Inline Skate Boot Repairs Help Needed; How to Fix Skates

Hi JonathanS. Ouch. Sorry to hear about the K2 Radicals and the sheared rivet. Without seeing it, I guess I'd say take the boot to an automotive fasteners shop (look in the good old yellow pages...in Greensboro, for example, there are at least two I know of), where they have all sorts of, well, fasteners for automobiles. When searching for skate bolts and such, I have found the big hardware stores to be less and less good for getting useful stuff. They'd be a good source for expoxy, as would Hobby Lobby. A NAPA might be able to get something for you if you know what to call it by the time you ask. This is often the hardest part, just knowing the name of the piece you need. Anyway, as I think about it maybe bondo might come in handy too...you know the stuff that can sometimes be useful fixing dents or holes or both (usually both as you used to drill a hole to pull a dent, right?). I'm not knowledgeable with the stuff, but think you might end up deciding it could help shore up the repair. The main item that comes to mind is a T-nut, which has a flat base (the top of the T-shaped item) you could put on the inside, and a female-threaded stem (the longer part of the T-shaped item) that would go through the rivet hole to receive a bolt. I think you can easily get these with a base (the disc shape at the top of the T) of up to an inch. If the T-Nut base is not big enough, you might be able to fashion a large, perhaps flexible, mega-washer of sorts from something plastic which is fairly thin but rigid (cheap vanity licence plate plastic, layers or not of plastic file folder material, that mighty thin chopping board stuff which is really hard but thin plastic--the horrors of these under my feet remain, something like that. Regarding T-nuts, they are often used in the bottom of the boots of rec skates, with the flat base inside the boot, protruding through a hole in the boot and the frame, so a bolt can be attached from below. Come to think of it, I think T-nuts are used in speed skates too, but we're not usually supposed to see or feel that! You might find T-nuts in your old rec skates lying around in a closet, or at the Play It Again Sports store, or with some frames that were usable for either speed or rec skating (like the 3x100+85 black/yellow Salomon frame that went cheaply on eBay a couple of years ago. Maybe someone with such a frame has some T-nuts. You might email the inlinenc and triangleskateclub lists on yahoogroups.com. There are a lot of McGyver types in the skate world so somebody has something I'm sure, but so will the automotive fastener shops and even the local guys that work on auto body repairs maybe. Don't forget the local skating rink, either, if you have one. You know they have to repair rental skates and speed team skates, so they'll likely have some hacks to suggest or do for you. I don't know the situation but it seems like a T-nut, a couple of pieces of plastic inside and out, maybe some epoxy if using layers of anything, and a bolt might do it for a couple of weeks. Speaking of layering, if you have some Tyvek envelopes (of course I don't mean go down to the US Post Office and get them free to use in your project, but ones that have been mailed to you, or that you've incorrectly written an address on, yep), these can be used in layers with epoxy to fashion some very crude but pretty durable fibroxy (just my made up term) for skatey stuff. As an aside with me as hero, my favorite kind of story because there are so few, once in New Orleans when the plastic top part of my VW Rabbit's radiator sprung a leak, after 6:00 p.m. on Sunday, I was able to fashion a patch with epoxy and Burger King napkins methinks it was that somehow held together for the trip home to NC. Dumb luck I'd say, but yay for epoxy! And I've skated 2 Athens to Atlanta trips at least on skates repaired the night before, sad to admit. For repair projects others like to use JB Weld and I can say the times I have used it I didn't find it quite as good to work with, but it depends what you're doing of course. For this project it might be the best as it is more of a putty consistency as I recall. Keep JB Weld in mind for your project, though, especially if you can't find a T-Nut. Also there's some plumber's epoxy putty and I tried it for something. I think I liked mixing epoxy better. At Hobby Lobby you can get various styles of epoxy with differing drying times. You mentioned rivets. That brings to mind that a shade-tree auto repair guy or gal might have a thought or two. Also, timv often recommends machine shops as they are folk who figure mechanical things out all day every day. Crazy asking this, but is this a job that zip-ties could be used for? Sorry to not know the boots in question. Don't forget a thin layer of neoprene might be glued to the inside where the T-Nut is, but it might just make it worse so try that before pasting it down too tightly. Also Loc-tite makes a product called RTV Plastic methinks it is, which is soft rubbery stuff when dry (squeezes out of a tube) and it might be good for a thin layer of comfort over the T-Nut or other repair. I used RTV Black to repair my 1979 Fiat Spider 2000 convertible's top many times. It's flexible and durable and easy to work with. Well I hope some of these ideas help. Attach a photo if you would like to show us what it looks like. Good luck! Let us know what you end up doing and how well or not it works!