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The sole has started to come away from the body of one of my lad’s hiking boots.
What is the best way to repair it? I see that there are commercially available glues but are they going to last, or should I take it to the local shoe repair place and see if they have something more boot specific?
Not hiking boots but my 14 year olds lads school shoes*. Sole had come away to about half way. I glued it back on with some gorilla glue expecting for it to last a couple of days at best, but it's been a few weeks now and its still going strong.
*They take a battering, 1.5 mile walk to and from and football at breaks usually need 2 pairs a school year....
Impact adhesive usually works quite well for shoe soles
Shoe Goo worked surprisingly well for me. Used it on a pair of Solomon hiking trainers which I wear all the time about 18 months ago and sole is still very much still attached.
I have done both - a cobbler repair to attach a new sole, it worked fine. I think he used some sort of industrial superglue
I also repaired my own boots when the sole came away - used aquasure glue. Worked well.
Ive also done it with impact adhesive (evostick) and that was also fine
Apply glue, bind or tape around the boot and sole to hold everything in place until glue is fully cured. Job jobbed
All the repairs have outlasted the shoes
Shoe repair glue.
What you need to do is then smack it with a hammer to get full adhesion.
My local cobbler has now re soled my Timberlands four times, first glue he tried didn't work but subsequent one did, so a bit of trial and error is to be expected.
I have succesfully attached a herring, but not a sole...
Has the entire sole come away, or is it the tread, walking boots tend to delaminate if unused over a long period, and invariably require a resole, as gluing doesn't tend to work that great unfortunately.
Entire sole. Boots are less than a year old. Local Timpsons are going to have a look.
I've done it with shoe goo, small childs shoes where the endless dragging along the ground had peeled the first half of both soles off.
Clean (IPA), sand, Clean again (more IPA), shoe goo all over and poked into corners etc, then rolled flat and squished with a clamp and a couple of blocks of wood per shoe.
They lasted until she outgrew them (and then had a tantrum as they were her favourite shoes). TBH, they wouldn't have been repaired except for them being the favourites.
I've also repaired a pair of wellies (10+ years ago, still working fine and leak proof) and some old MTB shoes (lasted another 4 or 5 years, they were 10 years old when i repaired them, now gone to the tip).
Only problem is that the shoe goo usually goes off before i next need to use it.
Just coming back to this. After meeting a couple walking back into Castle Combe a while back, we got talking because they were wearing exactly the same boots as me, ex-British Army issue Meindle Desert Fox. We were all getting very enthusiastic about them because they’re so comfortable, but I said I had a couple of older pairs where the foam midsole had just crumbled leaving voids. My 5:10 biking boots have done the same. Theirs did too, but they mentioned a company up North, who I think have been mentioned here previously, who will take them, send them back to Meindle, who then strip the whole sole from the uppers and replace them. Costa about £80, but as Desert Fox boots are around £170 new, and none of mine cost me more than £40 from eBay, and all were virtually unworn, it’s got to be worth sending them back.
Trouble is, I’m damned if I can remember the name of the company! One pair of my Foxes have had a new sole applied, which cost £40, but it was only the outer sole that had worn, and a really good shoe repair place in Melksham did them, but it’s impossible to fix them once the midsole collapses.
Anyone remember the place?
Boots are at Timpson's now. They've been glued, but he wants to hang on to them until Monday to let it cure properly.
£10 for the repair.
Was Altberg your resoler? They will certainly repair boots that they make. I don't know about other brands. Worth asking.
https://www.altberg.co.uk/boot-fitting/resoling
Theirs did too, but they mentioned a company up North
I had a pair of Meindle boots resoled at https://www.cheshireshoe.co.uk/ recently. They were back within a couple of weeks when everyone else wanted multiple months. A1 job. Recommended.
As for Meindle, this is the second pair that have fallen to bits with very little provocation. I won't be buying any more...
Theirs did too, but they mentioned a company up North, who I think have been mentioned here previously, who will take them, send them back to Meindle, who then strip the whole sole from the uppers and replace them. Costa about £80,
Bramwell International, the UK agent for Meindl. Mine came back from Germany as good as new.
There’s always https://lancashiresportsrepairs.co.uk/ in Burnley if the Timpsons repair doesn’t hold. I’ve had a pair of approach shoes re-soles there and apart from a slightly different tread pattern you’d not know it wasn’t the original sole.
LSR above are great, but the turnaround is very slow.
The workmanship is top class though.
The boots are £50 Karrimors. His feet could still grow, so he's not getting anything more expensive yet. A tenner for a repair is all that it is worth spending on them.
I used some Soudal outdoor mastic from Screwfix, to glue a sole back on my k’d running shoes, so far so good. The mastic was left over from another job, good stuff, also used it to re fix the Velcro on some gloves, lasted all winter.