@abi wrote:

I couldn’t easily skate with a so long plate, but you don’t seem to be embarrassed anyway. I supposed it must be the habit.
Wouldn’t be easier to slalom with smaller wheels ?

Thank you, Xavier and abi!! Well, these aren’t my slalom skates (I’ve ordered much shorter plates from Hawaiisurf for that, and I’m also using artistic boots and smaller wheels for slalom); they’re only for street skating. It’s just that you cannot do much apart from a one-cone-Crazy in a small room 🙂 .

Hey, thanks Mieszko, your post really cheered me up yesterday!! I’m going to answer your questions: @Mieszko wrote:

Damn !!!
who is the guy who mount your set up ?

Well, somebody I do slalom with, who takes particular care that every last tiny part of his (utterly superior, of course) inlines is 100% perfect before he himself skates :evil:. He even posts videos on all the brilliant improvements he made to his beloved Powerslide Evos. And no, abi, he doesn’t usually wear glasses, but I think he definitely SHOULD!
@Mieszko wrote:

If you’ve got some money, you’ve got 2 or 3 solutions :
3 – replace the shoes :/ and kill the guy who mount your skates.

😀 😀 😀 8) I’d love to choose this option, especially the last part.
No, seriously, thanks for all your ideas – I’ll think about what I’ll do with the boots. I’ve bought some Shoe Goo, because someone on the US forum recommended this and I saw his posts first (I couldn’t find liquid rubber in any small, reasonably cheap quantity here in Germany). If that won’t work, I might just toss the boots (or, more sensibly, try the ‘Dural’ sole solution), especially as I just had a very nice skate in my old Starway boots with some Crank straps added.
Oh, abi, this might not be visible in the pictures, but almost all of the holes are about four times the size of the screws, and the holes at the front of one of the boots are ‘double holes’ sitting right beside each other, forming big holes.

I found out that glueing the soles to my aluminium plates would not really work, so I’m just going to do a regular screw mount again.
However I filled all the holes with Shoe Goo yesterday, using a complete 3.7 oz tube, and leaving a small space for screws in the holes I’m still going to use.

This seems to have made the soles harder and more stable, so I think I’ll just screw mount without any extra plates inbetween and give it a try. I’ll let the glue cure for some more days before I do that, of course, and I’ll use different (very small) holes at the front.
You can see here how much of the stuff (= Phylon) from inside the sole was missing before, how big some of the holes were.

By the way: I do not really recommend buying shoes with Phylon soles to mount them on aluminum plates if you do not intend to put anything like a ‘Dural’ plate in between, simply because this material is very soft. However if you do, do NOT try to drill holes into them with an electric drill, do it by hand using just a nail and a screw like this http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d2/Spax.jpg/800px-Spax.jpg

France has Allstargum, the same as Shoe Goo, allegedly, but without poisonous solvents. I’m quite surprised that we get Shoe Goo in Germany, seeing as we’re such a health conscious bunch 😉 . Yet, as I suspected it might not be the real stuff, I bought mine on eBay UK (it was also cheaper, even with the postage).
edited to add:
@Nico wrote:

About making holes in Phylon soles, I think that the best way to do them is to use a very hot screwdriver. It will melt the rubber a make really nice holes.

Good idea!!