Your shiny pro-level or beginner inline skates just arrived. And they fit just fine. But breaking them in is proving harder than you thought it would be. The boots are crushing your humble feet, and all you have to show for all your efforts are painful blisters, cuts, and sores. That’s why you ended up on this post on how to heat mold inline skates.
In this brief guide on baking rollerblades at home, I’ll show you how to heat-mold two of the most common boot liner types.
Also Read: Best Rollerblades
You’ll learn how to thermo-mold Intuition liners as well as how to bake MyFit boot liners. I bet that the liner inside of your skates is either an Intuition or a MyFit liner.
All that said, most rollerblades fit perfectly right out of the box. And for the most part, just riding your skates for a couple of hours should break them in.
Related Post: How to Break in Inline Skates
First Off, Know If Your Liners Are Heat Moldable
First things first — is your liner even heat moldable? One easy way to know whether you can heat-treat your liners is to know what type of liner they are. So, read the description of the product on the manufacturer’s official website to learn whether the boots can be heat-molded.
Another sure way to know whether you can actually thermo-mold your liners is to look at their brand name. If they’re either Intuition liners or MyFit liners, then you definitely can heat-mold them and make them conform to the shape of your feet.
Also, some inline skate brands are known to make heat-moldable boots. The best example I can think of is Bont inline skates. All Bont inline skates are heat-moldable. Learn how to heat-mold Bont rollerblades here.
How to Bake Inline Skates at Home: A Step-by-Step Guide
How you bake your skates largely depends on the kind of liner that’s inside of the boot. The way you treat inline skates with Intuition liners is a little different than how you cook boots with MyFit liners.
In this rollerblade heat-molding tutorial, I’ll describe to you how to handle each boot type without damaging it. That said, you’re wholly responsible for what happens to your liners. Follow the instructions carefully, or you’ll scorch those liners and then start hating on me.
So, here is…
How to Heat-mold MyFit Inline Skate Liners
Follow the steps below:
1. Take the liners out of the boots.
To do that, you’ll have to untie the laces or release whatever closure mechanism your boots feature. You don’t need to remove the laces, loosening them up should suffice.
Also, remove the insoles. Just make sure the liners go into your kitchen oven without any part or component that could burn irreparably.
2. Put your inner liners into the oven.
You’re not baking the entire boot, huh? So, the frame, the wheels, and the outer shell aren’t going in.
You can bake the liners one after the other, or you can opt to roast them at once. Avoid placing your liners where they might come into contact with the heating elements of your oven.
You want your MyFit liners standing upright in the baking equipment. So, keep an eye on the experiment so that you can right either boot in case it falls to the side.
3. Set the right temperature
What temperature should I set my oven at so MyFit liners won’t get charred? For MyFit liners, the recommended temperature is between 176 ˚F and 212˚F or 80˚C to 100˚C.
Not everyone agrees on what temperature range works best for MyFit liners. To avoid burning your liners, keep the temperatures somewhere between the two points. And the nearer to the lower limit, the safer, of course.
I bake mine at 180˚F, and I’ve never had a problem. The inline warehouse recommends 175F-185F for MyFit boot liners.
I suggest you check out the manufacturer’s website to confirm the correct temperature for heat-molding your specific skate model’s liner.
And how long should you bake your inline skate liners in the oven? Let them remain in the heating chamber for about 8-10 minutes.
Once ready, power off the machine and remove the liners
4. Roll MyFit Liner Molding Socks over the liners (OPTIONAL) *
When solids are exposed to heat, they expand, and boot liners are no exception. If you want to further customize the fit, consider rolling MyFit socks over the liners after you switch off the oven.
Just stand the hot liners on a table or other surface and roll the socks over each boot. When rolling the socks over the boots, start at the toe going up.
Note: the liners need to stay seated up for the entire cooling process, and 24 hours is a long enough time to cure your liners. After they’ve cooled, just put them back in the shell and that’s it.
If you didn’t execute this step, proceed to step 5 below.
5. Put the hot liners back in the boots
Once your liners have heat-molded, take them out of the oven and quickly put them back in the outer shell of your skates.
To handle this process smoothly, make sure to loosen the laces and the buckles just before taking the liners out of the oven. Put the insoles back into the liners before you slide them into the shell.
6. Wear the socks you’ll be skating with and strap the boots onto your feet.
But before you put on boots back on, touch them to assess how hot they are. If they’re too hot, wait for them to cool off for some time.
Lace up and buckle up the boots to get a nice and snug fit. Finally, sit on the edge of a sofa or chair and wait about 5-10 minutes for the liners to cool and conform to your foot’s shape.
I said to sit on the edge of the sofa or chair so that you can easily assume the natural skate position. In that position, your liners have an easy time aligning with the contours of your feet.
What if you still need a little more room here or there? Use this little trick to alleviate pressure points. Remove the boots and put some padding inside your socks where you need extra room and then get the boots back on. It’s that easy.
There’s no better way to personalize the fit than baking your boots.
How to Bake Intuition Inline Skate Liners
Requirements: rice and a pair of socks.
Follow these steps:
1. Put enough rice into each sock
Leave just enough space at the top so you can tie a knot. How much rice? As much as needed to have the filled socks fit snugly in the liners.
Maybe that’s a little vague. Do this: pour enough rice to fill the socks and then slide each sock into the liner. If the sock and its contents fit snugly, that’s enough rice you have in there.
2. Next, put the socks with the rice inside the oven.
How long do you bake the rice in the socks? It depends on how much power your oven/microwave pumps out.
If your oven is rated at 7,000-900W, set it to run for 7 minutes. If you have a 1000W-1,100-watt oven, allow the rice to stay in there for 5 minutes. And if the power of your oven hovers between 1,200-1,250 watts, 4 minutes should be enough.
Then, take the rice-filled socks out of the oven. Be careful or you’ll get burned by the hot rice. I use a cloth to hold the hot rice.
3. Then, put the socks into your Intuition liners
Wait about 7 minutes for the heat-molding process to complete. At that point, remove the socks and insert the now-warm liners into the waiting inline skate boots.
4. Put the boots on normally and tighten them up nice and snug.
Then, sit on the edge of a chair or sofa and get into a natural skate position. In that position, your knees stay bent over your toes. Wait about 10 minutes for the perfect fit to run its course. At this point, your skates are ready for use.
Final Thoughts on How to Bake Rollerblades
Heat molding inline skates isn’t always necessary. But if your boots don’t fit like a glove right out of the box, exposing them to heat helps soften them up, making it noticeably easier to break in your skates.
Make sure to follow the steps outlined above carefully, and you won’t damage your liners. Super important: follow the manufacturer’s instructions as to how much temperature to use during the heat molding process.