A roller mounting apparatus for an in-line roller skate blade comprises a body having a footware connector portion, a spacing portion adjacent the footware connector portion and a roller mounting portion adjacent the spacing portion. The roller mounting portion has roller mounts for mounting a plurality of rollers in tandem spaced apart positions such that contact points on outer surfaces of the rollers will lie on a first common curved line having no portion with a radius of curvature more than about 10 m, so that a contact point on a surface of a roller immediately adjacent to any given roller is spaced apart between about 0.1 mm to about 13 mm from a line tangent to the curved line at a point defined by the contact point of the given roller. A roller blade comprising the roller mounting apparatus is also disclosed. There is also disclosed a method of sharpening an outer circumferential surface of a rotatable roller of a roller blade by causing an outer circumferential surface of a rotating grinding implement to contact the outer circumferential surface of the rotatable roller at a contact point such that a grinder plane containing the contact point and a rotation axis of the rotating grinding implement is disposed at an angle to a roller plane containing the contact point and a rotational axis of the roller. Also disclosed is a method of sharpening an outer circumferential surface of a rotatable roller by causing an outer circumferential surface of a rotating grinding implement to contact the outer circumferential surface of the rotatable roller such that the rotating grinding implement tends to drive the roller in a first direction of rotation while causing a contact surface of a rotating drive wheel to contact the roller to cause the roller to rotate in a second direction against the first direction of rotation to cause relative movement between the roller and the outer circumferential surface of the grinding implement.