Charlie Brown On Skates

This weekend I traveled down to Springfield, IL to finally get molded for my custom Hyper Sincro boots. With all the skate troubles I have been having, it couldn’t have come sooner.

The man of action for this duty is none other than Jim Larson, the only man you want molding you for the Hypers. Jim is a great guy, a great skater, and really knows what he is doing.

I had prepared my feet with a bit of shaving, just in case.

Note the former patch of Hobbit hair that had been shaved clean!

I arrived about noon on Sunday and finally met Jim in person, and we got to work. First I crawled up onto his kitchen counter and sat on a chair… good thing I’ve lost some weight!

Jim sets my foot in just the right position.

You can kind of see he has my foot on a pad with a small shim under the heel for the right angle for the boot mold.

Once I was all set, Jim cut up the molding sheets - basically plaster infused onto a screen - to size and wet them in a bucket of warm water.

The cut up sheets.

They get dunked.

Squeeze em’ out and get ready for plastering.

He starts with the heel, molding out the back of my foot.

And then continues on with the sides and front of the foot:

The bottom molded, snug as a bug in a rug.

And then he builds the top piece, so you end up with a two piece mold, as you can see here:

Encased in plaster.

Here’s a shot of him doing the top piece on the other foot:

The final product is the two piece mold that fits together to form my foot. They will use the mold to make a negative of my foot around which the boot is built. (I think I got that right.)

The final mold.

After getting both feet done, my flappers are covered in plaster. I’m glad I shaved them dogs! Clean up was a breeze.

A clean up is in order.

From this point Jim lets them dry (or dries them in the oven) and ships them out to Brad, who will build the actual boot. I’m told there’s only a few people ahead of me at this point, so I am hopeful I will see them sooner rather than later, seeing as how I don’t really have anything decent to skate in as of now.

So hopefully in a few weeks I’ll be seeing something like this arrive at my door… (cue heavenly music)

I’ll be loading it up with a Hyper Genesis 4×100 (that accepts up to a 104 wheel) frame. I’ll probably start with 90s on it just to work on technique. I can’t wait…