The weapon of choice is the exacto knife. My tip: keep your blades sharp. A 100-pack of blades are sold and aren’t too pricey. Sharp blades = less trouble. More trouble = more force. More force = damaged leather and bloody fingers. Make it easy on yourself and keep sharp blades.
Shoes change over the years. Same models will still have different blueprints later on.
Below is just one example:
The middle is from a pair of wht/wht af1s from around 2001. Notice that the seperated toebox is much larger. As time goes by, I’m assuming Nike chose to save some more pennies so the panels gradually grew smaller and leather quality was downgraded.
When using the toebox as a template to cut out another piece of material (hides, vinyl, suede, leather, etc.), the cut and slits are probably the most important part. Based on my experience, The 2001 toebox was so much easier to replace since the bigger slits allowed more room to adjust when reattaching to the shoe. The 2004 piece without any slits was the hardest and took several attempts before I got a decent even-looking reattached toebox. The difficulty in working with the 2006 model was in between.
If the model you have does not have any slits, I recommend you maybe just add a single one like in the Dunk Toebox to the right. It’ll make a huge difference.
Here’s a little peak as to how the pieces are connected.
The toebox is attached only by some stitches to the midpanels.
The outer toe panel overlaps the toebox and midpanels.
Unforunately, I did several pairs before common sense hit me. If you’re replacing the midpanels and toebox, instead of just making three seperate panels, just align them like I did above and cut out one large connected shape. This eliminates alot of aligning when it’s time to finally stitch back the shoe. You can now just slip in the large piece in between the inner lining and the outer toepanel/lace panel. Make sure wherever you begin stitching, it’s correct. If you mess up it’s going to throw the rest of the shoe off. If you get it right, it makes life so much easier.
In the back, there is the upper heel panel and lower panel on each side. The seperation of these are hidden by the swoosh.
