How to remove the holder from a pair of skates

[Bazan110584 0]

This is probably a dumb question, but I'll ask anyway.

I am looking to convert a pair of ice skates to inline. I think I can install the inline chassis all right, but I need some help removing the holder from the ice skates (thereby leaving me with the boot only). Specifically, how do I go about doing it?

Any and all help is appreciated.

And I've never done anything like this before.

[trox_355 0]

I (an hour ago) just got done removing the holder from a pair myself. I'd suggest looking around the board for the ways others have done it, but after removing the holder from the second skate, I found a way that worked well for me. These were the steps I used for a pair of CCM 652 tacks, so if your boot is of a different construction, keep that in mind.

Assuming you're using standard rivets, get an 11/64" drill bit designed for drilling metals. Start drilling on the center of the rivets, going slowly until you have a good notch made in the metal that's exactly in the center of the rivet. Once you know the hole isn't going anywhere, you can start drilling a little faster, but slow down when you think you are getting to where the level of where the rivet head meets the holder. At this point, go slowly until you start to see some of the plastic of the holder, or at the point where the head of the rivet you drilled through begins to separate. If you can see plastic around the hole you drilled, you can try to pry the rivet head off and then push the now-headless rivet through the holder and outsole.

I also found using an aluminum oxide grinding bit on a Dremel tool helped to flatten out and get a small notch started in the rivet heads. If you use one of these, make sure it's the tan-colored aluminum oxide bit and not the white-ish silicon carbide bits--they don't last very long on metals (ask me how I know).

If the boot has copper rivets, it's pretty much the same with those as well. Try grinding down the expanded top part until you can pry the washer off the bottom, then it's a matter of pushing the rivet through.

Make sure to watch the temperature of all the rivets, especially the copper ones. If you don't care about using the holder again, you probably shouldn't have to worry as much, but it'll help keep the plastic insole from melting. Since the copper ones act like such great heatsinks, the big head on the inside of the boot will melt through the insole without much work on your part.

Now I'm just waiting for my Sprung chassis to arrive...

Hope this helps!

[Jason16 0]

Grab a roberts head screwdriver and put the tip into the rivet inside the boot. Get a mallet and start hammering away. The rivet will pop out with ease. For the copper ones, I heated the washer with a lighter (~2s) then peeled it off with a pair of needle nose pliers.