GappyHilmore

Hi all,

I haven't used these boards in a year or two (sorry if I missed a message from you), but thought maybe someone here might be able to help me out. My current skates were never perfect for me, but weren't overly terrible either. I've gone back to school for a post-grad program, and the new school has a 3 hour session of FREE shinny on campus every week day afternoon! Needless to say, I'm getting on the ice more frequently and for longer sessions. My feet are now in some serious pain though and my skates are no longer just a minor inconvenience.

I've had a bit of interest in grafs for awhile now. I know the deal with grafs, that they make them for foot type based on heel width, heel shape, and heel instep. I've played hockey for more than 20 years, so yes, I know the you've got to try skates on if you want good fit. That said, I've been to three stores that sell grafs and no one that helped me seemed to know anything about fitting grafs; all of them made suggestions purely on price point despite my efforts to steer it to foot type ("yeah, they're heat moldable, so really it's just about what features you want"  ). And here I was thinking the extra cost associated with buying in person was justified with service and expertise. Anyway, none of the stores had a huge selection of grafs that would allow me to try 50 different skates until something matched, and I didn't feel like being a prick to some kids at their part time jobs so I just left disappointed lol.

I'm not sure what counts as a "wide" heel or anything, but I thought maybe I could measure myself to determine heel width, shape, and instep depth, and use that to hone in on a few models that might be appropriate. Well, I've spent an embarrassing amount of time searching for how these measurements are taken when fitting for grafs but can't turn anything up besides people saying it's best to go to a graf retailer, which obviously didn't work for me... on 3 occasions. So now I turn to you guys, hoping there's someone here that works for a skate shop, has a foot fetish, is a graf fan boy, or just has a really good memory of when some kind, knowledgeable person fitted them for grafs! Does anyone know what measurements and/or calculations graf suggests using to determine your foot type?

Any help will be HUGELY appreciated. Thanks for reading.