The Thomas Paul Murphy Music Player

"You might think that I am off base, but I am published by the Securities and Exchange Commission."

Thomas Paul Murphy

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Boot Repair 11 07 2013

Boot Repair 11 07 2013

Winter is coming so I thought I would share with you repairs I have made on two pairs of boots in the last few days.

 In the picture above a cleat had torn out of the leather a few years back.  I cut a piece of leather that had a shoelace eyelet on it from some leather scraps I saved from a pair of boots that had worn out the souls.  The silver button is a 3/16 inch diameter rivet that I used to attach this strip of leather to the boot with.  First I used a punch press to put a hole in the scrap piece just below the brass shoelace hole.  In order to get the rive to hold I had to use a washer that fit into the "slice" hole of the leather where the old eyelet had torn out from.  That washer was about as wide as the bottom edge of that rectangular scrap piece.  And the washer had to have the same diameter hole as the rivet.  I used some wood Eco glue to put in the hole before I "snapped" the rivet in place.  That type of eyelet works better than the original.

In the past I have never known a good way to fix a broke off cleat or eyelet.  Sometimes a cleat will break off again.  I would repair a boot this way again, it is solid!

In the picture just below, you see that eyelet but also where the seam in the lower right hand corner of the picture was tearing apart I used a product called Barge Cement to seal it!  I have had good luck with barge cement before.  I put it on just after I polished these so the barge cement might not hold as well, but I believe I would use it again.


On the boot just above you can see that I added a leather tongue above the clothe one.  Clothe tongues appear to be the chimney on some boots.  The leather tongue makes it warmer in winter.  I got the piece of leather to make the tongues from a side strip of the same boots that I had cut away and saved when I wore out the soles of an old pair.  I cut the leather tongue using a sharp cutting took that looks like a pliers and holds a trapezoid razor blade in it.  I sized it so that it would gap under the lace hole side.  In order to keep it in place I punch pressed two holes in it and one of the under lapping laces goes through one of those holes through the tongue keeper on the clothe tongue and back out the other hole on the leather tongue and back through the eyelet holes of the boot.

It makes these boots a lot warmer for winter.  And they are not that much heavier than they were before.   I would do this again with other shoes that had clothe tongues and not leather.

Stay warm :)

Copyright 2013 Thomas Paul Murphy
Originally published on 11 08 2013 at: www.themilwaukeeandwisconsinnews.blogspot.com

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