MK: DIY Kevlar Toe Slippers

For those who want to be safe and comfortable!

In this weeks project I decided to upgrade regular pink fluffy slippers into safety, kevlar reinforced, hardcore slippers. Now you don´t need to worry about falling pieces of wood, bricks, steel tubes, or anything that might try to disturb you while enjoying your warm cup of morning tea.

Materials: styrodur, pair of slippers ( the pinkier they are, the better), kevlar (carbon, glass, ...) cloth, some soft cloth, epoxy, tape.

Tools: rotary tool, scissors, drill, sandpaper, japanese saw.

I started by cutting styrofoam with my japanese saw into cylindrical shape. Then I ran bolt through along the axis and fashioned myself a mini-lathe (just like that). Then I used coarse sandpaper to shape the styrodur to kind of round shape. I later masked the hole from the bolt with a tape.

After the mold was ready I spread plastic bag on top of it to prevent epoxy from sticking to it. It´s cheap and it works great.

I started by cutting several square pieces of kevlar and glassfiber cloth. Then I mixed my epoxy and covered the mold with it. After the mold was fully covered I started to laminate. I layed each layer and made sure that they all are efficiently saturated with epoxy. I alternated kevlar with glass fiber for cost-effectiveness. After I apllyed all the layers I covered the surface with a thin coat of epoxy.

After the epoxy has cured I removed the mold and covered the whole thing in masking tape. This allowed me to protect the surface from sratches while providing nice place for marking the future cuts with a sharpie.

For cutting itself I used rotary tool with cut off disk. This went really well, I just had to make sure I wasn´t rushing the tool too much, because the workpiece is relatively thick and hard.

I cut piece from soft cloth and glued it inside of the "toe". Then I wrapped the outside with tape, so it would slide easily to the slipper. Next I just simply slided the toe to the slipper and voila, nice, comfortable and most importantly safe slippers are done :-)

As you can see in the video, I tested them with block of wood, brick and steel tube and they surprisingly work very well. Finally someone who makes safety equipment, who also thinks about style :-)

Please check out my YouTube channel, to find some other awesome DIY projects!