[c0nquistad0rian]

Cal, very inventive (and brave)! Your drill-through method seems like it would really only work on a set of RBK's as they have a rounded inner gusset, while most pads have a flat one, which really wouldn't leave you much area to drill through without hitting any vital stitching.

You also did a great job in cutting out your plates to fit your pads well, particularly around the pad strap slots. I personally would have just drilled more holes in the plastic and used some nylon cord to "belt loop" the pad straps to secure the rear portion of the slide plates. It would have been a lot less work and it eliminates the potential for the plates to wear down and cut through the pad straps.

Getting back to the cutting your plates to fit well, it's important to note that you angled the calf plate upwards, to allow room for the pads to flex normally at the boot (although, I don't know how much RBK's flex at the boot).

Also, I find it a bit interesting to see that you came up so high on the boot, cutting a slit for the boot strap flap. For as high as you came up, you could have easily extended the boot plate down over the toe corner of the toe binding, and bending the plate around that. I find that little bit is still enough to catch my plates on sport court, and is really the only source of wear on my pads.

Aside from the rounded inner gusset issue, like you said, drilling through your pads may not be the preferred method for those of us who use our pads for both inline and ice, both due to the potential risk to the pads, and based on the fact that it would be a real pain in the butt to have to lace/un-lace those slide plates on a regular basis (and require a tool to do so).

And like you said, people should make sure that they have the proper tools for this job. You obviously used a drill, heavy duty scissors, dremel, and a lacing needle (very important!). Without any of these tools, the job would not have been easy.

Maybe you could post some more details, like which drill bits you used, what other tools or methods you might've found useful, etc.

Thanks for posting, and great job!