A new pair of shoes arrived with extravagantly long laces requiring shortening. Years ago, I found heatshrink tubing completely unequal to the task, so I deployed Real Metal:
The ferrules come from a kit of such things, minus their plastic strain relief:
That’s a fancy hexagonal crimper for round-ish results. If you have a square terminal block, you should use the square crimper that comes with the kit.
Worked perfectly and produced immediate customer satisfaction.
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10 responses to “Shoe Lace Ferrules”
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/aglet
Ya learn something new every day around here.
Thanks!
My approach: Twist the uncut lace into a round profile where you want the new tip to be. Saturate that section of round profile lace with superglue over a length comparable to the desired aglet. Let it cure. Trim the new, stiff, round section to the desired length, excising the excess lace in the process. Try to figure out how to ret the superglue off your fingers.
Many of the superglue formulations can be dissolved with acetone.
Acetone will pass through your skin and take whatever you’re dissolving along for the ride. A pair of medical latex gloves work wonders to keep your fingers unstuck :)
Protip, use a size too small when dexterity is required, they’ll stretch over your fingers instead of wrinkling on your fingertips. Don’t blow in them to inflate them before putting them on (especially if reusing a previously worn pair), moisture from the breath can make it really tricky to get them on. Air compressor works fine, or you can trap a small amount of air in the palm section, squeeze the end closed and push the air down each finger.
Very interesting, thanks, just never thought of it, and I have one of the square crimper things
Nice usage, I have the same crimpers AND laces that had the ends recently shredded by a relentless kitty. The toughest part will be to get the ends back into good enough shape to thread them through the largest ferrules.
Wrap the end tightly in regular clear scotch tape, drip superglue in there and remove the tape after it cures – that’s how I do dyneema lines on my windsurfing rig. Sailors normally seal polyester lines by melting them over a flame, but dyneema won’t melt and just disappears under flame.
Having new shoes with new laces definitely helped! The largest ferrules (green, over on the right) neatly slipped over the existing aglets (now I know!), so those were the ones I used.
[…] considerable evaluation, the Customer decided the shoelaces were still too long and said the hex-crimped ferrules were entirely too rough and tended to snag on things. This time, I prepared the ferrules by […]