22 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[October 1. 1913. 



RUBBER QUARTER-TIPS ON LEATHER HEELS 

 AND SOLES. 



'T'HE wonderful increase in the demand for rubber-soled shoes, 

 •* some account of which appeared in a recent number of 

 The India Rubber World, and the later development of special 

 applications of rubber portions or insertions in leather shoes for 

 modern dancing,* seem to have started a sort of epidemic among 

 shoe manufacturers to experiment in other combinations of 

 rubber and leather in their output. 



Quite recently it was reported that some shoe manufacturers 

 were making the heels of their shoes with a quarter-tip of rubber. 



Sole .\xn Heel of a Compound ok Rubber and Leather with 

 Rubber Tips Vulcanized as Shown. 



this tip being placed on the outside and back of the heel, the place 

 where probably eighty per cent, of the people wear their heels 

 most. It is claimed that this spot bears the initial impact in 

 walking, and that the quarter-tip therefore serves all the purposes 

 of a full rubber heel lift, while the rest of the heel tread, of 

 leather, prevents the slipping which forms the chief defect of the 

 rubber heel. 



The quarter-tip has also another argument in its favor. It is 

 very generally conceded that rubber wears better and longer than 

 leather. If this be granted, it stands to reason that a heel having 

 twice the durabihty where the most wear comes will probably 

 wear truer and more even than one which is homogeneous 

 throughout its entire tread, thereby overcoming the tendency to 

 run over or run down at the heel. 



The quarter-tip is a piece of rubber soling shaped to conform 

 to the curve of the heel. It has a flange which goes under the 

 cut-off top-lift, and this flange assists materially in holding 

 the tip in place under the heavy service required of it. The 

 invention is an English one, and nearly every rubber heel manu- 

 facturer in Great Britain, and some Continental makers, include 

 such quarter-tips in their catalogs, and find a large proportional 

 sale. Inquiries of rubber heel manufacturers in this country 



The Iron Heel Plate Now 

 Being Replaced by a Rub- 

 ber Quarter-Tip. 



KUBBEK yUARIER-TlI .MaPE 



IN England. 



bring the information that such quarter-tips have never come 

 into general demand here, and altho some have been manu- 

 factured and offered to the trade, their production has quite gen- 

 erally been discontinued. 



The use of the quarter-tip is, perhaps, the logical evolution of 

 the protection of heels, and has been evolved from the metallic 

 heel plate which, while preventing uneven wear, makes a noisy, 

 inelastic tread, and, when worn smooth, is dangerously 

 slippery. It is self-evident that rubber, for the same purpose, 



Rubber liEEi.-'lii' Made 

 in England. 



is far better. To go further in this same direction, some manu- 

 facturers are reversing the rubber-leather sole, by a tip of 

 rubber skived to a leather sole, this being designed for 

 those persons who naturally w-ear the tips of th^ soles 

 to an excessive degree. Whether 

 this idea is practical remains to 

 be proved, for one of the reasons 

 given for tipping the rubber sole 

 with leather is the difficulty of 

 making a permanent, durable join- 

 ing of a rubber sole at the toe. 

 A modification of this scheme, 

 and what seems to be an improvement, is shown by a Brockton 

 shoe manufacturer who is using a sole compounded of rubber 

 and leather by a patented process. In order to secure even 

 wear at the points getting hard- 

 est service and which are worn 

 away quickest, those parts are 

 reinforced by a different compound, 

 richer in fine East Indian rubber, 

 and molded with the main bod: 

 of the sole and heel in thi 

 vulcanization. 



An adaptation of the rubber 

 heel and quarter-tip idea is a 

 half-tip of rubber with an insert 

 of leather, and a rubber heel with 

 a leather center. Both of these 

 are of English origin. 



What will be the next adop- 

 tion of rubber in the manufac- 

 ture of footwear is certainly an interesting question. 

 This idea of making the top lift of the heel of a shoe part 

 leather and part rubber, with the rubber at the point of natural 

 contact in walking, is not a new one; it was described in The 

 India Rubber World, in May, 1909, and attention was called at 

 that time to the difficulty that the shoemakers had in getting the 

 rubber part to take on the same color as the leather. After 

 much experimenting, however, a way was discovered in which 

 this could be done. But while this division of the upper lift of 

 the heel between leather and rubber is not new, there has not 

 been until quite recently any great demand for these shoes. Be- 

 tween the new dances introduced within the last year or two, 

 however, and the growing popularity of various sports, there has 

 arisen quite a general request for shoes partially soled or heeled 

 with rubber. 



Rubber Heel With 

 Le.\ther Insert. 



*See article on Non-Skid Dancing Shoes, The India Rubber World, 

 August, 1913, page 576. 



TWO PRACTICAL USES FOR RUBBER BALLS. 



One of the readers of a woman's magazine, who evidently is 

 somewhat given to whitewashing her own ceilings and painting 

 her own walls, describes in a letter for publication a method 

 she has devised for avoiding the unpleasant experience of hav- 

 ing whitewash or paint run down the handle of the brush, 

 when working overhead. She buys a large, hollow rubber ball, 

 cuts it in two, punches a hole in the centre of one half, and 

 then pushes this hemisphere over the handle and close up to the 

 brush, with the concave surface opening out. When the brush 

 is used on the ceiling or the upper part of the wall, the paint 

 or whitewash simply runs down into this improvised cup and col- 

 lects there, from which it can be easily removed after the painting 

 is over. 



Another housewife has discovered a useful employment for 

 a rubber ball in the cleaning of lamp chimneys. She takes a 

 hollow ball, fits a stick into it, slits the sides, so that it can be 

 compressed, and then pushes it into the lamp chimney. Naturally, 

 the ball has a tendency to resume its proper shape, so that it 

 swells out and fits snugly against the inside of the chimney. The 

 rubber serves to remove all the dirt and when the chimney is 

 clean it can be easilv withdrawn. 



