March 12, 2020

Boot repair

I have said elsewhere that I don't backpack with boots. I do own boots, mostly for use in snow and for non-backpacking use (such as exploring mines). I have had stitching wear away as well as soles come unglued.

Gorilla Glue

The recommended stuff is Gorilla Glue! I am in the process of repairing some missing stitching right now using Gorilla Glue and the results look promising. The trick is clamping. I use a wide mouth C-clamp along with some chunks of metal and wood. It is important to put some wax paper (or something of the sort) between wood blocks and the boot, or the blocks will end up glued to the boot!

There are now many different products being sold as gorilla glue, so care is required to get the right stuff. I recommend the "original" stuff (which is yellow/brown). There is also "white" and "clear" now. I used the white for my first repair of this sort, and it seems fine, but time will tell. The white cures faster, which always makes me suspect that performance is being sacrificed. Patience has its rewards.

The "original" stuff is polyurethane and is both flexible and tenacious. It is very hard to find any quality information about the other variants. Searching just yields marketing copy and advertising.

My "mine boots" were repaired 3-12-2020, the left boot using the white, the right boot using the original.

Conclusion: this does OK in lieu of stitching. If I was a cobbler, I would be resewing the boots. I tried using gorilla glue to reattach some soles that were falling off of some boots, and this simply did not work. The boots were originally manufactured by gluing on the soles and while gorilla looked good at first, one day of rough use undid everything.

Aquaseal +SR

Here "SR" stands for "shoe repair" and the product comes with endorsements by smart and experienced people. I am repairing a pair of Lowa Innox boots with a left to right tear in the boot fabric right behind the toe cap. What I am going to do is to use some polyester mesh sold for roof repair and embed it in the Aquaseal.

First I stuff the boot with grocery bags. Next I coat the boot with aquaeal (in the repair area) and press the mesh into the aquaseal. I use several narrow strips to allow the repair to conform to the shape of the boot without a lot of horrific bunching and pleating of the mesh. Really narrow strips (like 1/4 wide by 1.5 to 2 inches long). It won't be pretty, but honestly that is just fine, especially as it promises to give me a couple of years of use out of these almost new boots.

Wish me luck!

The boots in question are Lowa Innox GTX mid TF. They call this a "tactical" boot (I think this is all about color). Full retail is $235. They are made in Slovakia.

They recommend cleaning the surface with isopropyl alcohol. They even give instructions for using the product to build a toe cap.

Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's backpacking pages / tom@mmto.org