The
ability to do alterations is very useful and has
relevance in the context of men's heeled shoe fashion for
the following reasons:
1.
You may wish to alter a woman's style to suit your own
preference or the heel height etc may not be right for
you.
2.
If you into shoes in a big way then subtle differences in
style become important, and it enables you to get that
"ideal pair", often at budget cost.
These
things apply equally to women's styles as well. Tell your
wife or girlfriend to look here and she'll be able to
modify her own shoes to suit her tastes too.
I'm starting by showing you how I
modified a pair of Sancho boots that were bought in
Camden Market London for £50.00 reduced from £100.00.
These are size 40 all leather boots in a very nice
western style and make excellent shoes to blend perfectly
with all manner of men's fashion. You can wear these to
work or anywhere with no problems. When I saw them
initially I thought the styling was not my favourite, but
I appreciated the possibility of alteration.
In this feature I'll cover dyeing,
protection of the heel and raising the height, and custom
fitting techniques.
Here's the boot as purchased. The
thing that put me off was the two tone effect, but
otherwise this is a very nice boot with walkable 3 1/4"
heel for all day wear and classic western styling. They
were a real bargain for £50.00, so I had to have them.
Here's the heel measurement as
originally purchased for those of you that like to
compare this sort of thing. The measuring stick is
graduated in inches.
Rear view showing the western heel
shapes and the tooling of the leatrher in close up.
Half front view showing the
tooling and styling . These western styles have the
ability to hide quite a high heel in the natural flow of
their styling which makes them quite masculine heeled
styles.
Here are some of the products I
used in the modification project, including shoe dye and
polyvinly heel repair pieces from Woolworths. These
repair pieces are excellent for protecting a new pair of
shoe heels or for doing custom height alterations.
The first step was to dye the
shoes on the cream leather parts using the dye as per the
manufacturers instructions. Some may say I have ruined
the effect, but the two tone effect wasn't really to my
personal liking and not so suitable for wearing with
business suits etc. In actual fact, the first application
of black dye on cream produces a deep black red colour
with subtle variations in shade which was nice in itself
and also a more muted effect that I was looking for. Also
the pattern of the tooling is not lost at all.
Now I'm adding the top piece. The
first step is to screw it in place, leaving a gap all
round, using hardened steel chipboard screws about 1 1/4
inch long. Great care is taken to position the screws as
close to the edge of the original heel as possible, but
not so close as they leave a bulge when you screw them in.
This takes a bit of practice to do well. You could
experiment on an old pair first if you are not so handy
with a screwdriver.
About six screws are right for the
first stage so the top piece is held firmly when you cut
it. if you dont like the screws you can use glue or the
nails supplied, but I like the screws as they are instant
fix, very controlable, and very strong. The downside is
that you need to be fairly experienced to screw them in
straight and close to the edges as possible without
making the existing shoe heel bulge out.
Now you can cut the surplus
roughly off using a sharp Stanley knife as shown. You
should still leave an overhang of 2 or 3mm which is then
pared down to an exact fit later. It's very easy to cut
too much off here so be very careful as the knife can
twist and run the wrong way in the vinyl, so just cut off
a little at a time slowly and keep checking you still
have some overhang.
Now you can add some more screws.
It's easier to get them in correctly close to the edge
when the vinyl is roughly trimmed to shape. After all the
screws are in, the vinyl is gradually pared back with the
knife so less than 1mm overhangs. It is then finally
filed to shape with first a rough file and then sandpaper
to get an exact profile fit. This must
be done with care to get a good finish.
Here you can see I've put quite a
few screws around the perimeter. These will stop the shoe
wearing down and also make a nice noise. I have
concentrated the screws at the back outside which is the
heel contact point and the bit which takes the most wear.
I put these top pieces in before wearing the shoes so the
original top piece is not worn at all.
Here is another pair I altered
using this technique. In the case of the Sancho boots the
top piece is only 1/4" thick and there more for
protective purposes. In the case of this pair of cowboy
shoes, a height alteration as well as protection was the
motive.
You can see how two thicker top
pieces were used to give over an inch extra height to
take the shoes from a very ordinary 1 1/4 inch to 2 1/4
inches. This can be used to give life to some boring men's
shoes. You may need to bend the steel shank to make the
heel sit right and about an inch addition is as much as I'd
recommend. However, more may be tried, but the shoe may
not sit right at the front.
Above is how they look when first
added to show you where the new material was but the
whole heel is then smoothed off and painted as here so
you get a uniform colour.
Going back to the Sancho boots,
they were quite a good fit, but they were still slightly
narrow in the toes. Hence I used my shoe stretcher as
described elsewhere to get a perfect fit instantly. I
also wore the shoes while damp to fine tune this initial
fitting. A final touch was the use of the spray as
illustrated. I could have had size 41 in these boots, but
they would have been too sloppy at the back and I prefer
to custom fit the width.
Here's the finished boot with
measuring stcik. They are about 3 1/2" now which is
about as much as I'd want for regular wear and walking
any distance. The personal width fitting means they match
my feet exatcly. This is always possible with good
quality leather boots like these. They've got leather
soles as well, but after a bit of wear I'll probably
protect these with polyvinyl front parts to get boots
which will last forever.
I'd hope you'd agree that these
alterations are quite easy to do and I have a unique pair
of custom boots now. By following these steps you can do
similar things with your shoes. It does need a bit of
experience to do it well, but you can always leave it to
a professional if you are no good with your hands! I'm
thinking of getting another pair of these and producing a
4 1/4" inch pair as I like this style of western
boot.
More alteration techniques to come...
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