If you've been in the habit of putting your skateguards on straight after skating, or leaving your blades wet, your blades might start to suffer with Edge Rust - quite simply, rust that appears up the side of the skate often close to the edges.
Edge rust will dramatically shorten the life of the skates. When you leave skates for sharpening, the technician can often deal with rust sitting in the hollow of the blade, but cannot easily do anything with the rust on the sides of the blade.
Further, rusts on the sides of the blade will give you notched edges, irrespective of how much the skates are sharpened, making your skating more difficult. Imagine skating on an edge shaped like a bread knife, rather than a carving knife!
Prevention is the best way to preserve the life of your blades. In order to prevent edge rust, follow our advice on skate maintenance .
Sadly not much can be done with edge rust - the ice technician will try to buff as much out as possible, but ultimately the only thing that can be done, aside buying new blades, is to keep the blades dry when not in use. Follow our skate maintenance guide for more information.
Fortunately edge rust has to get extremely bad in order to require new blades, though it can affect the quality of your edges - but remember: Any rust will actively hold water and increase the speed of aging on the blade - so make sure you look after your blades!