DIY Alignment Experimentation

[pbnjay]

What are some goods methods of making temporary modifications to your alignment?

If you are slightly knock-kneed or bow legged, what materials (credit cards, duct tape) would you use, where in the boot (or outside the boot?) would you put the material, and how would you attach it?

What about fore-aft experimentation? Same questions.

I'm using the stock 'insoles' that came inside the boots.

[dan.boisvert]

The typical way for side to side is to buy some shims in various angles and use those. That's what bootfitters use. I'm pretty sure Tognar has them. You just put the shims under the boot as you click in, and once you've verified the right amount, you move the alignment into the boots.

There is a conversion from strips of duct tape to degrees--I thought it was something like one strip is a quarter-degree or somesuch, but I can't recall exactly. It'd be easy enough to figure out with some duct tape, a true bar, and a ruler.

Fore-aft is a lot more complicated and harder to do, because you've got inside-the-boot angles, outside-the-boot angles, and binding angles that all need to work for the net result to be good. I'm not sure there's a way to mess with these in a quick and easy fashion.

I'd be completely remiss if I didn't add that you're going about this exactly backwards, though. You need to start inside the boots, get the footbed figured out, get the inside dialed, and then look at the outside stuff. In my case, the difference between alignment with the inside right and the inside wrong was about 4 degrees on each foot. That's a lot. If you can get to a Harb-trained fitter from the beginning, it's well worth the expense to not have to deal with that. In my case, I posted here for advice before letting a previous fitter grind the angles into my boots, and boy was I ever glad I did..

[Max_501]

Dan is correct. Footbeds before exterior lateral alignment.