Curling Ice

There is no question that is ever asked a curler more often about curling ice than, "Do you use a Zamboni on it?" The short answer to that question is "no." And if you read on you will learn all about how curling ice is made and how it is different than hockey ice and skating ice.

The Ice Bed

There is an old joke about an ice fisherman hearing voices from above telling him that there are no fish underneath the surface in which he is boring holes. After moving a few times he continues to hear the voice and finally asks, "Are you God?" To which the voice responds, "No, I'm the arena announcer, now get off the ice." If you were to bore a hole through the curling ice, what would you find? Besides one extremely agitate ice maker, you would find one of two things: either a big pile of sand or a slab of concrete. Some clubs are fortunate enough to have a concrete floor that is cooled much in the same way a refrigerator is cooled allowing for very even ice temperatures and very quick ice making due to an extremely level floor and unexposed pipes. Other clubs use a sand base that contains a series of pipes through which a cooling agent is passed. With sand beds the cooling pipes are exposed and the sand can shift and displace the cooling pipes make the bed not quite so level.

The Ice Itself

Curling ice does not have to be tremendously thick. It need only be about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch thick above the highest part of the ice field. So, generally speaking, the ice will be thicker in a sand field than on a concrete floor. Creating curling ice can be a time consuming process. If you simply filled the ice bed and let it freeze you would like have ice that was not very level and not very good to play on. Instead, a series of "floods" are done. A very thin layer of water is set down in the bed and allowed to freeze. Once it has frozen solid, another thin layer of water is set down. So on and so forth until the ice is built up enough to survive an entire season of play. After a few floods, but before the final floods, the ice is painted. Those circles that you see on the ice are in fact painted by hand to look as nice as they do. At the same time lengths of ribbon, yarn or string are run along the surface to mark the boundaries of play. Immediately after being painted or having a placed on it, that section of ice is sprayed with a fine mist of water to help seal in the color of the paint or the line placed down.

The Ice Surface

Our bed is made. We've laid some floods on it, done our painting and laid some more floods down. We are ready to play right? Well, not quite. Curling ice is not flat ice, so running a Zamboni over it would not be helpful for us at all. Instead little droplets of water are sprayed on the ice (using a backpack with a hose and sprinkler head assembly or any of a number of other methods) and allowed to freeze. This is called "pebbling" the ice and the little water droplets are called "pebble." This pebble allows curling stones to travel easily over the ice and more importantly to make the stones curl. Pebble also makes the people who sweep the ice effective by changing the path of the moving stone. By sweeping the ice they are in fact melting the pebble and reducing the friction between the stone and the pebble, allowing the stone to travel further and straighter.

Care Of The Ice

Caring for curling ice is tremendously important. Pebble will accumulate over time and every once in a while it needs to be removed entirely and replaced. This is akin to cleaning all the shuffleboard wax off a shuffleboard table and starting anew. We do this by using a tool called a scraper, in effect a large metal blade attached to an electric motor. Scraping the ice in this manner not only removes the old broken down pebble but also scrapes off any frost that has accumulated as a result of moisture in the air.

There are also small things that curlers can do to help maintain the ice as well. Keeping shoes and brooms clean keeps dirt from getting ground into the ice. Not to mention, keeping our hands and arms off the ice, since our own body heat can make flat spots on the ice by melting it.

Want More Information?

Do you want more information about the creation and care of curling ice? Ice makers are notorious for their abilities to go on and on and on about curling ice. Simply stop your local icemaker and he or she will be glad to explain to you about dew point and humidity and scraping patterns and nippers and everything else about curling ice! Don't have an ice maker handy? Drop us a line at info@schenectadycurlingclub.org and we'll be glad to help you out!