Extending life of stuff

[Joeboy]

Today I am trying something new. Fitting a new sole front section to SWMBO fave ankle .

I am quite enjoying the challenge, using woodclamps and dumb Bell single weights to hold in place while the glue sets.

Total price, £5 for the kit

[Djs63]

What kind of glue please?

[Bugtownboy]

Go Joe

Firm believer in mend and make do, repair and reuse, recycling or whatever it’s called. So much stuff that is still useable is just binned.

It’s a great attitude to have and is immensely satisfying when you restore/fix something that’s deemed ‘broken’.

You only acquire skills by having a go.

[AE-NMidlands]

What kind of glue please?

for sticking suede leather to the bottom of indoor shoes I use Evo-stik time-bond or similar. Have done it several times now and it works well - SWMBO buys suede remnants for the job from a fabric shop, Abakhan I think.

[nowty]

Got a very similar job, its been on my to do list for a couple of weeks now to SWMBO dismay.

I'm currently using the excuse of its too cold to go to the shed to find my clamps. I'm going to have a go with slow setting Araldite, I have it in stock and I used some from a pair of 15+ year old tubes a few weeks back to fix the fridge door.

[Joeboy]

What kind of glue please?

It was a very drippy & squidgy for the first 5 to 10 minutes then it started to firm up. Will need a trim up once set otherwise there will be Yeti tracks on our drive!

[Joeboy]

Also making up black out fixed blinds for Turkish hoose. A window and a door to be done. Again recycling material to hand and a decent blue & white blind from an upcycling shop for a quid.

Hopefully the boots will bounce back when the weights are off!

[nowty]

I'm a little behind you Joeboy, but this glue will take till tomorrow to fully cure.

[Mr Gus]

Glue, depends on the shoe.

My 14 year old leather sandals came loose (the foamy rubber sole) for which bostik? ..has a very good flexible fixer, they live on!

Conversely a hardly worn pair of sketchers "rockers" circa 2010..foam type sole crumbled into nothing requiring "binning" earlier.

Generally why I wear caterpillar colorado medium tops mostly (now with raised inner soles) asthey have proven durable & can be downgraded to mucky duty as they age, split etc.

Modern clamps are very handy, ..previously it was a bench vice or furniture lifted on to aid compression for glueing as the solution.

Been putting replacement heels on daughters riiding jodphur boots for years, same / less orice than lesser fashion boots also with "classic styling" always happy at the opportunity when leather outlasts the sole (which you must catch in time lest it go through deeper into a moulding allowing water ingress & debatable repairability)

Good shoes are old friends, & shoes are buggers where recycling is concerned, thus I wear em till they fall off my feet.

[Oldgreybeard]

The soles of my work boots split whilst I was building this house, letting water in. At the time I had an open tube of black Sikaflex PU sealant I was using, so I swapped the boots for wellies and liberally squirted Sikaflex into the cracks with the sole flexed to open the crack right out, then just let it all squidge out and set. That was around six or seven years ago, and the boots are still going strong, although the mess of Sikaflex on the bottom doesn't look pretty!