Does anyone else besides me fix their shoes when the sole starts to fall off? In my experience, this happens eventually even to the best brands. I tend to buy cheaper brands and fix them often.
For me shoe repair started as a connection with fishing. Stocking foot waders with wading boots give more support than boot foot waders when negotiating rocky trout streams. Wading shoes can have felt soles, metal studs or rubber soles (Some places outlaw felt soled wading boots because they can transport invasive organisms from one stream to another). Indoor outdoor carpet is just as good as felt for gripping slippery rocks. You can make any kind of boot into a wadding boot by gluing indoor outdoor carpet the sole, but they won’t have features like a full gusseted tongue to keep out sand and gravel or a BOA fit system. I am still working on the best DIY way to attach metal studs to wading shoes.
When I started to glue carpet to the bottom of my wading shoes, barge cement was recommended but I never had any of that. One of the wonders of the internet is that now, 40 years too late, I can have barge cement delivered to my door overnight. I have used ordinary rubber cement and automobile weather stripping cement with different levels of success.
After this experience, working on my street shoes came naturally. On a trip to the Congo once, the sole of my Keen walking shoes started flapping. It was a bad time for a shoe failure as I did not have a backup pair. Before going to bed I glued the sole back on and I was good to go the next day. I was once deep in the Congo Basin Rainforest wearing a pair of low topped North Face hiking shoes. Once again I felt the flap, flap of a disconnected shoe sole. That time repair was not an option. The foam in this high end shoe had disintegrated. Feeling the flap , flap for the rest of the trip made me less inclined to buy high priced shoes.
I am not going to tell you “how to” fix shoes, rather here is how I fix shoes. I have neither looked at or produced a YouTube video on the subject. To reattach the sole of a shoe to the upper, clean the 2 pieces with an old tooth brush and then wipe the surfaces with alcohol. These days I use JB Weld as the bonding agent of choice. Mix some up according to the instructions and apply it with a popsicle stick. Try not to make a mess. Push the 2 pieces together then wrap them with packing tape. Wrap the tape around enough times to squeeze the sole and the upper together. The next day take the tape off and you will be good to go. You can also use JB Weld to build up worn out spots on the soles, but when you walk you will hear the clacking of the JB Weld for a while until it wears down a little.
I suppose that many people throw away shoes that start to fall apart. There are not too many shoe repair shops these days so DYI is the only option. This reveals one advantage to living in the developing world. When I was in Senegal in April my sandals started to fall apart. I was staying in the Hann Mariste neighborhood with Amet & Alexia. A 3 minute walk from their house to the main road brought me to a shoe repairman who fixed them in less than an hour for $2.
Adventures in Suburbia 