Is Shoe Goo goop really just gasoline and styrofoam?

It would make better napalm...

I'm reading up on Shoe Goop goo which apparently is toluene based where the goop simply "hardens" by evaporating the toluene solvent in air.

This explains why it is always best to squeeze out the goop before capping it, so that there is zero air left (if possible) to harden.

It also explains why it sometimes can cure in a short period of time (hours) but when used on the entire sole of shoes, it can take days for all the solvent to evaporate out, especially if the shoe is wrapped in strands of rubber bicycle tire tubing strips.

What I do to repair shoe soles is I stuff with towels or rags (it would be nice to make my own form but usually I'm doing kid's shoes where I don't have a wooden form).

Then I glop the shoe goop goo on the sole and then wrap with 26-inch long half-inch wide strips of bicycle tire tube. Each wrap adds tension and I let it sit for a couple of days if the impatient kids can wait that long.

I use so much of this shoe goo that I was wondering how to make it at home.

Well, it's NOT styrene - which is what you get if you disolve styrofoam.. Might be cheaper to buy the kids good used shoes instead of trying to repair them with goop.

Here's my repair project this morning.

The first think I've learned is that the washing machine is a brutal place for kids shoes!

What I learned was an ice cube is GREAT for smoothing the shoe goop without sticking.

And I learned that a bicycle tire tube makes a good strap.

Clamps are ok but they don't fit shoes all that well except when you use a rectangle of tire tube to repair the back of the heel.

I read somewhere that you know a bit of chemistry.

I never understood "glue".

It's not "bonding" like covalent or ionic bonding, right?

Glue is sort of like solidifying. Right?

I liken it to Velcro where one half of the glue links up with a mechanical bond to the other half of the glue.

But I studied chemistry and they never covered "glue bonding".

What is glue bonding anyway? Do you know?

I'm sure it's different for different glues, for example, what we call glue in water pipes is really a solvent that melts the pipe and then the solvent dissipates into the atmosphere partial pressure until the only thing left is two pipes "welded" together. But that's not glue.

What is your typical glue bond? Does anyone know?

I get the joke but what I was hoping was to do three things with this thread.

1. Let people know that ice cubes work GREAT to smooth out Shoe Goop and to let people know that a bicycle tire tube cut into long 1/2-inch-wide strips also works great, as do all the common clamps everyone already knows about (especially for repairing the heel area as shown here).
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2. Ask people in this home repair group if there is a cheaper alternative to a six-dollar toothpaste-tube-sized Shoe Goop glue that works as well as shoe goo does (perhaps maybe by mixing toluene and plastic peanuts, for example).
3. Ask chemistry knowledgeable people here what kind of "bonding" is the glue doing. It's not covalent or ionic or aromatic bonds. What is it?

Can anyone add to our knowledge in any of those three areas?

Hi Frank, if you're out there.

Looking at the Shoe Goo MSDS, it's toluene based but that's all I can get out of the MSDS. The toluene is the solvent which seems to vaporize, leaving the "glue" behind.

I know about covalent and ionic bonding and the nuclear strong and weak forces, but glue doesn't seem to be any of those.

Do any chemists out there know what "force" is what holds most common glues together?

I call it the "velcro force" because it's none of the common forces. But what is it really?