Bicycle tyre sandals are very easy to make (with care), very versatile and surprisingly comfortable. But why bike tyre sandals you may ask. Well they were a culmination of a couple of ideas I had winging around inside my head. I wear Vivobarefoot and Vibram 5 finger shoes quite a lot as they are very comfy and allow you to feel connected to the earth you’re walking on. Possibly the next best thing to moccasins after going bare foot, but like moccasins they wear out quite quickly if you are walking round on pavements or anything other than grass or woodland. So I was thinking about how to help my moccasins last longer and I remembered watching an episode of Last Man standing, where a group of guys spent time with native tribes and competed in some form of sport challenge. One of these they were in a running race with the local tribe, but they had to make their own running shoes, or sandals from old car tyres first. After doing a bit of research and reading about how to make car tyre sandals in my copy of Primitive Living, Self Sufficiency and Survival Skills by Thomas J Elpel, I decided I would have a go. Elpel explains that he came about these in the same way, that he was wearing out his moccasins too quickly, great minds think alike eh? Now I didn’t have any old car tyres but from my mountain biking days I had a few old bike tyres in the garage, so that’s what I had to work with and I went for it.
So to start with, let me give you a tip first, some bike tyres have a wire bead round the rim, you don’t want these. Also I would suggest not using the type of tyre I used, these had Kevlar threads running through them to help prevent punctures and it made them a lot more difficult to cut. I would suggest your best bet would be cheaper, fat tyres. You definitely want a wide tyre so a good size off road tyre is what you’re looking for. I’m sure if you haven’t got any if you pop to your local bike shop and ask if they have any old, worn out tyres they will be happy to let you have some.
First I would recommend making a cardboard template. To do this simply place your foot onto the card and draw round it. Wearing a sock makes this easier and adds a little size to the outline. Don’t draw tight up against your foot, give about 1cm extra all round. Once you have done this you need to add on some “tabs” that will act as the securing points. Make these about 1” wide and you need to place them at 5 points. The first is at the back of your heel, then working forward you need two more tabs, one on either side, slightly to the rear of just under your ankle bone. Then carrying on towards the front of your foot the last two tabs will be level with the ball of your toes, one at your big toe and the other side at your little toe. Draw these tabs onto the card at these locations and you should have a pretty good fit. Once done cut out the card template. Try this card template against your foot to make sure you are happy with the fit, obviously make one for each foot, don’t rely on flipping over the template as you will find the fit won’t be as good and a good fit is what we want.
When you have two templates you're happy with you need to transfer these onto the bike tyre. Trying to do this on a full bike tyre is a bit awkward so to help you here I would recommend cutting out two sections of tyre a good couple of inches longer than your feet. You should find that these flatten out a lot easier and allow you to place the template onto them. Put the template on the inside of the tyre, where the inner tube would be, draw round the template onto the tyre, I used a pencil but a marker pen would be good.
Once you’ve done that, making sure the templates don’t slip, you are ready to cut out the tyre. The best way I found to do this was with a VERY sharp knife. I tried big scissors and even secateurs but they didn’t cut the tyre well at all. Now this may have been that the tyre I was using was Kevlar reinforced but I had little trouble using my Mora knife. I found cutting down onto a wooden block worked very well, just be very careful doing this as the rubber grips the blade and it’s not easy.
Once you have worked your way round and cut out the shape, being careful not to cut the tabs, you need to cut slots in each tab to accommodate the fastening straps. Also if your tyre has chunky tread on it as mine has, you need to cut the chunks off the heel tab so that the heel tab is smooth like the others. There’s no issue leaving some tread up the back of the heel but it helps to cut it off the tab itself. When you have cut out the slots in the tabs, you are almost done, just the fastening to work out. For speed I Initially used paracord just to lace them up and try them out. Even with just the paracord they worked very well and were a lot more comfy than I had imagined them to be. This was wearing them both barefoot and with socks on, yes I know “socks n sandals”. Don’t forget the real purpose of these is to be worn over the top of a pair of moccasins, so a thin cord such as this won’t really be an issue as it won’t dig in. But having said that I wore them for an hour or so round the garden and house without any discomfort at all. I would be looking at a different strap method though if I was going to wear them barefoot for a day, I was thinking of perhaps using bike inner tubing strips, but we will have to wait until I’ve had a play around. The beauty of these really is how cheaply they can be made, they last very well, and they don’t have an issue with getting wet. So if you are looking for a way to make your moccasins last a lot longer then give them a go, or if you are just into self-sufficiency and recycling and you want some cutting edge treads then you won’t go far wrong with these beauties.
You never know, we could start a new footwear trend and wearing these will be the only time your feet get tyred!
