OfflineOur club has 40 year old Blue Trevor stones. They have been refurbished a number of times but the running surfaces keep pitting. When the club borrowed inserted stones they ran about 10% faster and with a little less curl (still 4 ft). We are strongly considering having our rocks inserted over the summer. I know a few years ago some on this forum where against inserts. Does anyone have any concerns about inserts at this time? If so what are they? Thanks
You should contact Broomstones as they had their rocks inserted about 3 or 4 years ago. They could give you some good info probably.
How do your current stones run? are they still fairly consistant despite the pitting, or is the whole set a mess?
just stay away from ceramic, blue hone inserts are okay but you'll have to paper them once and awhile. you can refer to the trhead to scrarch or not to scratch the stones
Duct Tape, the stones are considerably slower than the borrowed set of inserts. They curl nicely. Some visitors think they curl too much. Normally it's about 4 ft of curl.
I mean is it a good set of stones, do they all run fairly conistantly despite the pitting? how fast do they run as well?
I time from back to hog and the fastest we can get for a tee line is 3.5. We can get the borrowed rocks up to 4.0 on the next sheet. Our rocks are fairly consistent within each sheet but differ on the 4 sheets. Is that the ice or the rocks, not completely sure. Our rocks on the same sheet as the borrowed will curl about 5 ft and the inserts about 3.5. The big reason would be the speed. As a club, we love the speed. Has anyone had any problems after the inserts were put in?
At my last club for 24 to 24.5 second hog to tee line draw - back line to hog was:
At the Brier last night they were getting about 3.55 for a tee line draw from back line to hog (with 4.5 to 5 feet of curl), so that sounds like about 22 seconds hog to tee. Needless to say, the more the curl and the further the rock has to travel to get to the desired location.
It's a bit off the topic, but,
While it may 'sound like' 22 seconds, try timing hog to tee [or stop] direct from the TV. You'll be surprised at what you get.
The Winnipeg Brier ice has been timing out at 24.5 - 25 seconds; 26 with strong sweeping!
You can actually do this. Compare your readings with the times given when the TV crew times a rock to see that it is accurate. I wonder if their timing is by hand or is electronic. Live TV really is in 'real time'. My reaction time gives me times within a tenth or two, and I don't trust myself to be better than a quarter second, so I generally round to the nearest half.
Havanicedayea!
I would just like to add that back line to hogline times are not an accurate way of knowing how fast your ice is... Most players have a different rate of deceleration do to different coefficients of frictions with their shoes, brooms on ice. It will give you a good idea, but some players can have up to a .3 second difference on the exact same shot. The only real way to get ice time is to use hog to tee, as it takes the player out of the equation.
That's true. Actually the numbers I gave were the base numbers. Two of us were in line with these, the third one you had to add about .12 to get the same result, the fourth one it wasn't a factor because sometimes he would add a bit coming out and sometimes he would subtract a bit coming out.
Time a few rocks hog to tee, and see what you get.
Personally, I prefer 25-26, however even going as low as 23.5 is still not bad. Anything slower than that is really getting too slow though.
If the fastest you can make your rocks go is 22, then i'd consider getting them reground or inserted. if they run 23.5+ and curl nicely on their own, and are well matched sheet to sheet, keep them!