Can anyone help me with a sole swap? I have a pair of 1991 Black Infrared 6s i want to sole swap but i cant find a tutorial anywhere and want to make sure its perfect. Can i get a list of supplies and methods or anything?
It's not too hard, but if it's your first time regluing/gluing back anything then you're probably goona be up for a challenge. It's literally the same concept as regluing a midsole or sole separation but just a little harder.
How to separate sole from donor:
If you do not want to completely destroy your donor, you can try to use a hair dryer/steamer and melt the glue on the midsole then slowly rip it apart. If you don't care about the donor and want the easiest&fastest way to separate the donor, you can do this. If you have not separated the shoe you wanted to swap yet, you can use a hair dryer/steamer to separate it.
After separating the donor, and the original shoe you want to swap, all there is to do is glue it back together.
General idea: (THIS IS NOT HOW YOU SHOULD DO YOUR SWAP, but it's just the general idea, all you do is glue the swapped midsoles back with the shoe, 11's are easy because you can use shoe laces to grip the upper and the midsole/sole together, everything other shoe is a little different because it can crease if you use shoelaces) REMEMBER, it's ONE PART AT A TIME, not the entire sole at one instance.
This is more of what you should do, different shoe, but similar process: (You can ignore the parts where they talk about repainting it unless you want to repaint it also, but that's a different topic to deal with)
When reattaching it, you'll see that two of the dudes use a clamp and that is probably the most effective and smartest way to do it. One reason why I love regluing 11's is because you don't need a clamp and can just use shoe laces and it won't crease, but on 6's, if you do that, it'll crease the shoe all over.
Materials off the top of my head (but you should also take into account what those dudes used in the vid):
- Original shoe you want to swap
- Donors to swap
- Hair Dryer/Steamer (to separate the midsoles from the shoe)
- Glue (barge cement, etc.)
- Clamp
- Something to spread the glue on the soles/midsoles (toothpick, etc.)
I've never had to swap anything outside of 11's, but just a quick thought, with the clamp, you might not want to use it on the entire shoe because if it pushes in from the top and the sides, it can eventually crease your shoe big time if you do it throughout the shoe like on the toebox,etc. that is why you only see the dudes use the clamp on the back part of the shoe because they can put it into the insole. Again, remember to just do one part of the shoe at a time (back, then middle,then front,etc.) and work your way to completing it all. I always recommend to start at the heel/back. If you get glue stains on the midsole,leather,etc. remember to wipe it off asap, if it dries, you're screwed. So just keep a wet towel around incase there is excess glue and if it's your first swap or reglue, there probably will be some excess glue.
EDIT: Not many great tutorials, but I hope you get the general idea of how to do it. It's not too hard, but as always, the more experience, the easier it gets, so it might be challenging the first time.