DIY hollow heel repair for men's shoes

Historians claim that the first footwear appeared in Eurasia more than 30 thousand years ago. Shoes were made from animal skins, woven from plant leaves. Since then, the technology of making shoes has stepped forward, often artificial materials are used for its manufacture, which are not inferior to, and even surpass in wear resistance, leather.

But even the best quality shoes wear out heels over time, especially in women's boots and stiletto heels. Usually, not the entire surface of the heels is worn out, but only the back part. Therefore, it must be ensured that wear does not touch the base of the heel. If the base is worn out, it will have to be ground down to flatten the entire supporting surface, and this is unnecessary work and a decrease in the height of the heel.

Factory heels, as a rule, are made of plastic and they are fixed on the base of the heel of shoes with glue and pins inserted with an interference fit into the holes provided for them in the heel.

In order to change worn out heels, you must first remove the factory heels from them. The line of contact of the heels with the base of the heel is usually clearly visible. There is a light streak in the photo above.

To remove a worn-out heel, you need to put the shoes on one side on a hard surface and press with a boot knife, swinging it in the plane of the blade, to the place of the border of the base of the heel and the heel. You can use a simple knife or even a flat-blade screwdriver. In this case, it is better to remove the heel from the side of the sole so that possible small damages to the heel are not visible from the outside.

The heel was torn off the base of the heel of the shoes, and now it is not difficult to remove it. The heel is removed from the second shoe in the same way.

The photo shows a view of the removed factory-made heel from the side of the installation on the base of the heel of the shoes. Some factories provide extra heels for shoes. Check if there are spare heels in the box of these shoes. Then all repairs for replacing heels will be reduced to smearing the factory heels with glue, for example, "Moment" and installing it on the heel of shoes.

If there are no sapas heels, then you can search in stores. Finished heels are plastic and metal. The photo shows a metal powder heel for shoes with stiletto heels.

After removing the heels, the heel of shoes of approximately the same type as in the photo will open in front of you. There can be two, three or even four holes for pins for factory heels, depending on the area of ​​the heel. But the repair technology is the same for all cases.

The best material for new heels is 5-6 mm polyurethane sheet with medium elasticity. It can be purchased at the ruins from the junk merchants. When choosing, you need to check the rigidity of the polyurethane. With strong pressure with your fingernail, it should bend slightly.

If there is no polyurethane, then rubber from car tires will work well. It also has high abrasion resistance. But getting a piece of flat rubber out of a round tire will take some tinkering.

To make a heel, it is necessary to apply its contour to a polyurethane or rubber plate. To do this, you need to attach the heel of the shoe to the workpiece and circle it around the perimeter with a marker or ballpoint pen.

The shape of the heels for the right and left shoes, as a rule, is different and this must not be forgotten when cutting out the workpiece.You can also circle the removed worn heel with a handle, but I prefer to circle the heel.

After applying the markings, the heels must be cut out. You can cut polyurethane with a sharp knife, wetting its blade, to improve glide, in water. But polyurethane is very difficult to cut with a knife, and I prefer to cut it with a jigsaw with a file on wood. Polyurethane is easy to saw with a jigsaw.

For cutting, the marked plate is clamped in a vice. As soon as a few millimeters have been cut, the plate is pulled by hand so that the jigsaw file is not clamped. Then the heel can be cut out pretty quickly. You need to cut along the outside of the line so that there is a margin. The protruding part of the heel due to the level of the heel of the shoes can then be grinded off on an emery column or cut off with a knife.

New heels are ready and you can start installing them on the heels of your shoes. But before that, the heels themselves must be prepared for the installation of heels.

Probably, looking at the photo above, you noticed the appearance of the heels after removing the heels. The plane is almost all in the holes and the question arises, how can we fix the new heels?

The answer is simple, you need to install wooden plugs in the holes for attaching standard plastic heels. The pin holes are usually 5 mm in diameter and 10-15 mm deep. The depth is measured first. If it is less than 10 mm, then it is necessary to drill the base of the heel to a depth of 15-20 mm with the help of a reduced.

If you drill with an electric drill, then you need to take into account that the drill can "pull" the soft material of the heel and the depth of the hole will turn out to be greater than necessary. I usually perform this operation manually, holding the drill in a special handle.

Plugs in heels for installing heels can be made from any piece of wood by sawing off the desired piece along the length and pricking it with a chock knife of the required diameter. You can also use ready-made, for example, wooden Japanese chopsticks that fit well in diameter.

It is enough to cut them into pieces of the required length. If the stick is too thick, then peel it off a little with a knife. Once the corks have been made, they can be hammered into the holes in the heels. The diameter of the plugs should ensure their tight fit, but you should not make plugs with a diameter much larger than the holes in the heel, since the heel can crack when plugging the plugs. The plugs should not protrude beyond the level of the heel surface, it is better to let them be slightly recessed.

The heels are ready for installation, wooden plugs are driven into the heels, and it's time to install the heels on the shoes.

To securely fasten the heel heels, I use a combined fastening, gluing, followed by nailing with lingering shoe nails, which experts call the Tex type TP. Shoe nails differ from ordinary nails in that they have flat edges, a diameter of 1-2 mm and a length of about 15 mm. The head of the boot nails is also of a special shape, small in diameter, but thick. Flat edges on the nail shank prevent it from spinning when walking, and the shape of the head acts as a heel area and increases its service life.

If there are no shoe nails, then you can use simple finishing nails to fix the heels, shortening them and giving the rod the shape of a shoe, grinding it off with a file or on an emery column. Finishing studs are commonly used to attach door trims.

To accurately hit the nails in the plugs hammered into the heels, it is advisable to first mark the driving points on them before gluing the heels. For this, the heel is applied to the heel, the polyurethane is slightly transparent and the corks are visible. It is enough just to put dots with a marker in the places where the traffic jams are visible.

If the plugs do not show through, if the heels are made of rubber, then you can attach the heel to the heel, shift it towards yourself and make one risk at the level of the plugs, then move the heel to the side and apply a second line.You will get a cross into which you will need to hammer a carnation. Since the diameter of the plug is 5 mm, this method will provide sufficient accuracy.

You can nail the heel with nails by attaching the heel directly to the heel, but this is inconvenient, since the heel can move and set inaccurately. Therefore, I prefer to first hammer all the nails into the heels so that the sharp ends appear on the opposite side of the heels. You need to hammer the carnations by placing the heel on the board so that the sharp ends of the nails do not flatten and become blunt.

For more reliable fastening of the heel, before nailing, the mating surfaces of the heel and heel are abundantly lubricated with waterproof Moment glue. After the exposure recommended by the rules of use for 5 minutes, the heel is applied to the heel and pressed firmly.

There are special paws for repairing shoes with nails. But I get by with a large file with a wooden handle. I rest the file on a massive piece of iron, and the heel of my shoe rests on the handle.

As you can see in the photo above, the studs are hammered in, the heel is firmly installed on the heel, but the edges of the heel protrude somewhat beyond the contour of the heel. The protruding part of the heel must be removed by cutting off with a knife or on an emery column.

Shoes, with new heels installed with their own hands, look no worse than new ones. If desired, the heels on the front side can be painted with a waterproof marker or paint.

If, when buying women's shoes, you find a spare set of heels in the box, then the first repair by changing worn out heels will not be difficult. It is enough to remove the old ones and grease the surface of the heel with glue and hammer the pins of the new heel into the heel with a hammer.

But sometimes the difficulty arises that when removing worn heels, one of the pins breaks off and remains in the heel. It is impossible to remove the pin with pliers, as there is nothing to grab onto. The pins can be drilled with a drill, having previously sunk them into the heel. But in this case, the walls of the hole will most likely be ground off, and the new heels will not hold securely.

To remove the pin from the heel of shoes without damaging the walls of the holes, you must first drill a hole with a diameter of 2.5 mm in the center of the pin. If you have a self-tapping screw with a diameter of 3 mm, you can screw it into the drilled hole and remove the pin. It would seem that instead of drilling a hole in the pin, you can immediately screw a small diameter self-tapping screw into it, and take it with pliers to remove the pin. But in this case, the self-tapping screw will distribute the pin to the sides, and it will hold on even more tightly in the heel and it will be impossible to remove the pin.

If there is no self-tapping screw with an outer diameter of 3 mm, but there is an M3 tap, then a thread must be cut with it in the drilled hole.

Next, a screw with an M3 thread with a length of at least 15 mm is screwed into the pin so that it passes through the entire length of the pin, and the head of the screw with a part of the thread remains protruding.

Now you can substitute an emphasis on the heel, for example, the shaft of a screwdriver, grasping the head of the screw with side cutters, and easily remove the stuck pin from the heel.

The pin has been safely removed from the heel of the shoes without damaging the holes, and now you can start installing spare heels.

It is not necessary to lubricate the pins of the heels with glue and the surface of their adhesion to the heel of the shoes, but for the reliability of fixing the heels and excluding the ingress of dirt and water into the gap, the glue will not be superfluous. Moment waterproof glue is well suited for this purpose.

After covering with a layer of glue, the heel is inserted with pins into the holes of the heel and, even without support, is hammered in with a hammer. The protruding glue residues are smeared along the joint with your finger.

Spare heels have been installed on the women's shoes and now they look like new. The heels are enough to wear the shoes without repair for another summer season.

Professional shoe repair now is simply impossible, because new shoes are cheaper than the cost of repairs.
But - after all, you can also fix your own shoes.
I want to share my experience and, if any, listen to someone's advice.

Shoes sometimes break to death - they cannot be restored.
This is when the sole breaks.

But, there is something that - CAN BE FIXED!
This is what I want to write about.

Very often - very good shoes are rubbed in the outer area of ​​the heel.
Everything else is a whole, and there are holes, there are pebbles, and in general it is unpleasant.
You can - throw it away, but - you can fix your favorite shoes yourself.
AS? - Easy. I am writing about this.
I do it simply - shoes, rubber heels - wash them with powder, throw out all the pebbles, dry them.
And then I mix epoxy glue with a hardener. I pour a solution of epoxy glue into the outer, worn part of the heel.
Then I seal the holes with scotch tape - several times, not sparing scotch tape, duct tape.
And - I turn the shoes - the way they should be.
Epoxy under the action of gravity flows down, and there - scotch tape, adhesive tape.
The epoxy flows around everything, and then it freezes.

That's all! After 2-3 days - peel off the sticky tape (scotch tape), smooth everything a little bit with sandpaper.
And - you have - WHOLE, strong boots that will serve you for more than one year.

Epoxy is - well, even at current prices - clearly cheaper than new shoes.

Yes, it is not necessary to glue it. I’ll do an educational program.
The chores are domestic.

FORMICOPHILY
The meaning of the lesson is to achieve orgasm from insects swarming on the genitals. The legendary Marquis de Sade advised applying jam to the genitals so that the insects swarm exactly where they need it. And you can also lie in the bath: the insects planted on the genital protruding from the water will simply have nowhere to go.
___________

Bon Appetit!
Enough, we started about shoes, and, as always, ended up with an orgasm.

Ka 99 - 02/10/2011 - 22:03
To the author: I think in this case it is better to use not epoxy (for heels), but elastic glue, there should still be cushioning, otherwise you will have to cut out new heels from wood.
___________

Dear Kaa!
You, as I see, are an experienced, thinking person.
I agree that epoxy is not the best option. I did some experiments with polymers.
Polymers are plastic. The idea was to melt pieces of plastic over low heat and carefully pour the plastic broth into the holes in the heels. It’s a good idea, but I didn’t implement it well.
In the beginning, nothing foreshadowed trouble. I took an old plastic bucket, broke the pieces of plastic with pliers, took a saucepan, filled it halfway with hard pieces of plastic and put it on a small fire - at home in the kitchen.
There was an unpleasant smell, I opened the window, prepared the shoes - fixed them on the table with the heels up. I used thick books for this.
After 15 minutes, the saucepan began to gurgle, I stirred the plastic broth with a stick, took a terry towel and removed the saucepan from the heat.

And it turned out that I made a fatal mistake - the saucepan was VERY hot, the towel did not protect me from the heat. Reflexively, my fingers unclenched, the saucepan overturned on the shoes with books and spilled a plastic stream, as in the great painting by Bryullov "The Death of Pompeii".
I jerked to save one book from the lava flow and hit my fingers into the plastic broth.

What is great human pain, I learned at the same moment. Plastic lava hissed on my fingers ...
It hurt for a long time.
The shoes had to be thrown away, the saucepan and some books too.

I am writing this so that no one will repeat my experiments at home.
Epoxy is, of course, more expensive than pieces of plastic, but - it does not burn!
Remember, Safety comes first!

It happens that the outside of the shoes look decent, it's a pity to throw it away. And I haven't bought anything new for the spring. And inside there is trouble. The heel falls into the voids of the heel and you walk like an Indian yogi on nails. What to do?
Repair, of course

First of all, you need to tear the heel off the heel. We don't want to take off our shoes and hide them right there so that people don't see a torn heel, do we? Therefore, carefully separate the half of the sole (back) using a boot knife. Attention. Try not to tear anything while doing this.

The next step is to fill in the voids in the heel. For this I use Master Glue. Usually it is used for gluing all kinds of pylons, moldings and other ceiling tiles when renovating apartments. It has an elastic rubber-like structure and is quite suitable for us.
Now we put the shoes in a warm place (under the battery, for example) and wait for the glue to dry. This can take up to three days.
After the glue has completely dried, carefully cut off the excess with the same boot knife and sand it rough emery cloth.

Time to glue, gentlemen!
Cut the heel out of the leather in the shape of the heel, but a little smaller. We lubricate both the heel and the master glue filling its voids and the leather patch itself with the Moment. Let it dry for about a minute, apply the skin and STRONGLY press. We hold for 20 seconds.
We leave this whole structure for an hour.

Everything is ready, it remains only to return the heel to its original place.
We glue our repaired heel to its original position and leave the shoes for 10 hours.
Everything. The heel will no longer cut your heel.

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VERY intelligible video, almost everything is shown. The glue, judging by the appeal, is Dismakol. You can replace the filing of the inner part of the heel with a stone on Dremel. You can check whether a regular hair dryer heats up the glue enough beforehand. I will check - I will fix it here. YouTube channel VL Master

You need to make jambs on a worn heel and put on heels.

HAPPENED!! And - yes - an ordinary hair dryer completely heats up the glue for a strong adhesion.

The process of replacing a man's heel differs from replacing a heel on a woman’s shoes, in that a man’s heel has a large area and they are attached with nails or self-tapping screws. But always the first operation is to strengthen the heel by precisely gluing it into place, and only then tighten it on the self-tapping screw through the heel pad, even enough for one self-tapping screw with a cross section of at least 5mm. It is possible and on nails, shoe masters use for these purposes special device for driving nails... With its help, they easily drive in shoe nails in the heel from the inside. You can watch this process in the video below.