Bladesharpener 2017
City’s family-owned business able to maintain an edge
WOONSOCKET— Skate and tool sharpening is more than just a day job for Joseph Lemay, it’s an art form.
The owner of Lemay’s Sharpening on St. Barnabe Street – the city’s last family-owned and operated sharpening business – Lamay, 53, is carrying on a tradition his late father, Robert L. Lemay, started in 1971.
Lemay’s Sharpening has been providing skate sharpening services to several generations of Woonsocket-area hockey players and skaters, and it’s the place landscapers, home gardeners, tailors and chefs go to get a cutting edge on their axes, scissors, knives, chainsaws and mower blades. “Years ago, there used to be a few sharpening businesses in the city, but we’re the only one
left,” says Lemay, who is carrying on the business his father started in the workshop basement of the family home on St. Barnabe Street.
That address – 206 St. Barnabe St. – has been memorized by thousands of Mount Saint Charles Academy hockey players over the years who have come to depend on Lemay’s to keep their skates sharp.
The Mount Saint Charles Academy men’s hockey team led by legendary coach Norman “Bill” Belisle won 26 consecutive state titles from 1978–2003 and began a new streak with state victories in 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011. Over the years, a total of 20 alumni have been drafted by the NHL, including Brian Lawton and Bryan Berard.
Today, you can find photo- graphs of all of those players posing with Bob Lemay on the walls of his workshop, which Joe Lemay calls “The Wall of Fame.” The walls of the original workshop that houses the skate sharpening machines is plastered with hundreds of photographs of Mount Saint Charles hockey players and newspaper stories going back to the 1970s.
“You have to do something that stands out to get on the wall,” Lemay says.
Robert Lemay, who graduated from Mount Saint Charles in the early 1950s, worked for more than 30 years at Industrial Machine Corp. in Georgiaville, which closed in 1987. To earn a little extra money, Lemay and his wife, Claire, opened Lemay’s Skate Sharpening Company from their home. Today, there is still a sign out front directing customers to a side entrance that leads to the basement level workshop.
In the early days, Lemay charged $1 to sharpen a pair of ice skates.
“In those days, the high schools paid to have the kids’ skates sharpened. The competition was fierce and there were a lot of bidding wars,” Joe Lemay says. “In five years we had every school in the area. Years ago, cars would be parked up and down the road and the kids would be lined up outside to get their skates sharpened.”
Today, sharpening a pair of skates at Lemay’s costs $6, a bargain in anyone’s book. You also get a ticket with each sharpening. Collect six tickets and your next sharpening is free.
Lemay’s father eventually expanded the workshop to provide additional sharpening services for carpenters and professional landscapers, which had been a big part of the business until the recession in 2008.
“When the recession hit, we lost about 80 percent of landscaper business because a lot of those guys went out of business,” Joe Lemay says.
A 1982 graduate of Woonsocket High School, Joe Lemay began working with his father and learning how to sharpen skates when he was 15.
According to Lemay, a skate blade is sharpened by creating a perfectly rounded valley, centered on the bottom of the blade. This forms a pair of sharp edges at the outer extremities of the blades giving skaters control on the ice. This valley is the hollow, or more precisely, the “radius of hollow.”
While the workshop may not be as busy as it used to be, Lemay has no plans of retiring. His nephew, Matthew, helps out when he can, and there is still enough business to justify the workshop’s daily operation.
“We’re going to be around for a little bit longer,” he says. Follow Joseph Fitzgerald on Twitter @jofitz7