Heel Taps / Shoe Tacks
Prevents sole wear
Putting new heels on dress shoes is expensive, but an old trick is to use hard wearing taps that take the wear and can be easily replaced. I have used these successfully for the past few years and they really work. You can purchase in a variety of sizes. I only use the plastic ones but if you want to go really old school, you can buy metal taps.
Although the taps have some adhesive, you have to nail them to the heel or they will just peel off. In the past, my taps came with wire nails (uniform diameter shank) that were difficult to pound into a rubber heel. However, my most recent purchase (see above) actually came with old fashioned shoe tacks. These are cut nails with a sharp tip that easily bite into a rubber heel with a few hammer taps. (Cut nails are a whole topic for another post.) I usually wait to install these until the heel is a bit rounded down so that these approximately fill in the gap and leave my shoe level to the ground. We remove our shoes indoors but it is possible that the nail heads could damage a wooden floor if they protrude so caveat emptor.
03/23/18
