Introduction: Repairing Your Shoelaces...with Floss!
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About: I'm a Mechancial/Aerospace Engineer that likes to tinker in my spare time. I make my own Christmas Cards.
So, you finally got your sneakers good and comfortable when, disaster! The lace has come out of the...hole...that the lace...goes through...whatever it is called...an eyelet?
Invariably the little plastic sleeve (which I’m told is an aglet, and has a sinister purpose) has been missing many mud puddles back and you are stuck wondering why the fates had dealt you such a harsh blow. You could buy a new lace, but how will you get to the store with your shoe untied! Besides, it will never match your show color and you will inevitably grab a boot lace or something too short.
Alternately, you may just be a very frugal individual, like myself. The art of frugality runs deep in my family and is the primary reason that my wife married me (so I will say for this article, as I don’t think she reads my Instructables). Why should you have to pay for a new shoelace when only the end are bad?
Never fear! You have options! Repairing the end of a rope is fairly easy, given some simple techniques: whipping and fusing. These are regular rope mending skills, and so they can also be used to maintain ropes at home and so you will not shame yourself when the local scrimshaw peddler comes knocking at your door.
First thing you must check is to see if your lace is made of a plastic material or a natural one. In olden days, there were two main ways to keep a rope end tidy: whipping and end splicing. End splicing is the process of weaving the rope strands back into the rope body to secure them from fraying. It’s handy and looks fantastic, but with the number of strands in a shoe string and the scale, I’ll leave that hurdle to more ambitious Instructables. Whipping is a technique where you wrap your larger rope (or lace in this case) with twine (or floss for us) to secure the end. It is both handsome and strong, like me.
Sit back with your favorite movie snack and I will regale you on the wonders of shoelace repair. A tale of wonder that you will pass on to your children.
Invariably the little plastic sleeve (which I’m told is an aglet, and has a sinister purpose) has been missing many mud puddles back and you are stuck wondering why the fates had dealt you such a harsh blow. You could buy a new lace, but how will you get to the store with your shoe untied! Besides, it will never match your show color and you will inevitably grab a boot lace or something too short.
Alternately, you may just be a very frugal individual, like myself. The art of frugality runs deep in my family and is the primary reason that my wife married me (so I will say for this article, as I don’t think she reads my Instructables). Why should you have to pay for a new shoelace when only the end are bad?
Never fear! You have options! Repairing the end of a rope is fairly easy, given some simple techniques: whipping and fusing. These are regular rope mending skills, and so they can also be used to maintain ropes at home and so you will not shame yourself when the local scrimshaw peddler comes knocking at your door.
First thing you must check is to see if your lace is made of a plastic material or a natural one. In olden days, there were two main ways to keep a rope end tidy: whipping and end splicing. End splicing is the process of weaving the rope strands back into the rope body to secure them from fraying. It’s handy and looks fantastic, but with the number of strands in a shoe string and the scale, I’ll leave that hurdle to more ambitious Instructables. Whipping is a technique where you wrap your larger rope (or lace in this case) with twine (or floss for us) to secure the end. It is both handsome and strong, like me.
Sit back with your favorite movie snack and I will regale you on the wonders of shoelace repair. A tale of wonder that you will pass on to your children.
