shoe hacking

so i got these badass new shoes, but they only had three rows of the metal rings for the laces. the top two rungs are those fake loops that are really just knobs to wrap your lace around to tie it up another notch. on a previous pair of boots i’d tried clamping the u-knob-things down so that they form a closed loop, so the lace can go through and not come out. but they were either too tight and the lace couldn’t move, or too loose and the lace still came out, but was a huge pain to get back in.

i bought these new shoes without noticing that they only had half rings. not wanting to take them back, but not really wanting to fumble around with the hooks anymore, it occured to me that instead of clamping the hook-knob-things down onto the laces, i could clamp them down onto new metal rings instead, and thread the laces through THOSE.

where to get some of these rings? why, off my old boots that i can’t wear anymore, of course! ripped them out with ease, clamped them into the new boots with a little less ease, and BAM i have hacked the gibson. my new shoes now feature four rungs of metal-loop lacing and function exactly the way i want instead of some bastard version of same.

and while i was at it, i ripped out the rest of the rings on one of the boots so that next time this happens i’m set.