TStop4Me, since you are knowledgeable about designs using screws, could you guess proper technique for not stripping screws when mounting blades in a plastic composite sole such as occur in Fusion? Or does it depend on the specific materials too much to guess?
I don't see anything on Jackson's website about this, so perhaps that means normal leather sole techniques work, but maybe they have something somewhere that I didn't find.
I tried to look it up. The literature speaks of it being very easy to strip plastic screws and holes in plastic materials, and it seems to be a remarkably common problem, perhaps because people are used to working with steel screws and threads, which are more durable, but it doesn't give any practical advice that I have found for avoiding the issue, just for fixing the problem. THe literature pertaining to fixing stripped holes and stripped screws, or making sure they never slip, uses materials that are too difficult to remove for use in skate blade mounts (e.g., Superglue, West Systems Epoxy, Heli Coils, etc.), since the skater will probably eventually want to replace the blades.
Elgin Fastener group, and a few other places, advocates lubricating screws in general before tightening (
http://elginfasteners.com/markets/fastener-joint-failure-evaluation) - but since the whole problem here is that screws work their way loose, and we don't want them to come loose until we choose to remove them, I assume that is completely wrong for us - correct? (Some people speak of using wax or soap as a screw lubricant...)
AFAICT, many roller (quad and inline) skate mounts deal with plastic composite soles in a different way - by drilling holes for bolts all the way through, and tightening the bolts with specialized nuts, from inside the boots. Since there are no threads in the plastic, there are no threads to strip. You could do that with skates - I've know people who have done it even in leather skates, because they wanted to interchange blades more quickly - but it is too complicated and requires too much work for most people. For one thing, you need to create a recessed hole inside the boot, under the insole.
Likewise, with rental skates, and some hockey skates, skate techs routinely remove and install rivets in various types of synthetic soles - but they have expensive bulky tools to do the job.
I assume the original poster wants something simple and quick, using ordinary skate screws, and no expensive materials or tools.
The problem here is you can't feasibly experiment, because mistakes are too costly.
Most Graf skates have synthetic soles. They have their own screws (
http://www.grafskates.ch/en/inside-graf/grafskates-technologie/anatomy-of-the-graf-skate) they want you to use. But notice that they do advocate drilling a pilot hole for each screw, just as you would in leather or wood. I can't find any special instructions they give.
I also wonder if they had been sharpened at all! The factory sharpening on any blade is never so good -
My experience with Jackson Ultima blades, if that is what the o.p. is using, is that the factory sharpening has been excellent in every respect. My personal experience was only with old Matrix I blades, which I still use, but this experience has been confirmed with more recent blades by several skate techs as well. (Some have said that Paramount blades have good factory sharpening too, but most skate techs I've talked to feel that MK and Wilson blades should be resharpened to fix certain inconsistencies.) Cheap Jackson rental skate blades
do need to be sharpened, but I assume no one would order Fusions with rental level blades.