Modifying skates to prevent lace bite, add ankle support, and better heel lock on GSX skates.

[johncho]

11 minutes ago, OldSchoolGoalie said:

That is brutal! Are you skating now bare foot? No more issues?

No, it's actually funny. I was wearing my good socks from Stance socks - https://stance.ca/

And I kept on getting this crazy painful abrasion about the size of an eyelet, so I thought the eyelet what was rubbing against my leg so I tried to add cushioning like I wrote above, but somehow it made it worse. Well turns out the issue was the logo on the socks that's made of this rough material and since my skate had really good ankle wrap it was making it dig into my skin. If you have a look at their socks their logo is about the size of an eyelet and they line up perfectly to where the top eyelet goes. Their newer socks have the logo in the back.

So yeah in the end, no more issues.

Edited February 4 by johncho

[OldSchoolGoalie]

Found a bunch of old leather belts with plenty of workable space so I can probably use these to make something. I'll do a few tests and come back with something later. It won't look the "best" but it will work. Might get some chirps in the dressing room!

[OldSchoolGoalie]

I made a few prototypes of the eyelet extenders but really didn't like them. The boot is also pretty stiff which means I have to use about four eyelets to make it work and really I only want the top two squeezing that extra width down because if I go down to low my feet will cramp up. I had the belt leather to try some things but I need more wider squares and the cost to even consider this just isn't worth it.

I might try this later because I can use strips and stack them or make a 4 eyelet version off the leather and stack them a few times. I just need the hardware at the correct length to attach them.

Example:

 

or

 

 

My tests were not done like this as I made the loops via lace which properly didn't work well. I need to seal the leather properly to get this to work. I'll consider and try it again later.

I also looked into the heel lock a bit more and found my Yellow Superfeet did indeed take up some of that heel pocket as you can see below. As you go up the pocket pushes towards the front of the skate so essentially if you have your heel too high it doesn't sit in the pocket properly:

 

The Superfeet also force the top of my foot to be closer to the laces making that lace bite issue even worse. I've skated on flat insoles before and got sold into getting Superfeet due to that cramping pain, but from what I've found it was actually due to the boot being too tight which is why I don't tighten any lace from the top two and down. I have a game tomorrow so I'll try the flat ones and they're also super easy to make when they wear out as you can use 1/8" Neoprene and the thickness is the same.

For the Forsberg pads I'll need to find the proper size to cut down the middle so I don't loose support from the foam around making it compress faster, and also not having enough causing that pressure on my tendon again. I'll do something like this but maybe make the hole a bit smaller in width.

 

So far these do "work" but I need to adjust the cuts better as my Saturday game on my left I must've had it at the wrong position because it was digging in bad where I didn't cut it here:

Edited February 7 by OldSchoolGoalie

[creasecollector]

This probably won’t help, but I make sure when tying up my skates to pull the tongue out so it provides me with the forward flex I need while still cranking the laces where needed. 
 

[OldSchoolGoalie]

30 minutes ago, creasecollector said:

This probably won’t help, but I make sure when tying up my skates to pull the tongue out so it provides me with the forward flex I need while still cranking the laces where needed. 
 

I will make sure I'm doing this! Thank you for that.

So far with these skates I'm only cranking these laces as I only use the top two eyelets, nothing else. I make a bridge first so this part doesn't dig into my foot so outside in on both parts.



Then I take that lace and do a loop to the top eyelet for the heel lock.

After that I would take the lace ends for each side and put them through their opposites for the heel lock and use two or three unders for the first knot and then a double bow. Just like in the video:

 

 

The real challenge with the pads is due to the area being on the flex point. I have my order coming tomorrow to work on that eyelet extender.

[OldSchoolGoalie]

I ended up doing a hardware version but didn't like it due to a few reasons. With goalie skates at those eyelets even with the extenders it just doesn't crank the side enough to what I want as I'm using two eyelets for this, but it does give a good half an inch (I've done more by layering it) of forward flex without the lace digging in. The second issue is the hardware touching and digging into the ankle. I did switch to a lace method but it just won't secure it the same on a single by single basis due to the strips and with belt leather you really need to crank it down.

I was also worried about the stock eyelets on the boot because when I would crank them with the extenders and flex forward it did put a lot of stress on the eyelets.

For now I'll just remain with the pads until I get new skates - hopefully within 6 months! The only way I could make it work with extenders for these would be to use several eyelets and lace to secure them but with larger pieces of softer leather so I'm not dealing with a strip per eyelet and something as stiff. For the cost to do this it would just be better to buy new skates.

[OldSchoolGoalie]

I should probably update this as the lace bite issue got 100% resolved with the help of using Forsberg pads and changing my lace method to move it lower down.

Thread: 

Lacing method: