Many shoe factories and shoemakers use plastic coverage during the manufacturing process, to protect the uppers from stains and marks. When one remove this at the end of the production, you will inevitably end up with plastic left. About this topic, and how to handle it (or not handle it), in this article.
In a shoe factory or a workshop of a bespoke shoemaker, it’s standard to protect the upper of the shoes in some way, from the harsh machines and / or tools as well as edge ink etc. that can cause issues. It varies how it’s done, everything from fully plastic covered plus extra tape security for various steps, to just small pieces of tape in specific steps. Partly due to how sensitive leather one work with, but partly just due to standard practice for that place.
Here a shoe has had a plastic cover placed over it and been a short time in an “oven” which has shrunken it, and the main excess is cut off.
How it often looks on the trolleys in a shoe factory.
The full plastic cover is a common solution, which protects more or less the whole upper from smaller nicks and stains (a slipping sanding wheel would still go through it, then one can use extra tape to reinforce further). The cover is attached after the upper has been lasted, before the welting (if welted shoes), and it can be a wrap that one pull over the shoe, or a so called shrunk plastic wrap that first is big but then with heat shrink tightly around the upper.
Here’s a hand welted bespoke shoe with a plastic wrap, which is removed from after the welt stitch.
A plastic wrap doesn’t protect from harsher stuff, so during part of the making one often attach extra strong tape.
A heated knife is used to remove the cover, but as you’d understand by the photos above, there’s plastic left inside the shoe.
The plastic cover is removed with a knife with a heated edge. It’s done as close to the sole and heel edge as possible, and with the heat the edge of the remains sort of contract into the shoe and isn’t visible anymore. Hence, many of your welted shoes most likely have some plastic strips inside them. It do no harm whatsoever, and in most cases you’ll never notice it at all. But, what sometimes happen is that the plastic start to creep out and become noticeable.
This is something that some people are very annoyed about (interestingly enough often the same people who are very sensitive for marks on the upper from the manufacturing…), but it’s not bad work by the factory or the maker, it’s just the nature of what can happen when one use a plastic cover. It’s not possible to remove it better than what is done, and if it then with time creeps out and become visible, well, it’s not more to than than that you can remove it.
This factory-made shoe had a large part that came out of the storm welt part. Very visible but also very easy to remove.
Here in the inside arch of a pair of bespoke shoes one can see plastic residues poking out.
It’s usually done best with a pair of tweezers, which you try to get a grip around the plastic strip that you see, and pull out. Once you’ve gotten it out a bit, you can use your fingers instead. Pull very carefully, so you can get as much as possible out at once without the plastic breaking and you might have to start over again and fiddle with the tweezers.
Once you’ve removed all the plastic that’s visible, it’s good to use an application brush and get some shoe cream in there between the upper and the sole and heel edge, since the plastic has usually covered parts which are now exposed again. Not that it makes that much of a difference from afar, but feels better to do it properly.
With a pair of tweezers, you can slowly but surely pull out the plastic. Once it’s this much out you can start using your fingers instead.
Gone.
Plastic residues removed from this bespoke pair. Some weren’t really that visible, but when one start with the pieces shown other comes out as well.
