself on a sharp edge. That is not a legal disclaimer to skim past. A pair of StayBent Cut Resistant Gloves costs a fraction of what a hand injury costs you in missed training. Wear them for the whole process, including the tidying up.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sharpen short track blades without a jig?
You can remove steel without a jig. You cannot reliably keep the blade square and straight while doing it, which is the entire point. Freehand sharpening tends to produce a blade that is subtly tapered or rounded, and the damage accumulates invisibly over months. If you are going to sharpen your own blades regularly, a proper bench pays for itself in steel you do not waste.
Do I need the polishing triangle if I already have a good stone?
They do different jobs. The stone cuts the edge that gives you grip. The polishing triangle finishes the gliding surface, which is where speed comes from. If your budget only stretches to one, buy the stone first, since a polished blunt blade is still blunt. Add the triangle when you start racing seriously.
How do I know if I have removed the burr properly?
Run a fingertip lightly along the flat side of the blade near the edge. A remaining burr feels like a faint catching lip. It should feel completely smooth. If in doubt, one or two more light passes with the deburr stone will not hurt anything.
How do I know if my sharpening stone is worn out?
Use the straight edge test described above. Lay a rule along the working face, hold it up to a light, and look for a gap in the middle. Light means the stone is dished and needs flattening before you sharpen again. Also replace the stone if it has cracked, or if it has worn so thin that it flexes or feels unstable under your hand.
My stone has stopped cutting. Is it clogged or finished?
Clean it first, because a loaded surface is much more common than a worn out block. Scrub the face with a stiff brush and soapy water, rinse it, dry it fully and try again on a spare blade. If it now bites and raises a burr at the normal rate, it was simply clogged with steel dust. If it still skates over the surface without cutting, check it for dishing and flatten or replace it.
Should the stone be wet or dry when I use it?
Follow whatever guidance comes with the stone you own, since different blocks are made to be used differently. What matters in every case is that the face is clean and flat while you work, that you wipe the steel dust away as it builds up, and that the stone is completely dry before it goes back into your kit bag next to your blades.
Should I sharpen before or after a competition?
Before, but not on the day. Give yourself at least one session on the fresh edges so you know how they feel. Carry your jig to the venue for touching up a nick if something happens in a heat, which is exactly what a take apart, low weight design is for.
My blades are rusty. Is it too late?
Light surface rust usually comes off with normal stone work. Pitting you can feel with a fingernail means the corrosion has eaten into the steel, and you will need to remove material down past the pit to get a clean edge back. That is real steel gone. Prevention costs a dry cloth and thirty seconds.
Can the EHS jig be used for long track blades too?
Yes. It is designed as a portable bench for sharpening both short track and long track speed skating blades, which is useful if you or a training partner skate both disciplines.
The Habit, Not the Event
The skaters with the best edges are almost never the ones with the most expensive setup. They are the ones who wipe their blades every single time, who check the edge under a light before they pack up, who keep their stone flat and clean, and who sharpen when the blade tells them to rather than when the calendar does. Sharpening well is not a skill you acquire once. It is a habit you keep.
Set up your jig properly, tighten the knobs, put your gloves on, take your time, and let the tools do the work. Your corners will thank you.
