Shoe Repair

Griffin has been walking over 10,000 steps a day as a college student on campus. This has caused him to wear out many pairs of shoes. Although the upper part of the shoes look relatively new, the soles have worn. In some pairs, the sole has cracked in half in the center. In other pairs, the heels have worn away.

Griffin decided to try repairing the newest pair to try getting more life out of them. He considered filling in the worn-away heel with hot glue, foam, wood, or rubber. Rubber seemed like a good choice (as we have seen people create soles from old tires). He finally decided to use wire insulation (probably plastic, not rubber). 

He had a scrap of 1.25" diameter wire insulation that he found on the sidewalk near a telecom box. The outside was smooth, and the inside was grooved. He flattened the wire insulation with his heat gun, and then used a pattern to cut a shape out of the plastic. Then he hot glued the plastic to the heel of the shoe. He did the same thing for the second shoe.

Now to experiment and see how long the repair will last. Which will fail first- the hot glue, the new plastic patch, or the rest of the shoe? 

Edited to add the results- it was the hot glue that failed. It didn't stick very well to the bottom of the shoe. It fell off after a couple of weeks. Another issue was that the plastic was too slippery to be a good heel material. Griffin ended up buying new sandals, steel-toed Keens that have lasted longer.