Here's a list of things you;ll need first;
1.) one yard of white marine grade vynal
2.) humongo tacks (I used two packs, one per shoe)
3.) three tubes of "shoe goo"
4.) white thread and a sewing needle
5.) some sort of plastic, metal, formica type of what ever you armor will be made from.
enough to do two plates on your feet and make straps with.
6.) white "Athletics Works" shoes from wal-mart
7.) button snaps
8.) five minute epoxy
9.) your mando paint colors and your own weathering.
First thing first, you'll want to make an attempt at keeping the boot to scale with your foot so it'll look right on you.
Do dry runs of parts and make sure it's where you want it to be before you cut anything, the old adage "measure twice cut once"
So without a due here ya go.
1.) take your shoe and set it up to be a slip on. you can either just tie the laces and tuck'em like I did or you could sew them
to the tongue. either way, they will still be covered up later so looks don't matter, only comfort.
2.) Now your shoe is ready for the vynal you'll have to cut some off of your roll. You'll need enough to wrap almost all the way
around. Make sure to leave a gap in the front and most importantly, don't forget that you'll be stretching the vynal over
the shoe so take that into mind when you leave your gap.
something I also did with mine was to leave enough to seal up my ankles, you know for those not so sunny days and the mudd
gets to deep.
3.) Once you get your main piece done, you'll want to add the toe piece, the little strip on the toe area. You can sew it on once
you have it's width figured out. Remember to keep in a proportion for you. with the sewing part, just lay it all inside out and bring your two ends to your toe piece and stitch one side at a time till you have a ring in the shape of a boot top.
You can also do what I did on my first set, just glue it on with shoe goo later and add a couple of stitches to re-inforce it.
4.) now you're ready to goop the shoe up with shoe goo. I used 1 1/2 tube per shoe so you could use more or less depends on
your shoe size I guess. ( I'm a 10.5 )
anyway, start at the heal and goop up from the side sole to the top of the shoe. place beads of goop about every inch but
ease off from the front. leave it for later unless you're doing the toe stitched version, then goop the whole thing up in the
pattern mentioned. As you lay the vynal on, pull it down over the top part of the side sole and use the large humongo
tacks to hold it in place. once this stuff is all done, you'll be trimming off excess vynal.
now, once you've let it dry for those that are adding the toe later, you can remove you tacks and not worry about the vynal
pulling off. this will help you to get a better fit and have less stress on the material.
5.) once you're ready to place your toe piece goop up the rest of the shoe, and you could add a stitch or two to the top of you
toe piece and laces to help hold it into place. it's gonna be covered with an armor plate anyway so don't worry about
appearances on the under side of the plate. once you get that on, let the shoe goo dry completely so when you go to place
your plate you don't have it oozing out.
6.) Making you plate is pretty easy to do, I based mine off of a few good pics of clone boots only to realize they are almost
similar to mando shoulder armor in shape. Here's a few shots I used;
Makeing your plates is pretty easy, just practice with some cardboard scap to get it just right, then commit it to
your material of choice ( metal, plastic )
I really didn't use a pattern for mine but used trial and error to get my shapes to where I liked it and then made it reversed
for the other foot.
side view
6.) You might want to add some velcro or button snaps to close up your top flap around your ankles
7.) also you'll be adding a set of snaps to the downward curve of the ankle area of the shoe. I placed mine about center of the
curve and these will hold your buckle plate on.
8.) The buckle plate is roughly two inches but yet again, go for the proportion. Try it out with cardboard until you're happy
and it all looks good together. Once you have it in cardboard, you now have a template to make you actual pieces.
I used the other side of the button snap and five minute epoxy to attach the snap piece to the plate.
And here's a finished look;
It helps to get your plates painted up before placing them so your whole boot will get the same weathering treatment
and look better over all.
If anyone has any questions please feel free to drop me a line or two.