[natelevi]

Hey guys

First of all I must give props to leaferguy for his tutorial. Today I completed the slide plate mod on my velocity I's. Pictures to follow.

What I did was purchase the UHMD 1/16" from mcmaster-carr, 17 bucks and was dellivered the next day (i live in S. California). my pads are black and I would have rather gotten black plastic but oh well, i'm not out to make a fashion statement.

First I made my templates using .99cent poster board. Just made one set and when it was time to trace the other side of the pads I just flipped the template over so I have a mirror image.

As far as cutting the pieces, using a box cutter worked okay for cutting the plastic into smaller pieces, but for getting nice clean lines I used a sheer machine at my office whichm unfortunately for most people, is somewhat hard to come by so i don't know what to recommend for cutting out your plastic pieces. The box cuter could work with a lot of patience and care.

Next, I took sticky black duct tape and applied it to each spot on the pads I planned on putting the velco material. I also used a few pieces of double-sticky foam to make the plates extra secure (i don't play ice so i dont plan on removing the plates any time soon).

The step i didn't end up using was taking a heat gun to the plastic to shape the pieces. I ended up using making my pieces fairly conservative in size (except for the knee/knee wing section) so i'm not sure yet if I will be happy with the decision or not until tomorrow evening when I get to use the pads ( i play on sport court).
I did however use a heat gun a little bit to heat the plastic once they were attached to the pad so that hopefully the glue would seep into the pores of the rougher side of the plastic better. Only time will tell.

Again I'll post pictures asap and give a full review friday or possibly this weekend at the lastest after I've had a chance to use them. They look like they'll work well and for what it's worth I tried going into my butterfly on our office concrete floor. The floor is fairly smooth but not as smooth as the sport court i play on, the pads were definitely more slippery and mobile with the plates on, hard to say how i'll slide though because I didn't have room and the concrete isn't as slippery as I'd hoped. Took roughly 3 hours to complete the project, but overall a fairly easy process. If i do it over again I think i'll make the pieces a little cleaner looking, but at this point I'm seeing how viable and functional process is.

Thanks for the patience in reading this post and let me know if you have any questions!