Unlace Me — A shoelace replacement and lacing | unlace-me.com
Old lace out, count the pairs, thread bottom-up, even the tension, tie the bow — about five minutes per shoe, no tools.
Step 1 — pull the old lace out. Start at the top eyelet and work down; the lace slides free in about 30 seconds. Keep it: if the chart and the shoe disagree later, the old lace is the measurement that settles it.
Step 2 — count the eyelet pairs on one side of the shoe, about a minute. That count feeds straight into the length chart: 3 pairs take 30 in (76 cm), 5-6 pairs take 45 in (114 cm), 8-9 pairs take 72 in (183 cm). Measure the old lace if the count lands between rows.
Step 3 — thread bottom-up, about two minutes. Run a straight bar across the bottom pair, then work upward with both ends even. The typical failure at this stage is a twisted lace that will not lie flat no matter how the bow is tied.
On narrow screens, swipe or scroll the plate sideways.
Step 4 — even out the tension from the toe up, pair by pair, about a minute. The typical failure is one loose side: pulling only at the top leaves the lower pairs slack, and the shoe feels wrong within a few steps.
Step 5 — tie the bow as a square knot: right over left, then left over right, about 30 seconds. Finishing with a granny knot is the classic final failure — it failed 100% of lab trials at 3 g of free-end weight, against 53% for the square knot — and the knot-fix page explains the mechanics.
Total time runs about five minutes per shoe. If the new lace turns out short, the cause is almost always step 2: the eyelet count was guessed instead of counted, or the shoe is the high version of a model whose low version takes a shorter lace.
Further reading