Stilletto Heel Repair for some Handmade Red Leather Boots ..

I am now selling on Depop and had some boots to sell .. not realising that the heel on one of the boots had completely snapped in half .. It was nicely camouflaged by the leather being really thick ..

These are the boots in question:-

I took them to my local Cobblers who said he could not repair them and they would have to be sent away .. so I thought .. how hard can it be to repair them myself .. quite hard .. it turns out!!

So .. I started by watching YouTube videos on shoe repairers .. and then decided to have a go myself ..

First job was to unglue all the leather on the heel to expose the plastic heel inside. Which is when I realised that this heel have been repaired previously .. as can be seen in this next pic!!

Sadly, this repair had created a very weak spot in the heel which is why it failed again .. so .. I had an idea of how to repair it .. but someone else had already tried that repair .. so I needed to think of another way to retain the original strength in the heel ..

I decided to drill down into the male and female parts of the old repair and insert a solid steel pin .. I drilled down to about an inch on either side of the break .. added in some 2 part araldite .. to both ends of the steel pin .. and also added the glue to the remainder of the plastic heel ..

I also placed the glue on the white plastic either side of the steel tubes on both pieces .. then hammered the heel into place.

and Voila .. a fixed stilletto heel!!

Well .. not quite .. where they had repaired it previously .. the pin they inserted had inadvertently created a weak spot in the plastic .. so I had to think of a way to strengthen that weak spot.

I tried using resin putty ..

I was going to sand it smooth with my dremel .. but sadly .. the resin was too brittle for this repair .. so .. back to the drawing board ..

I then realised I had some resin left over from making my casts from my silicone moulds .. did a YouTube viewing and ordered some Glass fibre ribbon .. had to wait for it to be delivered, then I could carry on with the repair.

Glass fibre arrived and I mixed up some 2 part resin .. cut the glass fibre ribbon to size .. and started painting the resin onto the heel and then gently laid the fibre glass on top and covered it thinly with some more resin .. waited for it to dry for 24 hours .. and this is the result.

So .. its hard to see .. but the glass fibre and resin is a little bumpy .. just needed a light sanding and its ready to be re-wrapped in red leather !! Voila!! hahaha

Here is the finished heel:-

There is a slight bump there .. which is unavoidable as any more sanding would strip away the fibreglas sheath .. which again would weaken the joint .. but once on the foot .. that would not be noticeable.

So yeah .. I am very pleased with it!!

Susey ..

xxx