The Beer Leaguer
The podcast for the discerning beer league hockey player. We cover all things adult recreational hockey from folks that never played professionally, but just want to have fun and get a little better every game.
The Beer Leaguer
Long Term In-Depth Sparx Review Part 2
In this episode, part 2 of a 2 episode series, I go more in-depth about what you need to keep a Sparx working, and what are some nice-to-haves to get a better sharpening. I discuss the issues I've had with my machine and how I've resolved and worked around them. After that it's time for some Beer Leaguer math to help decide if you can break even sharpening your own skates. Then it's looking around at what issues other people have with their Sparx, and is there any way to fix them? Finally you get my thoughts on if owning a Sparx has been worth it to me and if I would buy it again.
Sparx sharpeners
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In this episode, part two of the long term in-depth Sparx review, I talk about accessory is the cost to own your sparx sharpener and keep it running. And finally, what do I think of my purchase of a sparxs? Is it worth it? And right now the sparxs isn't a completely. You buy it once you're done on to buy anything else machine. It does require some consumables and really you do need to buy some accessories for it to actually get it to work at its fullest potential. First is obviously the grandiose. Right now having this recording. Those wheels currently go for $70 views. They're available in very limited stores here in the States. I know in Canada, a couple of the big chain stores have them. But really, you have to buy them online and generally through sparxs. That means you're not really getting any kind of coupons or deals or anything with them. So they're pretty much always going to cost 70 bucks. I will say, I do know that Sparx does about once or twice a year. They'll do something like free shipping on the wheels. So keep an eye out for deals like that. And I guess stock up if you know you're going to be using them because you have to get sparxs wheels. You can't get any kind of third party wheels. There's no other entity out there making grinding wheels that work for sparxs. You have to get the Sparx branded ones, but only ones that work on ones that exist. Now, the one upside with the wheels is they do last a pretty good amount of time. So you are going to get a lot of sharp out of one wheel, which is great. That being said, one of the cool things about having a sparx is you can try out different sharpening pretty easily, but it's expensive to do that if you're spending 70 bucks to try out. You know, one of the fire sharpening cars and you realize, hey, I don't like this at all. Well, you're kind of spent 70 bucks for sharpening your skates like once or twice that kind of sucks. But, you know, there's ways you can kind of go around that and talk about that a little later. Another great thing with the wheels is they are small and portable and easy to store. They're pretty sturdy. So if you are traveling with your sparxs, it's not like, you know, like a flimsy sanding this thing or anything that you're going to have with you or some large case that you're going to have to have with all these wheels in it. They're actually pretty small, so you can take a lot of them with you. And pretty much any case that they have for sparxs that you would travel around with it. It's real easy to throw in, you know, a dozen different hollows with no problem and take those with and they don't add a lot of weight or anything. So that is nice. The only other consumable that you have to get are filters. Now, again, this is only if you have the consumer model. If you have the pro model, you're probably having it hooked up to a sort of vacuum system. So don't have to worry about the filtering as much if there even are filters in it. But for the consumer model, you do have to have filters. Sparx does sell a little kit that's got filter, a little cleaning cloth for the front glass, some lubrication for a skate clamp, nice little kit. It's super easy to use all that stuff and replace the filter. Not a big deal at all. Pops in and out if you clean out your machine somewhat regularly, then you shouldn't have to buy filters very often. I have seen people try and sometimes successfully make their own filters from like a house filter, but honestly, their little kit is not very expensive and I think it's worth it to just buy theirs because you know, it fits nicely. And like I said, if you keep the machine relatively clean, like you vacuum it every so often or get those little metal shavings out of there pretty regularly, you're not going to use filter very often. In the eight years I've owned it, I've had the warning come up once to change the filter. So I've only changed it once and I don't vacuum it all the time. I don't vacuum it religiously or anything, but I do vacuum it pretty regularly, you know, probably every ten, 15 sharpening. I mean, they're vacuuming it out. So not a ton, but, you know, it lasts. Now, an accessory that you really should get but is not 100% required is some kind of edge checker. Like I said, they have the new beam edge checker that comes with the Gen three machines. You can also buy it separately to use it with the Gen one of their Gen two or just if for some reason you want to check your edges and your own sparxs, you can feel free to go buy one yourself and have a blast with it. The beam seems like it's really more of a Gen two Gen three thing because of how it interacts with the app and tells you how to adjust everything. So if you have a Gen one machine like myself, I don't know that spending the money on the beam is really worth it for that. So what I have is kind of the old school magnetic edge checker. It's two pieces of L-shaped metal with magnets that sit on your blade and check for level at super easy to use. You can buy this from all kinds of people. You can buy one from sparxs if you would like. You can buy one from just about any brand that makes the like stand up skate sharpeners. No problem. You can buy those or you can do like what? I did buy generic one off eBay for like a quarter. The price of those. They all work the same, but you really should get an edge level checker if you're going to use a sparxs or really any kind of skate sharpening machine at home because you can't visually tell if the skates are level. No matter what you think, you can't visually tell just by looking. If they look out of level to your naked eye, then they are really messed up. I know people try and do like the place. A quarter on the blade. You can tell from the quarter. I mean, again, if you can tell from that, this means they're really, really messed up. So just just get an edge checker, you know, it's the best way. It's the easiest way. They take 2 seconds to use you. Not a big deal. So something you really need to do. Want to get another not 100% completely required to use the machine, but required if you want to have nicely finished blades is something to get the burns off your blades. So after you sharpen, there's going to be a little burrs all on the blades, no matter what kind of steel you have, there's going to be something that needs to be cleaned off of there. This is usually done with some kind of honing stone or like a leather strap. Again, these are consumables. You're going to have to replace them eventually, but they last a super long time, you know, depending on what kind of material you're you're sharpening, what kind of blades they are, they can last a ridiculously long time and you can clean them. I've never cleaned them, but apparently you can clean all this stuff. I would just say buy new ones when they get that that worn down. But you can buy in from sparxs. They sell a bunch of different honing stones and stripes. You can buy them from other places like other hockey places like how he sells them and stuff like that. You can also buy from places that sell them to sharpen like knives. It's all the same thing. Now, again, this is not the same as those rebadging tools because those are not made to get burrs off. It's a similar thing, but that's not what those are made to do. So holding stones are different than that. Now, when you're buying these, the key is to getting ones that work for the blades you're going to be sharpening. If you have coated steel high Glass-Steagall, black steel, you want something that's not going to scratch or rub off the coating. So you're going to want to get some kind of like a gummy or rubber stone or like a leather strap to clean those up. If you only are ever going to be sharpening regular steel, you can get away with, you know, just a regular honing stone and probably a leather strap still with that. The coated steels do generate less burrs. So like, right for myself, I have some of the black blade textile, and a lot of times I just use the little strap on them to get off the burrs. I don't even have to use a stone of any sort. So that's a good thing to know too. So look at what kind of steel you're going to be sharpening if it's just yours, just your families, if it's your teammates, see what it is. The more steel you sharpen, the more of these kind of accessories that you really need to have. This is also where I think a lot of the stores and stuff, they use sparxs don't do this. They don't take the time to properly, you know, get those burrs off. And I have heard and seen people that have taken coated steel to a place that's run through a sparxs and then they complain because they've like marked up the coating and started to flake it and crack it real bad. But it's not sparxs doing that. It's they're using the honing stones afterward. They're using the improper ones for the coated steel. The only the other accessory that have any experience with is the single blade holder is definitely the least required of the ones that I use. You only need the single blade holder if you plan to sharpen any steel without skates or if you have holders, they have a little bit of a warp in them. If you're holder's have a slight warp in them, you're not going to get a very good sharpening because you're steel is going to have a slight warp when it goes into the sparxs. So you could pop out the steel, put it in the single blade holder and sharpen it through there. It's super simple to use. It's a little twisting mechanism to hold in the steel poplin like you do a skate, run it through, boom, you're done real easy. But again, totally not required unless you're going to sharpen steel without skates or if you find out that skates they are sharpening do have a little bit of a wave in them or a curl or something. So the steel isn't going in straight. There are other accessories out there that I have never used. They have things for sharpening figure skates, sharpening kids skates, sharpened goalie skates with big old cowbells on them. Never had to worry about any of that stuff, but they look like they'd work pretty good. Most of them are just little risers that pop in to the blade holder to hold the skates at a better level for sharpening. There are also a lot of people out there making accessories for the sparxs making like third party accessories. The two biggest things I've seen is people making accessory holders. So I've seen like little boxes and then little stands that are made to sit on top of the sparxs that hold like the adjustment tool, hold a number of rings, hold the little magnifier for doing the level adjustments, stuff like that, holding, you know, you're holding stones and stuff like, like that. Also, I've seen people make some pretty cool little things for cleaning the inside of your sparxs out. Sparx does make it's like a rubber I think wand it looks like looks like the butt end of a hockey stick that has a magnet in it. And so you just move it throughout the inside of your machine. The magnet picks up all the metal shavings. Then you're like, Put it over a trashcan, I guess. Pull the magnet out from the middle of it all the metal shavings from the trash can. I've seen people make ones that are similar idea, but they're shaped like a little hockey stick and pick up stuff. You know, it's an easy way to clean out the machine if you don't want to use a vacuum. I've always used a vacuum. There's also if you want to buy something for it of take a sandwich bag turned inside out, put pretty powerful, whatever, however powerful magnet you have inside there, go around the inside of the machine. All the stuff is going to stick to the magnet, turn the bag inside out right side in the correct way, and then just pull the magnet out and all the shavings are sitting in the bag. So, you know, people come with cool things for that stuff I've seen that is along those lines like 3D printed stuff. Usually pretty decent prices on there, but there is stuff out there if you go look around like on eBay and Etsy and stuff like that for those what, you know, it's kind of fun, kind of fun to have that have stuff stored nicely. I keep all my stuff stored in. It's basically a tackle box that's a very small tackle box. There's different compartments for everything and it works fine. You know, people use all different kinds of, you know, craft boxes, electrical boxes for holding electrical parts and stuff like that. But anything like that, you know, all kind of works. Also depends how much moving your stuff around. If your sparxs is never moving, don't need anything that you can carry around with you. You can get one of those accessory holders that's made to sit on top of your sparxs and live right there. Or maybe something. If you have a nice set up and you have like a pegboard wall behind your something that goes under there, that holds everything, you know. But again, totally not required for any of that stuff, just trying to be handy with how you keep your things organized. All right. Now, in my time of having sparxs, I've really only had two issues. One is and this is a pretty common issue that I've seen with people is your skates can start to develop a little bit of a lip or I guess almost a point if you really sharpen a ton on them at one end. A lot of this, I think, is due to people not setting their height correctly when they're first running them. But the way I've kind of solved this is I just occasionally slip the skates around which way they're sharpening from not, not that big of a deal at all to do that, that seems to almost completely eliminate it, not 100% eliminate it, but it makes it such a minor thing and it's so far up on a blade that it's not going to affect you all skating. I have seen online people talking about having this issue and they talk about taking a Dremel and grinding down like a little knob. But I think at that point you need to be looking at you're doing something wrong if you're having to take a Dremel to your blades after sharpening. The only other issue that I've had is one of my wheels. And I think I've gone through nine or ten grinding wheels. I did have one wheel break after it was about three quarters of the way through its life. It had little pieces come off of it, little pieces off. The grinding element came off while sharpening. I never seen that before. Never seen a sense. I don't know what happened, but it did. So that's that's the only thing I've had. The only things I've had have issues with sparxs, the only other it's almost, but not really an issue I have. And this is purely because I have a genuine machine is the size and weight of it. To move this thing around is a pain in the butt. It's just heavy enough and just bulky enough that it is not easy to move. So I would say if you ever planned on getting sparxs, don't get a Gen one if you're ever going to move it. If you want to make it be portable, if you want to put it in a case and take it with you, get a newer one. The case for the Gen one is big, it's bulky, it's got wheels, you need wheels. The Gen two has a backpack. You just throw it on your back and take it with you. I would not put the Gen one on my back. That'd be awful to carry that thing around like that. So again, not an issue, but kind of a I guess, gripe with it. Again, it's a Gen one machine is their first version of it doesn't really bother me now for what I see as the biggest downside of sparxs is the cost. So I'm going to try and break it down as best as I can for how much I've paid for it and kind of in the future to see if it makes sense for you. Now, Sparx does have a little cost calculator thing online too, but this is the barely your cost calculator. So my Kickstarter deal was 549 for the sharpener with a single wheel. As of right now, the recording of this podcast, a new Gen two machine goes for $600 a Gen three for $900. So these aren't cheap. These are not cheap machines. This isn't something on a whim you really go out and get. But once you buy the actual machine, you also need to factor in buying an edge checker, buying whatever you're using to finish your steel with buying whatever, you know, sharpening wheels. You need to get a travel case if you want to get one, you know, So there's stuff on top of this costs. So it's not just like I said, you know, 600 bucks. it's not too bad. But that's not it. It doesn't stop there. You're probably adding on another 150 to 200 bucks on top of it. Other stuff to buy. And now with wheels going for $70 and they have steadily gone up since the sparxs came out, the stuff can start to add up. Now. A sharpening wheel lasts something like 150 passes. Sparx never really says how much they last. They give you a range of sharpening as you should get. Sharpening does not equal a pass on the wheel, but it seems to be about 150 passes per wheel. So if you do a little math of that and you're doing a regular amount of passes with your sharpening, that costs about a dollar, a sharpening now around me sharpening go for 10 to $15 there, that's been creeping up a lot to about$15 ones is a place that uses a sparxs machine exclusively. And they're also a place that has more expensive sharpening that supposedly basically just do more checking of your skates and like spray like a deodorizer in your skate, you know, stuff like that which, you know, I'm not paying ten bucks some to spray some deodorizer on my skate. That seems ridiculous, but people do. So, okay, if you go with $15, say $15 sharpening is what's normal around you say about a dollar of it is going to us across the wheel. That means $14 of that, if you're doing it at home, would go back to paying for your sparxs. So you would need to be doing 43 sharpening to pay back the two machine. And that's just the machine. That's not extra wheels and not accessories or 65 sharpening to pay back the Gen three machine. So if you're just sharpening for yourself, that's a lot. That's a lot of sharp things. But if you're sharpening for your family, for sharpening for your teammates, something like that, you can get through those sharp rings probably in a couple of years and then you start paying back all the accessories that you bought from that. So definitely at the scale that, you know, like a big leaguer is doing this stuff out, it's not really a moneymaker. You know, you probably can pay it back and eventually make some money on it, but it's not a moneymaker by any means. But for someone like me who doesn't have access to a lot of people that I trust with my skates, I mean, honestly, I only have one or two people I have in places, one or two people that I would trust around and sharp my skates, and one of them who is a person I like to do. It is about 45 minutes away and isn't there in the evenings usually and on the weekends when they're there, they're there because there's kids tournaments going on. So you're waiting around for sometimes an hour and a half for them to get to. Like my skates. It's some of that is thrown in there too, because it is a huge time savings. With all that, though, is you got to, you know, like I said, put in the work to make sure you're getting a good sharpening. You know, I think that's the other thing is if you're going to buy sparxs and try and make money, I don't make money back on it. You got to know it is not completely a set it and forget it kind of thing. You do have to put a little bit of time and effort into it and these places that don't do it and they're just using a sparxs, I think it actually makes a lot of sense to buy yourself sparxs then, because even if it takes a number of years for you to make the money back, you're going to get a better sharpening every time. Kind of on the flip side of all, this is a have seen Sparx and the Sparx products hold their value. I have seen people selling their Jen ones for, you know, 500 bucks online for the sole purpose of selling the Gen One to buy the Gen two, mostly because they want to travel with it. And the Gen two is way better to travel with than the Gen one. I have also seen people selling wheels. They only have a couple sharpening on them. So going way back to the beginning when I was saying, if you buy a new hollow and you want to try it out at a couple stick and pucks or some open skates just to check it out and you realize, Hey, I hate this hollow, you can probably find somebody to buy it at, you know, a pretty good price. Like I see people selling wheels that, you know, have been used but they say or you know, I've only had, you know, ten passes or something on them or 15 passes on them and they sell them for like 50 bucks. So while 20 bucks to try to New Hollow isn't great, that's almost what you're paying for a sharpening. You know, if you're paying 15 bucks for a sharpening and I know where I'm at here in Ohio in the U.S., that's pretty cheap compared to other places. I know in Canada, people pay more for sharpening for sure. So 20 bucks to try a different hollow horse thing in the world. Yeah. It's also a way that you can buy some used wheels online. Usually you can find them from people you know, pay 50 bucks, run it on your blades a couple of times, go out to, like I said, some stick in parks or open skates or something like that, which is kind of one of the really nice things having sharpener at home is you can do that stuff before you go to something like a stick and park trial. The New Hollow, see if you like it. If you don't before your next game, put your regular hollow on it and then sell that wheel for the same price you bought it for. So that is a really nice thing you can do with the sparxs that you can't do if you have to go to a place and spend, you know, the money every time they get a new sharpening. I do try and stay pretty current with what people are saying and talking about the sparxs online, you know, checking forums and different posting and stuff people put on, you know, on like Facebook or Reddit or whatever, just to see what people are saying, you know, is working, not working. Ask people have tips about, you know, like I said, flipping the blade around just to get rid of those little, little bumps on them or alternative caring cases or like those 3D printed accessories that people are doing, you know, just see what's out there with stuff. While I'm doing that, I see a lot of stuff about people complaining with issues that they've had, not stuff I've had with. But here's other issues I have seen and read. People have had with their sparxs. One issue I've seen pop up a lot is with the Gen one machines and new wheels. So it sounds like there was a pretty bad batch of wheels that went out that if you use them in a Gen one machine Origin tour gen3 it basically locked up your machine and you had to do a firmware update. Fortunately, I had this issue. I've bought new wheels, haven't seen it happen, but it might and that sucks. The firmware update seems super easy to get hold of sparxs. The customer service is really nice. They send you a little kit, but they do the firmware update. You have to like unscrew the side of the machine, kind of take it apart, plug some stuff in and run a software update through it doesn't seem that difficult, but, you know, I don't really want to be doing that with my sharpener. I believe the newer machines have ways to do that kind of over the air, like using the app and stuff, which is a much nicer way in a more modern way to do it. But again, I haven't run into that right about it. Hopefully it doesn't happen to me. Another huge amount of issues I've seen very recently is with the new Beam Edge checker. It seems like there's a lot of issues with it. People have issues with the connecting to the app, people have issues with it, you know, powering on, staying powered on or actually checking edges or actually doing the thing it's supposed to do. A lot of those that I've seen, from what I can tell, think that it's not as much the beam itself not working, but the design of it and the directions to use it are not great. So I think a lot of people aren't realizing how to charge it properly, put it on its charger, how to get it to connect with the app and stuff like that. I think it's that I think it's more of the problem than the beam. I haven't seen a lot of stuff that makes me think the beam itself just doesn't work. But there is a lot of people out there have problems with it. Finally, a lot of people and not as much now, but a lot of people in the last couple of years were complaining that the sparxs no longer offers a consumer cross grinding ring. The initial offered one when the sparxs first came out for you to grind flat, you're hollow. So if you were changing your hollow, you have to use up, you know, one of your regular grinding rings. You had this really aggressive crossover ending wearing that you would run through and it would just kind of flatten out your hollow. It's also worked. If you were correcting an issue with a skate, you know, if you did have a nikkor, a gouge or something, you're not just running through a regular hollow, you're using this cross grinding ring to really aggressively just knock off steel. They very quickly stopped making that available for the consumer models. It was available for the pro model for a long time. I don't know if it still is or not, but it was coded to only work with the pro models, but people wanted to have that for their consumer model so they could use that versus going through their regular grinding rings. And the reason that sparxs stopped doing it is it generated way too much metal shavings and dust the machines. So it was shortening the life of filters like crazy and just making a super dirty way faster than it should. And people are complaining then that they have to change filters all the time. Again, not a big deal for the pro models because you're hooked up to a vacuum, so it just sucks it away. Who cares? But the consumer ones just have filters, so it's clogging those up super fast, so they got rid of it to kind of eliminate that as an issue. Also, I think a lot of people were using that cross grinding ring way too often and way too much. It sounded like a lot of people were every time they would change a hollow were just grinding the crap out of their steel and that would make a lot of shavings in your machine. So, you know, to eliminating those kind of issues, Sparx just got rid of that for the consumer machines. Never I never had one don't get I don't have one like that. I don't deal with issues on blades like that. So I don't think it's a big thing if I have to change hollow whatever, I don't change that my hollow that often to really care about having to grind it down first. You know, I run it through the New Hollow ten times or something. That's fine. Totally not something you need, but is a thing people used to complain about. Now, as more and more new people have gotten Sparx's machines and we know that existed, so they're not complaining about it. Obviously not neither. In conclusion, overall, I've loved being able to sharpen my skates regularly, not having to drive 45 minutes to the good sharpener. I Saturday wait around for and take care of whatever kid's tournament is going on and then finally get to my skates and then drive 45 minutes back. If only for that reason. Only Sparx has been a win for me. Always take my skates to other places. It was very hit or miss. Honestly, it was usually more miss and sometimes terribly miss. I had some really bad sharp rings from people. I remember taking it again to apply it again because I was the only place around me that was open to get sharpening. I'd gotten new skates and I just remember hearing the terrible, terrible noise that was coming out of the back room with the kids sharpening, and it was one of those I wanted to go back there, tell them to stop, because I knew I made a giant mistake. But I was in the Learn to Play program at the time, and I went that night with my skates and I thought I all sudden forgot completely how to skate because I could barely stand up. And that's when I learned how bad a bad sharpening can be. So it's nice to not have to do that anymore. I also like to play around different hollows, try the flat bottom stuff. I changed my hollow, got an open skate, try it out, realize hey, I don't like that. Neglecting a regular hollow. Yeah, it can get pricey. But like I said before, you can buy and sell stuff online and maybe you can find, you know, teammates of yours or somebody kid that wants to use that halo that you have. So there's ways to kind of go around that. But that's a really nice and cool, convenient thing to have. I think Sparx is totally worth it. If you plan to sharpen multiple skates, the more skates you sharpen, the more worth it is. And if you actually plan to put a little bit time into it, especially, it's worth it if you don't have a convenient, convenient access to a good manual sharpener if just barely. You're like me. I normally sharpening skates only a few times a year. Honestly, it is mostly a price. A gadget that you don't need to have. It's totally a luxury thing. Okay. I hope this helps everybody thinking about buying a Sparx for warning about sparxs. If you think about buying another automated sharpener, maybe some of these things are things to look at between the sparxs and something else. Let me know. Do you have a sparxs? Have you liked it? If you don't have one, you thought about getting one. What stopped you from getting it? As always? And he likes subscriptions. Interviews are always appreciated by everybody. See in the next one.
