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Shoelace Tips for Everyone
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There's some shoelace tips that apply to everyone, young and old alike. This section contains general tips about
shoelace comfort, security, appearance, and getting them to the right length.
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Lacing for Comfort
- Minimize the pressure points caused by hard, round shoelaces by replacing them with soft, flat shoelaces.
- Also for comfort,
Criss Cross Lacing minimizes pressure points.
- To reduce the pressure of shoelaces on the upper ridge of the foot, use
Straight Bar Lacing.
- To allow the sides of boots to flex more easily, use
Army Lacing.
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Preventing Shoelaces Coming Undone
- Check that you're not inadvertently tying an un-balanced
Granny Knot (which comes undone much more easily).
- Learn a more secure
knot, such as
Ian's Secure Shoelace Knot.
- Regardless of the knot used, finish it off by pulling the knot nice and tight. Follow-up by pushing the bits in the
centre of the knot snugly together to make the knot compact and secure.
- Replace shoelaces made of slippery synthetic materials (such as nylon) with ones made of less slippery materials
(such as polyester) or, better still, ones made of cotton, hemp or other natural fibers.
- To make shiny shoelaces less slippery, roughen them up with some coarse sandpaper.
- Shoelaces can be made less slippery by applying a grippy product to the surface, such as beeswax, rubber cement or
a specialist product like Lace-Stick®.
- Ensure that the shoelaces aren't too long, either by replacing them or by shortening them to the correct length.
Besides the obvious fact that long loops or ends are more likely to be either snagged or stepped on, the fact that
long laces flop around more also tends to work the knots loose.
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Helping Shoelaces Last Longer
- Try my
Ian Knot, which uses fewer steps and thus reduces wear and tear from handling.
- Check that you're not inadvertently tying an un-balanced
Granny Knot, which comes undone more easily and thus increases wear and tear due to more frequent re-tying.
- When pulling laces tight, pull outwards rather than upwards, thus reducing friction against the top eyelets.
- Pull firmly and evenly and don't tug quickly on the lace ends.
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Excessively Long Shoelaces
- To avoid stepping on excessively long loops, tuck them under the crossovers of lacing down the middle of the shoe.
- Use two or more successive
Ian Knots, as shown on my
Double Ian Knot page. This works well, though it looks a bit ridiculous and can be fickle to un-tie.
- Adopt a different lacing pattern, such as
Spider Web Lacing,
Ladder Lacing or
Lattice Lacing, all of which use up more lace and effectively "shorten" the ends. For maximum shortening, use
Supernova Lacing.
- Artificially shorten the shoelaces as follows: Lace the shoes on your feet, then adjust the end lengths to a
reasonable length (about 250 mm) by pulling the excess lace back through the eyelets until all the excess is
sitting at the bottom of the shoe (ie. near the toes). Tie a knot at that point to keep the excess down there.
- An alternative to tying a knot at the bottom is to create a triple-pass. Start lacing the shoe with a straight
section across the bottom eyelets, then run both ends back across the bottom and feed a second time through the
opposite bottom eyelets. Finish by lacing the remainder of the shoe normally.
- If the laces are way too long, you can cut out a section and re-join the two ends of lace. This can be done with a
simple
Reef Knot, or flat laces can be either sewn or glued together, while synthetic laces can even be melted
together.
- The ultimate solution is to shorten the shoelaces to the
correct length by cutting off the ends, then replacing the aglets (the plastic tips) as per my
Aglet Repair section.
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Excessively Short Shoelaces
While the obvious solution for excessively short shoelaces is to replace them with ones of the
correct length, here's some great emergency measures, especially if one lace end has broken at short notice and
there's no ready replacement.
- Adopt a different lacing pattern such as
Army Lacing or
Bow Tie Lacing, which uses less lace.
- Re-lace the shoes, skipping the bottom pair of eyelets, or more if the lace ends are really short.
- Tie a
Reef Knot, which is basically a
Standard Shoelace Knot minus the loops and drawstrings. This means that it looks different to a regular "bow",
and it also uses a slightly different method of untying.
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End Lengths Shifting
Some shoes suffer from laces that perpetually shift, such that one end gradually gets longer than the other. There
are various possible reasons and therefore various possible solutions.
- If using a non-symmetrical lacing method, particularly
Shoe Shop Lacing, re-lace the shoes with a symmetrical lacing method, such as
Criss Cross Lacing.
- If using a non-symmetrical shoelace knot, particularly the
Standard Shoelace Knot, try learning a symmetrical method, such as my own
Ian Knot.
- Ensure that all eyelets are a similar diameter. Those that are simply holes punched in the leather can be easily
enlarged with a leather punch, reamer or even a sharp drill bit.
- Before lacing the shoe, tie a permanent knot in the middle of the section that will run across the bottom eyelets
(the grey section in most of my diagrams). Any shift will be halted when the knot reaches the eyelet on either side.
- An alternative to tying a knot at the bottom is as follows. Start lacing the shoe with a straight section across
the bottom eyelets, then run both ends back across the bottom and feed a second time through the opposite bottom
eyelets. The extra friction of the double-passes of shoelace through those eyelets will reduce any shift.
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Shoelaces Worn In Icy Conditions
- To prevent shoelaces icing up and becoming stiff as wire, take them off and soak them in a waterproofing solution
(such as "Nixwax") and wipe off the excess. Once dry they will have a slightly waxy feel but will still hold a knot
properly, especially if you also adopt the
Ian's Secure Shoelace Knot.
- For those who wear crampons (spiked fittings for walking on snow or ice),
Hiking / Biking Lacing can be worn with the loops to the outside, further away from snagging in the spikes of
the adjacent foot.
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Preventing Shoe Tongues Slipping Sideways
Many shoes have tongues that tend to slip towards the outside of the foot. This is particularly common on shoes
with flatter tongues that don't fit the curvatures of the top part of the foot.
To minimize this slippage, the top of most shoe tongues includes some form of "centering loop":
- A separate loop of leather or material;
- A label that's stitched at the top and bottom and open at both sides;
- A pair of vertical grooves cut through the upper layer of material or right through the tongue.
There are several ways of lacing through such tongue centering loops to minimize sideways movement:
- Avoid straight lacing methods like
Straight Bar Lacing because they don't hold horizontally.
- If using
Over Under Lacing, note that the "Over" sections are more effective than the "Under" sections because they
prevent the tongue from passing under the sides of the shoe.
- Use a lacing method that runs the laces through the loop at a steeper angle, such as
Lattice Lacing or
Zipper Lacing.
- Rather than lacing the whole shoe differently, use
Zipper Lacing only on those eyelets immediately above and below the tongue loop.
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