Using a heat gun to help adjust specific parts of a skate fit

[VegasHockey 1256]

Has anyone does this? 

[mojo122 529]

Where and what is your issue?

[Kgbeast 195]

I have done it. You have to be very careful because the heatgun is way above the temp that can fry the skates. If you want to be foolproof, you should consider using hairdryer, these run under 200F which is enough to do adjustments. Alternatively, you can warm up the whole skate to 70% of the suggested molding temp and punch out in the spot that you are interested in. If your skates list 200F, go with 140F for spot adjustments. 

[Vet88 673]

A heat gun is fine, around 40 seconds to a minute of heating, held 6" from the boot and keep it moving over the area all the time. If I am spot heating and don't want to heat the surrounding area of the boot I use a sheet of thick cardboard with a hole cut n it to overlay the boot and reduce the amount of heat going to the surrounding areas.

[slooz 0]

What about the heel? I'd like to adjust it without having to rebake the entire skate again.

[Vet88 673]

1 hour ago, slooz said:

What about the heel? I'd like to adjust it without having to rebake the entire skate again.

The heel area is the hardest part to work on because of the curves and the strength in it. It would be easy if one had specialist tools made for it but I work with what I have at hand, c clamps and blocks of wood. What do you want to do? So far I have reshaped heels for a closer fit (ie turn a supreme heel into a vapour fit), widened them for a larger fit, punched them for haglunds and other bumps and reshaped the heel outwards for pronation (widen the outside of the heel so the foot shifts outward in relation to the blade). If you want to work on the heel with a little bit of heat and not have the heat affect the rest of the skate then that is easy to do.