Posts Tagged ‘Sandal Retread’

Sandal Retread using Fillet ‘o Tire

Sunday, August 2nd, 2009

Sandals After

I did this once years ago, and it worked really well. Take an old tire, and recycle it to make indestructible shoe soles. Tire tread is designed to handle way more abuse than simple walking can dish out. My current sandals were starting to wear down, and it was time to do it again.

There’s just one issue when using a tire: there’s a steel mesh embedded in the rubber. It rigidly holds a curved shape, which is not what you want. The solution I came up with was to fillet the tire, keeping the tread and leaving the steel behind. Good stuff.

Beyond that it’s a straight-forward process. You remove the old soles and glue the new ones on. The rest of my sandals will fall apart long before the soles do.

I took a bunch of pictures. Should make for a decent Instructable.

flattr this!