I picked up a pair of these bad boys in my size off Amazon and they got delivered. They fit pretty well! They’re not real leather, but they seem to be durable enough.
I took a closer look at Joe’s toecaps. At first, I assumed they were just steel toes, but upon closer examination, I realized that they’re engine pistons cut in half and shaped!
Makes sense, really, and it’s a damn cool detail I never would have noticed otherwise. I just got in a batch of ‘silver’ PLA filament for my 3d printer, so I figured I’d take a crack at 3d modelling something suitable up.
Problem was, I was kind of flying blind when it came to getting the toe caps to fit on the boots correctly. After a few unsuccessful test prints, I decided to try something different. I used my Kinect to do a quick 3d scan of the boot for reference, then started reshaping it and tapering it to contour to the boot a lot better.
I know the piston would never actually be shaped like this, but my justification is just that he probably would have hammered it out a bit wider to fit his foot, and frankly wearing a cylinder on the end of your toe isn’t very comfortable otherwise. I’ve spaced it such that the bike chain will hopefully sit right beneath the cylinder cap. I also added a couple posts to the front of the cylinder so the chain has something to shape it better, as the toe on my boot is rather pointed and I need the bike chain to have the profile of a wider toe.
I was reasonably satisfied with this, though I had to make some post-print changes. The white plastic bits are just there to hold the chain further out away from the toe and give the pointy boot a more ’rounded’ look. Here’s how we’re doing as far as a loose test fit goes:
