The Beer Leaguer

Repairing Hockey Equipment at Home Part 1

• The Beer Leaguer • Season 2 • Episode 8

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Hockey equipment is expensive, and beer leaguers aren't getting free gear (or paid to play) so making that stuff last as long as possible is imperative. In the first part of this 2 part series we talk about repairing your equipment. What can you repair yourself? When is it time to hand it over to a professional? Or when is it time to buy something new? 

This episode is a piece-by-piece walk-through of my experience in keeping your equipment useful as long as possible. 

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Music by RomaRecord1973 via Pixabay

THE_BEER_LEAGUER:

Hey, everybody, Beer Leaguer here with another episode of The Beer Leaguer Podcast. And on this episode, we're gonna go back to one of the old favorite subjects, talking about hockey gear. But, not gonna be talking about any gear reviews, or how to use your gear best, or anything like that. Instead, we're gonna talk about the very thrifty practice of how to fix your gear. How to even know if your gear has something wrong with it. How to know if it's time to replace the stuff that you have, or if you can get a little bit more life out of it. So, I'm just gonna start from the bottom, skates, work all the way up, talk about common things that I see and I've heard of from people of things that have broken, things that have worn out, things they need to fix. Give as many ideas of ways that I've seen that you can fix things. Cheap ways, kind of expensive ways, probably a couple very expensive ways, and if it's worth doing it or not with some of the gear. So kind of as a disclaimer for all these things, really any of the protective gear that you have, which is basically everything that you have for hockey, once you start repairing it, when it gets to the point that you need to be repairing it, it's going to significantly lessen how good it protects whatever it's supposed to protect. That goes probably triple for helmets. So helmets, really, as soon as anything goes on a helmet, you really shouldn't be trying to fix it, because you really can't fix busted up helmets. You can do some stuff, we'll talk about that. But keep that in mind through all this. That as soon as you have any protective gear that has been compromised in some way, and you're trying to repair it, so that you don't have to go out and get new things right away, because let's face it, anything hockey is expensive. So if you can make stuff last a little bit longer, all the better. Then just know that as you're fixing, patching, repairing and this stuff, you are compromising the integrity of its protection capabilities. So with that out of the way, like I said, we're going to start at the bottom. If you're watching the video version of this, available at thebeerleaguer.com, then you will see me using props. I will not pretend to think that everybody is watching the video of this, so I will do my best to explain, using my words, what I am showing the camera. All right, so starting with skates. A couple of things you kind of can't really repair. If your steel breaks on your skates, you can't repair that. You've got to get new steel, sorry. I've seen steel crack, I've seen steel split. There's not a way you're fixing that. I mean, you can weld it together, but you don't want to skate on that. So that's just, don't do that. It's to buy new steel. Now, your runners, holders, whatever you want to call them, those guys, various things can happen there. If the holders themselves are broken, I have had broken holders. I took a shot off one a couple of years ago, and it just shattered part of the holder. You can't really fix that. You shouldn't fix that. You're putting all your weight on these things, and because they're your skates, and the way you skate, you're probably putting all your weight on one of them at a time. So that is something you do not want to repair. You don't want to glue that back together. You don't want to epoxy that. I'm sorry, JB Weld is not going to fix that. It'll put it back together, but that's one of those things you shouldn't mess around with. Now, another thing that I have seen happen with your holders is the various trigger mechanisms that there are for holding the steel in there. Those can malfunction. And generally, the trigger holders are pretty easy to repair, unless they've had some catastrophic damage. You can buy repair kits from whoever makes your holders, Bauer, True, CCM, whoever you got. You can usually buy repair kits for them. And for the most part, they're just like a little trigger and like a little piece of plastic that kind of holds everything in, and a spring, and that's about it. It's usually not too hard to repair. You can find videos online how to repair them. They're usually pretty simple mechanisms. The older they are, the simpler they're going to be. Some of the newer ones are a little bit more complicated to do it. But for the most part, unless something is completely broken with it, if it's even just the spring breaks, or if a little plastic trigger breaks, or something like that, you can buy a repair kit and repair that. And it'll hold in your blade just like new. So that's a very simple fix. There's not really a way around repairing that, because with the new types of blades that there are out there, anything newer, and I say newer is in the last probably 10 years or so, has some kind of a trigger mechanism to hold it in place. So you do need to have that working to keep your blades in there. Older skates that have just kind of the screw to hold it in, you can get other screws that will fit, but they're probably not going to fit completely correctly to hold your blade in, and you can buy the correct screws. They're usually very short, and they have a flat side on them and everything, so they don't stick out and protrude in weird ways for your skates or anything like that. So that is something that you'd probably just, instead of going and grabbing one from your workshop, order the correct screw for it. It's probably going to be expensive for what it is, but in reality, it's worth it to have the correct one for something like that, I think. Now, the other thing on your runners that can go bad is the rivets to hold them in. They can completely rust out, they can come out, come undone, you know, all different things like that. And depending on what actually has happened with those, there's a couple of things you can do. You can always replace these rivets, you can get someone at any good hockey pro shop, we'll be able to do this, we'll have the machine for it. If you have a riveter that can get in there, into the spots to do that, there's nothing magical about the hockey rivets that have those, especially these brass ones that are on there, they're just rivets. So if you have the right size rivets, and you have a riveter that again can access this, you could do that. But the hockey skate riveters, they're made to fit in the hockey boot and do this. So they do it very quickly, do a very good job of it. And it's usually an extremely cheap service. So it's kind of worth just getting a pro to do it. And then you'll see on most skates, they usually only have two to four of these brass rivets that are on there. The rest of them are these kind of plastic rivets. And those brass rivets are there because they are a little bit more heavy duty than the other ones. And they're in kind of the more high stress area of your skates. That's the way you have those. So you could have those brass ones throughout for everything. And if you find that you're breaking rivets a whole lot in the same spot, let the person who's doing this know, and they'll probably put a brass one in there for it, just so it'll last for you. But there's not really a way around this. I've seen people put screws in there to hold it. And that's one of those, it kind of works. But honestly, if you're putting screws into something like that, eventually it's gonna start wearing out the plastic that is the holder, and it's gonna come undone. The whole point of the rivet is it's kind of holding from two sides really just with pressure. It's not screwed in like that to have to have the threads, because there aren't threads in there. So you could use a very flat bolt and a nut, and cut the bottom of that bolt off so that it's not sticking way out from the bottom of your skate. That would be something similar to do. I suppose if you were in a real pinch, you could do that. But again, every place that I've seen that replaces rivets, it's extremely cheap, and I think it's way worth getting it done correctly and doing that the right way, versus having something that could unscrew itself. That's the whole thing with like a nut and bolt, is even if you put Loctite or something on there that is supposed to hold that in, it could eventually unscrew itself. So you'd have to be checking that pretty constantly to make sure that it's fine. So as a very quick repair for, hey, you have a game right now, and you just noticed that, I guess that would work, but anything more than that, you're really asking to have some problems with it. Now, if you have your holder, if it's coming out of your skate because it's starting to rip out the bottom of your skate, depending on how badly it's ripping that out, there is a couple of things that can be done. They can, again, a good pro shop will do this, is they can kind of assess how bad it is on the bottom of your skate and maybe put in some extra material on the bottom of your skate to help hold in those rivets. But that can change how the inside of your skate feels a little bit, and that might be uncomfortable. It will be under your footbed, but it raises up certain areas and can make it feel a little bit weird. But that is a way to make that last a little bit longer. But honestly, if you're starting to get rips and tears in the bottom of the boot like that, you're having problems and they're not going to be easily fixed. You could try and epoxy and glue that stuff to kind of hold. But once that kind of stresses start to happen on the bottom of your boot, you need to be looking for some new skates. Nothing is permanently going to hold down there with any kind of good consistent hold at any point from there on. So not much you can really do, that's going to be a permanent fix. There is, like I said, some kind of patch things you can do, but that's about it. All right, moving to the boot. What can you do if you have problems with your boots? Well, it depends what it is. If you have superficial problems with scrapes and cuts and nicks and stuff in your skate boots, if stuff's not going through and making the boot lose its integrity, I mean, hockey skates are generally pretty stiff. You can tell if it's losing its integrity pretty easily, especially if they're newer skates. They're going to be a lot stiffer than older skates. Older skates tend to soften over time. That's just how stuff works. So they're more prone to that sort of thing. But you can tell pretty easily, I think, on the outside of skates if there is a problem with something. If it's still very stiff everywhere, and you have slices in odd spots that are away from laces and things like that, you can probably live with a lot of that kind of stuff. You can try and glue stuff like that back together. But it can also... If you start gluing up parts of your skate boot, it will cover up if you have cuts and slices and holes and things like that. But what it's also going to do is it's going to make it not flex and mold the way that it should to your foot. So depending on where that's at, if it's in a, like along the bottom of the boot or something like that or on an edge, and you're trying to just get it to stop coming apart or something like that, that's very different than something that's in the middle of your boot that normally bends to go around your foot because it's probably not going to bend properly, which could make the skates a little less uncomfortable. And honestly, skates are one of those things when they are a little bit off, they get very uncomfortable. So be aware of that, that you can feel something like that in with like a two-part epoxy or a JB weld or something like that, and that will hold it, but it might make the skates really crap to play in. Other thing is the eyelets. Eyelets are a big thing on skates when eyelets start to pull out. So eyelets, I also mean some of the other skate lacing systems that they have, they're not necessarily eyelets. Some skates have those plastic, almost like little hooks that are on the top of the skates for the laces, any of those things, when they start to come out from your skates, and that can be one, especially if you have them baked, you have to be careful, that's what they always say is, when you bake them and you tie them around to get a good impression of your foot, you pull the laces straight out and not forward, and that's why a lot of places also now are not using laces. They are wrapping the skate in saran wrap very tightly to eliminate this problem, because when you bake the skates like that, you can really weaken the very thin strip of material that is on the outside of the eyelet. And once that starts to get weakened, and as you're skating, you know, as you're tightening them up when you're tightening your laces down, you can pop those eyelets out. Now, you can get new eyelets put in, it's a very simple thing. It's something you can totally do yourself, if you want to go buy a little kit from like a craft store, or even like a Walmart or something like that, you can find them, they just kind of pound them in. But again, any good pro shop will do this, and they will do it for very, very cheap, if it is just an eyelet has come out. Now, if it's come out because you've blown out or ripped the material that is in front of the eyelet there, then you're going to have to do like some sort of repair to get that to stay in there. Usually that's done by gluing in some sort of fabric or leather around that to reinforce it, and then putting the eyelet in to kind of help clamp that together. And again, that's something you could do yourself, but you have to be really careful with the type of glue that you're using. You want something super, super strong. That does not mean like a super glue or a CA glue or something like that. That's where you're going to want something like a shoe glue or something along those lines to really hold that in there. And have that little piece of, like I said, usually leather that's on there, that's going to kind of hold that all together. And then you rivet the eyelet to kind of compress that and hold that some more and it'll hold. Sometimes those things hold kind of forever. Sometimes those things don't hold very long at all. It really just kind of depends on how much meat there's kind of left around there and how you wear your skates. If you're someone that wears your skates tied very tightly, that's not going to hold as long as somebody that wears them very loose. It also depends kind of what eyelet it is that has that problem. A lot of times you see that with the top couple eyelets because that's also where people flex a lot when they skate. So it's putting a lot of repeated hard stress, no stress, hard stress, no stress as you're skating with that, and that just wears out over time and stretches that little area out, and then you can pop an eyelet. So just be aware. Again, if it's one of those things that's happening a lot, I mean, you might want to get it repaired for your skates, or maybe look at changing how you lace your skates up a little bit. There's a lot of different techniques out there for how to lace your skates. Maybe something like that would work for you better. Hold your skate on just as good, but not cause those problems. All right, staying on for parts of the skates. Kind of a generic one around the skate, where you have different layers that get laminated together a little bit. Those can kind of start to come apart at some of the seams. Generally, that's not too big of a deal to have that. Usually, that's kind of more of a cosmetic thing, if it's just at the very edges, like that. So that's something you can just glue up yourself and use some kind of a heavy-duty glue. If it's not something that's holding in an eyelet or something else like that, and it's just around an edge, that is where you could use something more along the lines of like a CA or super glue or something to kind of hold that in. Glue it up and clamp it together for a little bit and hold that together, and that should work. Again, stronger glue, something like a shoe goo or something like that would do a better job, but that's kind of not necessarily a very integral part of your skate. It's more just preventing it from getting worse kind of thing, so you can do that. Other parts of your skates that you might or might not be able to repair yourself is your tongue. Some people's tongues just get messed up, just get broken. Some newer skates, some fancier skates have removable tongues, so if you have something like that, that's totally something you can do yourself. Some of them just have velcro or snaps to get them out and replace them, so that's a totally DIY-friendly thing. You just got to buy a new tongue and put it in. If you don't have that, you can always sew in a new tongue. That is something that you can probably do yourself if you have either a, it's called a speedy stitch, which is kind of like a heavy-duty sticher that you do by hand, or if you have a heavy-duty sewing machine, something that can do leather, it has to be able to at least do leather, because that's usually more heavy-duty ones. It's not just like your regular sewing machine that you have around that you can hem up your pants with or something like that. You need something that's a little bit more heavy-duty to be able to go through the thicker materials that are used on hockey equipment. One of the popular things you see online for these is you will see people that have these very kind of old school sewing machines that are like hand crank, that are made to do leather work. I have one of those. You can find them for pretty cheap online. You can find brand new ones for like 100 bucks online. And they are kind of monstrosity to use and a little bit scary. People hook up motors to them and that makes them very scary. But they are made for doing like, stitching together leather wallets. So they go through four, five, six layers of kind of thick leather. So they can go through the materials used for hockey equipment pretty easily. So a tongue, if the tongue completely comes detached, there's gonna be some spot where you can probably sew up back together. As long as it's like fabric to fabric and not something that's attached under the plastic toe cap. Because you can't really sew through plastic. Just doesn't work real well. Speaking of the toe cap, people's toe caps get cracked, they get blown out, things like that. If you have a toe cap that is just covering kind of the part of your skate, some of them are a whatever material underneath it, something else is not plastic, and then kind of a plastic toe cap on top of that. And if the plastic just cracks, or splits, or a part of it comes off, your skates should be fine, but they will be much less protective of your toes if you get hit. And if there is anything, and I will probably repeat this many times throughout this episode as I go through gear, the cardinal rule is the puck always finds the worst spot to hit you. So if you just have a small piece of your toe cap missing, that's where the puck's gonna hit you. I guarantee that's where the puck's gonna hit you. It's gonna find it. So you could chance it with that missing there. I would try and repair it. If you don't wanna buy new skates right away for that, something like that, you can hopefully, if a chunk came off, you can glue it back on. If it's not an integrated, if it's a more integrated toe cap like that, and not something that is just covering a piece of material, that's starting to get the integrity of your skate not so great, but again, you can glue something like that back together, but it's gonna be hard to put that back together because you kinda have to hold it from inside your skate and outside your skate, you have to really hold it in place while whatever you're using dries. And that's where something like a two-part epoxy or something would hold it in, but it's probably not gonna hold it in great while it dries. So that's the sort of thing that unless you get it perfect, you're gonna feel it while you skate, which is not great for something there. So that's really a time where you probably need to look at getting new skates, unfortunately. All right, last couple things we're talking about with skates and skate repairing. Tending guards. Again, some of the newer, fancier skates, much like the tongs, have removable and replaceable tending guards. If you want to have different flexes, different protection levels, things like that. If you have one of those skates, great. Some happens to be the tending guard. You get a new one, you pop it in, and you're good to go. If you have not super fancy skates like that, or older skates, these tending guards, they will tend to wear out and flex. Usually, there is a small flex point somewhere on them because of how they are shaped kind of triangularly, and those will start to crack over time just through wear and tear. And unfortunately, there's not a ton you can do with those. You can try and reinforce the plastic bit a little bit with, again, some sort of a glue or epoxy or something like that to help out. But what you are doing then is you are going to make it stiffer, and it will probably be not as comfortable to skate on because it will be stiffer, or because it starts flexing, you are going to wear that new stuff out pretty quickly because it's not made to flex. So you need to have something that will be flexible enough to hold it together without breaking, but strong enough that it doesn't snap. I want to do that. So that can be a really tough thing there, but that is a common place for those to have that. Now some skates do have replaceable tendon guards, but they don't seem like they're replaceable. So there are skates that will have like screws or some sort of fastener around them that you can actually take the tendon guard off if it does crack. So even if it's not a modern skate that has easily replaceable tendon guards, that's something you can look at if that does start to wear out. All right, I think that that covers skates pretty well and the different things you can and can't do and things you shouldn't do yourself. All right, moving on to the next piece of equipment, you've got shin guards. Now shin guards, there are a couple of things you can do very easily to make these last longer and help out if something goes wrong with them. They're also a little bit less, how do I put it, the shin guards are really just for protection. So if you feel comfortable with it, you can do more repairs yourself, and it's not going to really mess you up unless you get hit. Whereas skates, if you do something, trying to do repair that is not great, you will fall a whole bunch and not be able to skate good. And that means you kind of can't play. Shin guards are more of you just kind of taking your own safety into your own hands with that sort of thing. Not impeding your ability to play. You might be if you get hurt because you repaired them poorly, though. So keep that in mind. So common things with shin guards. Generally, the front of every shin guard is plastic. These get scraped up. They get beat up pretty bad. That's what they are there for. I mean, it's sacrificial plastic, so that's not your leg taking that, not your shins for it. Knee cups can get beat up pretty bad. I used to have my knee cups used to just shatter. I used to go through a pair of shin guards almost every year, because I was someone that tried to block shots like crazy, and I would be dropping down onto my shins a whole bunch to do that. So I would have these things would just get cracked and blown out pretty quickly. Not a great way to repair these and keep them the way they are. There is, if you get little cracks and stuff, you can go through and do things. You can tape it over. That doesn't really fix anything. I used to get big flaps of plastic on the knee sections. That would come undone, and I would tape it down. Just knowing, just so I had plastic there still, instead of ripping it off or having it kind of flip up on me while I'm putting my socks on and stuff like that. So that's a way you can do that and does help with that. If there is enough kind of meat around it, you can try, you know, like, epoxying and something like that, and that will help. Again, you're gonna lose some integrity of the plastic with doing things like that. Not because epoxy isn't strong, the epoxy is probably stronger than the plastic, but just because it's the shape is gonna be different for it. But unlike with your skates, that kind of matters a little bit less with your shin guards, because it means something is there to hopefully help stop the puck and having it hurt your leg when you get hit. So that's what you can do with the plastic. Now, if you have the plastic start to come undone from kind of the soft goods that is around it and holding that in, usually you'll see that it's kind of sewn in there. This is where you can use, like I talked about that speedy stitch or an awl. You can try it with a regular needle and thread, but good luck because they are not made to go through things like this, but if you get something that's made for like denim, it might possibly work depending on how thick stuff on your shin guards is. But also that large manual sewing machine or something like that would definitely work and will go through this kind of plastic that is on there. And you can re-stitch them back together if they start to come apart from each other. So that is something I see happen is, you know, this is not the strongest thread that's used here. And I mean, a skate can cut it, it gets hit just right by a puck or even a stick, or you're sliding and it catches something, or it just gets old. That happens. And once that kind of starts to go in one spot, it's gonna unravel pretty quickly. So this is a good thing to check on your shin guards very often and make sure that that string is still in good shape around there. And if you see a split, see if you can tie off both ends of it to stop it from doing that. Because if just a little section comes undone, not a big deal. But you can tie off kind of both sides, make sure it's both sides of it so it stays in place. And you just have a little section that is not stuck together, which that's fine. But you can, like I said, you can sew it back together if you really want to. Now, if you go on to the backside and you're looking at more of the soft goods area for your shin guards, kind of the issues you can have in there, depends on what's in there. If it is just the kind of soft, little bit of foamy cushion that is in there, that can get worn out. And that foam stuff, you can replace that with other foams from other pieces of equipment. It's kind of similar to what you'd have in other shin guards. Or if you want to beef it up, this is a place where you can actually add more protection. You can add thicker foams from other hockey equipment, or go out and buy foam for that, that is a hard foam, or something like CCM uses that D30 foam. You can actually buy sections of that, and sew that into any of your equipment to add some more protection. A good place to find things like that is for motorcycles. A lot of motorcycle riders will buy extra foam pads to sew into their jackets, and their pants, and things like that, to add more protection, or add protection to non-motorcycle specific clothing like that. So they have that. So that's something you can find pretty easily online for places, sections of foam like that. I would really, if you're adding foam, and you're not gonna go buy like a donor set of hockey pads to get that from, so it's a similar size and shape, similar-ish, to either replace or upgrade the foam that you have there, is I would look at that D30 foam. That stuff is, the point of it is, it's very soft until it gets impacted, then it becomes harder, so it's really supposed to help spread that impact out, and that's why CCM has been using that and a lot of their higher-end stuff. And it's not hard to purchase. So if you have foam that's coming out from any of the insides of your shin guards, you can easily just slip new foam in there from any of those sources and sew that back up. It's not that hard. You can either sew that, that's something you can do by hand, that's something you can do on a cheap sewing machine. That is something that you can, if you really want to, just tape it up with some kind of tape that's gonna not leave a huge disgusting residue on your legs, hopefully, and on yourself. But something also that's a little bit waterproof would be helpful. Honestly, hockey tape is not great for that. It's okay in a pinch, but not great to do that. Or you can also buy for something like that. If you have like a split and you're adding in more foam, you can buy glue that is made to seal fabric. It's like no-sew glue. You can buy something like that and use that to seal up whatever cut or rip that you've made in there or gotten in there. That you've either replaced foam or added foam or whatever, or you just have a ripper tear in there to put that in there. You can buy that stuff, and that saves you having to sew anything if you don't want to do it. But honestly, doing something like that and sewing by hand is actually extremely easy to do. Another part there is a lot of times nicer shin guards in your knees have kind of like a gel insert right where your knee goes, and those can be a little tricky to replace. Again, there's different types of ones. Some of them are encased kind of like a jelly insert that's encased in plastic. Some of them are kind of more hard gel inserts that are just sewn directly in there. And this is the case, if some of that goes, you probably do want to get like a donor set of pads, and either cut that stuff out of or extract it out of there however you can and replace it directly on your shin guards. There's not a good way to really fix some of that stuff if it comes out and if it's in there pretty bad. I have, on my shin guards, had kind of the, they're in two pieces, there is an insert in them that comes out with Velcro, and the front of that insert, so it's kind of sandwiched between, my knee sits in the little knee cup, and there is a little bit of padding, and then there is, on the outside of that insert, is kind of the gel padding that is there that's really supposed to help with the impact, but that's sitting in plastic that has gotten brittle over time and has broken, and then on the outside of that, that connects to the back end of the plastic knee cap. So what I've done is that has come out, that plastic that's gotten brittle in there has cracked, the little gel inserts have come out in pieces, and usually they're still in there, and I find them when I'm taking my gear off, because they're not flying out or anything when I play. And that's a place where, pretty easy to put that back in, and that's a place where something like, you know, a good quality tape, I've used like Gorilla Tape is one that I've used, or something like that, can keep it there and hold it there. Again, I recommend the stuff that's waterproof for that. But remember, it is kind of holding on to fabric, so make sure you get the tape as much as you can onto the plastic parts to hold everything together and hold those gel things in. And that usually works pretty good. That's what I found is a good way to do that. If you want to be very thorough, you could get a very pretty thin, something stretchy fabric and sew a cover onto there to hold that stuff in. That would be a great solution for it. If you want to sew, again, that is something because it's going to be thinner. You could sew by hand very easily. So with that Speedy Stitch that I've talked about, or any kind of sewing machine would do that. If you're going to use a sewing machine, and for all these things, I will say if you're using a sewing machine, make sure you get correct thread for it. You want very strong thread. I'll see people talking about using dental floss instead of thread because dental floss is pretty strong stuff. So for something like that, you could totally just go get a regular needle and some dental thread and sew a little piece of fabric to hold in that gel knee area there if you needed to. And that would totally work and probably last a very long time. Last thing I will talk about on shin guards, and this is applicable to basically all the rest of the gear as well. This is the, I think, the most common thing you see with hockey equipment as it gets older, is the Velcro straps. It's always kind of elasticky straps, have Velcro, and that's how this stuff holds on. And the Velcro wears out over time, which you can revive Velcro with a very stiff toothbrush. Just kind of brush through both sides of it, and that will revive it, because Velcro is its hook and loop. That's the, I think that's the technical name for it, Velcro's brand name. It is Hook and Loop Fastener, and it's exactly what it sounds like. It is a bunch of little loops and a bunch of little things that look like fishhooks, and they hook together. And what happens over time is they get flattened out, so they don't, they don't hook together as well. So if you get a very stiff toothbrush and just kind of brush up all those things on both sides of that, that will help revive your Velcro. That's a handy little life tip that you're getting here on The Beer Leaguer podcast. Not just applicable to hockey equipment, applicable to anything that uses Velcro or Hook and Loop Fastener. So, that's how you can fix that. But then the other thing is, is the elastic stretches out. That happens on everything. Elastic stretches out over time. And especially for somebody that likes a very tight fit, that can suck. So, a couple of things you can do. You can completely cut it out and sew in replacement elastic. You can find this kind of elastic that is on these things, you know, same kind of stretchiness, same kind of width and all that. You can find that pretty easily, any fabric or sewing store or anything like that. You can find it online pretty easily. And that is one solution you can totally do, and that is probably the best solution if you want to have your stuff be still very tight, so you can really kind of ratchet it down, because you need that elasticity so that it can hold in there and still move a little bit with you as you move. So, that is kind of like the primo way to do it. Cut that stuff off, put on all new, elastic, and all new Velcro, and that takes care of it. But if you don't want to do that, because that's kind of a pain to sew that stuff in, then the other option that you have is you can actually just kind of take some of the, if there is still some stretch left in the elastic, you can take some of that, kind of fold it over onto itself, and you can do this, put the stuff on, see how much you need to have left on there to hold it, and fold it onto itself, and you can either, really, you could put a safety pin in there, and that would hold it. Not the best way, because you probably don't really want a safety pin sitting down there in your gear like that. Not ideal, because if it comes undone, poking yourself with it, also not going to be the most permanent solution. So you can totally do that with a safety pin. You can also just sew that together. That's just a little bit of sewing in there. You don't want that to be kind of strong, though, if you're going to sew it, because it will be getting tugged on. So you're not going to do, you know, a couple little, can I get the right word for that? That you, when you sew, you don't want just a couple of those stitches. You want to do a lot of them to do that. That's why I usually see a lot of stuff with like an X that they make with the stitches to have it hold a little bit more. So you could totally do that. Or if you want to go a no-sew route, this is again where you can use some of that no-sew glue and do that and just kind of fold it over onto itself and glue it. Make sure you kind of clamp it together, you know, put it between some books, something like that, and hold it for as long as you can. Usually that type of glue will tell you how long it needs to set for. It's going to be a couple of hours. So not something to do before, like right before you go out for a game, but if you notice after a game that you need to have that, something you could totally do in the couple of days between games that you have. And all that's going to do is shorten the length of that elastic that you have on there. And that will definitely hold your shin guards on better. And again, this works for kind of universally for all of your equipment, and the elastic Velcro straps to hold it on. That will help hold that on a little bit better. But it's not going to be quite the same because the elasticity is going to be worn out so it's not going to probably move as much as you would necessarily like it to. But that's the way you can try it. If you just want to see if that's going to work, you can try just taking, like I said, a safety pin or a couple of pins or something like that, shortening it up, kind of like overlap it onto itself, and put the shin pads on and walk around, see if they fit good. If they do, it's not bothering you, it's not too tight, then that's an easy way to go. Just glue that up. Another thing you can do, what I do, because the elastic on my shin guards is not great, these are all shin guards. I actually have little elastic sleeves that I put over my shin guards to hold them in. They have little elastic sleeves you can buy that are like that. They also have elastic straps that are made to just go around your shin guards. They can go inside or outside of your hockey socks. Doesn't really matter if you do the outside, it also holds your hockey socks on pretty tight with that. And those are two ways you can completely skip around having to replace that elastic, but still keep your shin guards holding on pretty well and holding on good like that for you. And those are things you can buy. Any well stocked hockey store will have those. You can buy them online very, very easily. Either one of those works. All right, and that is going to do it for part one of this two-part episode on how to make your hockey gear last just hopefully a little bit longer or long enough so you can afford to buy some new stuff. Hope that you found this useful. If you want to know anything that we talked about on this episode, you need the names for stuff or links to the videos that we talked about, but always that is available at thebeerleaguer.com. That's also where you can sign up for the Beer Leaguer newsletter that is out there that is going to just let you know when new stuff gets released. It's gonna go out and say, hey, here's some new videos or whatever that I have done that you can go see nothing else on there for that. So you can check that out. You can also go on there, leave me a voice message or send me an email from there. If you have any particular questions on any of the stuff that I have talked about, or things that you hope I talk about in the future regarding this episode or any other episodes, I would love to hear from you. All that stuff, like I said, over at thebeerleaguer.com. All right, thanks a lot, everyone. Catch you in the next one.

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