03 Apr 2026 · Ice notes
January wants a thin bite so the crust does not chatter. March wants that bite to have a millimetre of mercy. People who recut for ice and never come back find a shovel in the sponge.
Leading-edge height, on a Grind Bay sheet, is how far the front of the sole sits off the plate at address, measured before the first counted swing and again after a pass. It is not “sharpness.” You can have a sharp feeling face and a high edge, or a dull feeling face and a knife that still dives. Height is geometry. Feel is a rumor we do not write down.
After a harbor thaw the apron is a sponge sitting on cold dirt. A knife-thin edge that was perfect on January glaze now enters too early and too deep. The stain moves behind the ball. Energy goes into mud. The ball goes nowhere, or it goes low and wet. Golfers describe this as “the grind wore off.” Again: metal does not grow. The surface changed and the edge height did not.
What we do in April: wet the strip, stain the current edge, then add a small rise — often less than a millimetre — by recutting the camber behind the edge rather than blunting the edge into a shovel. Blunting is how shops panic. A blunt edge on next January’s crust will chatter worse than the original. The honest April sit keeps a clean bite and lifts the hull behind it so the sponge has something to push against. That is crown doing work the edge should not be asked to do alone.
There is a version of this that goes the other way. A golfer who only plays the thaw — snowbirds who arrive in April and leave before ice — can live with a slightly higher edge all year. A golfer who plays ice and thaw has to pick, or book the flip. We would rather see you twice than ship a hybrid edge that chatters in January and still dives in March. The harbor clock is built for return visits. Tuesday and Wednesday exist so we can dress belts for exactly this kind of small pass.
Bring a sleeve of the ball you use after a thaw. Barrel balls are harder and they lie about how much the face wants to dig. Shoes you walk the municipal in, not downtown leather. The pitching iron, because a diving 56 often shares a bag with a gap that is already confused. Halina will look at the gap after Mara looks at the edge. The sheet can hold both arguments.
A warning we write in hazard yellow: if your counted swings are all lunges, we will not touch the edge. A lunge drives any edge into the sponge. Grinding a liar swing is how heads get ruined and how golfers blame Buffalo. We stop, refund unused wheel time, and tell you to come back when the stain is repeatable. That refusal is in the FAQ because people argue with it. The plate does not argue. It just shows the lunge.
If you want the sand version of this story — packed cement after a lake storm — Dory wrote that note. Edges in sand are a different meal. Do not copy an April turf number onto a bunker sole and expect the jar on the bench to agree.