Can Ice Skates cut your fingers off, When I first started ice skating, I was concerned that if I would fall and someone goes over me with his sharp ice skates, will it cut my fingers? I used to think so because I had done roller skating for a long time and I had some instances of people going over my hand while wearing their skates but that wasn’t that painful.
I did a bunch of research and some small experiments to find the answer to my question and I am going to discuss that in this article. Also, I will be covering about the figure skaters how they can stand on their partner.
Ice skates are sharp enough to cut your fingers off when someone who weighs more goes over at high speeds but still one can easily gently run your fingers over the skates without hurting yourself. The pain of the cut depends on numerous factors including the weight of the person, speed, and the skates he’s using, and many more.
Are Ice Skates As Sharp As Knives?
When we talk about blades the first thing that comes to our mind is a knife, and undoubtedly knife is a very sharp object that can cause many serious injuries but are ice skate blades as sharp as a knife?
Ice skates are very sharp but not as sharp as a knife or a blade, a knife is actually flat while ice skaters are U shaped making the knife have a sharper edge while the U shape makes the ice skate blades less sharp but still when moving at a high speed, skates can be very dangerous.
As I mentioned skates are not as sharp as a knife but they can cause the same damage when the velocity is increased. A person moving at a speed of 31 Mph can cause equal damage when someone hits a person with a knife intending to kill. (Not including the other factors)
How Painful Can The Cut Caused By Ice Skates Be?
If ice skates go over you, it can cut your fingers off, make a little cut, and even sometimes it may do nothing on your skin. This all depends upon a bunch of factors.
The Ice Skate The Person Is Using
Newer skates are generally sharper than old ice skates or skates that just get sharpened are also very sharp. The way that person sharpens his skate also comes into play – the sharpest skates would be 0.125 inches and the least sharp would be one inch.
The cut would be deeper and basically more painful if the ice skate blade is less than 0.06 (generally the width of speed skates) inches and if the ice skate is more than 0.06 inches, then the probability of getting hurt is very less.
Keep in mind that the blades of ice skates are not sharpened like the way we sharpen knives.
Speed of the Person Going Over
The speed of the skater can make a huge difference. While ice skate may cause no damage to your hand when in less speed, the same skate can make a very deep cut if the skater is skating at high speed.
Weight Of the Person Going Over
The weight of the person using that ice skate also comes to play. As the more, the weight will be the more force the ice skates are going to exert on the ground (fingers.)
Age Of The Person
If ice skates go over a child, then the results could be very critical as the skin of kids is very soft meaning very easy to cut. On the other hand, the damage on an adult’s finger would definitely be lesser but still, it will be painful.
Position Of Your Fingers
The position or the way your finger is on the ground makes a huge difference, if only some part of your finger or hand gets in contact with the skate then the pain is going to be much less in comparison to when the fingers are in a normal position.
How Are Ice Skate Blades Made?
In General, The Ice skate blades are made of tempered carbon steel coated with carbon to make it look shiny, nowadays, some blades are also made of stainless steel.
Types Of Blades
There are usually 4 types of blades used in ice skating for different purposes.
| Speed Blades | Hockey blades | Freestyle Figure | Dance Blades |
| Used For Speed skating | Used By Hockey Players | Used For Freestyle skating | Used For dance skating |
| 1 mm wide | 3 mm wide | 4 mm wide | 4-6 mm wide |
| Very Sharp | Sharp | Not That Sharp | Least Sharp |
Speed skate blades are usually 18 inches long 3 mm wide. Speed skates are super sharp and can be very dangerous if they go over your fingers.
Why Are Ice Skates Sharp?
Ice skates are sharp because they have to correlate with the friction of the steel and the ice. The sharper the skates be the easier it would be for you to glide, stop, and turn. The blades have to be sharp enough to ensure that the blades have bites which will help you make turns.
Do You Need to Be Worried Of Going Of Ice Skate Over Your Fingers?
Yes, going of any kind of ice skate blade over your hand is going to cause pain (a lot of pain) so it is better to be careful of this.
Although, there are many other injuries caused by ice skating which is much more dangerous and are more common still it can be dangerous so you have to take some precautions if you are a newbie, even if you are already a pro skater, then also you should take these precautions because you may become the skater going on someone’s fingers so it is better to take precautions than this.
How to Avoid Getting Ice Skates Off Your Fingers
First of all, keep a good amount of distance from other ice skaters (just like social distancing) stay away from people to avoid this. Secondly, many times I see this happening where the person is taking support of someone to get up and he ends up getting that person’s ice skates over him.
So, avoid taking the support of other people if you are falling because it may make the other person go over you by mistake.
Lastly, keep your speed down, don’t over speed especially when you’re starting and you don’t know properly how to stop because you may do it to someone but basically broken arms and concussions are more common than the fingers injury so to avoid them as well, you have to keep your speed down.
How Figure Skaters Stand On Their Partner Without Hurting Them?
Now, you may think if these ice skates are so sharp then how are those figure skaters able to stand up on their partner without hurting them and perform tricks.
The answer is simple.
Figure skates are very thick in comparison to normal ice skates. Normal ice skates are usually 1-2 mm thick while figure ice skates are 4-6mm thick reducing their sharpness. The blades have two edges making the weight distributed. Also, figure skates are designed in a special way that makes these lifts tolerable. That’s why it does not hurt much but it still hurts.
As sharpness does not play a big role in figure skating as sharpness is basically meant for speed and figure skating does not focus on speed the way normal ice skating focuses.
