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Tuesday 8am - 6pm Saturday 8am - 6pm

Damned Soles

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Australia
Ulladulla, NSW
Damned Soles

Custom roller skate boots, skate boot rebuilds and repairs, shoe repairs, sage advice. Be excellent to each other.

17/05/2026

Rollerskating warms my little black heart , and I enjoy restoring old Altamuras. It's always a surprise to find how many tacks are still embedded the sole.
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I see red: the enamel took for f-ing ever to remove, but at least now I'm pretty quick at the task. It's a to do while listening to audio books.

Back to black: 2 different dyes, and then leather paint, were applied to achieve this deep black.
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If you're unsure of what the first step in caring for::restoring your Altamuras, send me a message. See less

20/04/2026

I fu***ng love DIY videos. I note the methods + tools used then find low cost* options + workarounds.

I’ve never really needed to solder before, but the o-ring between my sh*tty loupe** and a snap hook kept opening. So.

Failing to find a soldering iron on community noticeboards etc, I ended up at Hammerbarn, then ended up there again to get an iron with >10W along with general purpose solder and flux (kits don’t lable the solder included, so it’s a bit hit’n’miss). I figure this will do me a while, and I can now solder close zip head o-rings. DIY vids also show “helping hands” that hold small items in position while soldering, but random pinchnose pliers + elastic band work just as well, and damp paper towel is just as good as the sponges sold alongside soldering gear.

Borrow what you can, buy secondhand if needed and new at last resort. Find different options for tools and methods. Save your slave tokens, the world is full of enough stuff for everyone.

* Yes, I fully understand the cost of “I can just make it myself” mindsets
** Fun on mushroom forays

$life

18/02/2026

I rarely post photos of finished work… bc it induced panic attacks. I _know_ this sounds wild, that I’m a bit dramatic about regular worries. But no, connecting with my work felt like I’m putting my hand in the box of pain and the Gom Jabbar is at my neck. There are Reasons for this, but the worst experience was trying to work through this for decades, get fu***ng _nowhere_, and have many folk decide it’s a flaw in my personality. This has been both heartbreaking and very, very boring. Now that I’m sleeping I can hold space for doomy panics, find a way past them and unlearn habitual disassociations. Anyway, this fancy-as photo is from James: menthol colourway boots with hardware from .h.brown and Scott Corey.

27/01/2026

Dystopian futures were high on the agenda in the 90s. In mean, we joked about surviving a zombie apocalypse. Who would be on our team (and who would _not_). But the future crept up on us, now we’re sending memes during catastrophic heat waves::fire storms::blizzards of death::fascist regimes. So I fix shoes. These babies are coming along well, I finished hand stitching the toecap of one and have started the final recolouring with ‘Colour change’ over 3 coats of leather dye. These boots have taken a beating but they’re not dead yet.

14/01/2026

A year and a week ago, I experienced the most profound change in my life: I started sleeping. This sounds unhinged - didn’t I realise I wasn’t sleeping?! Yes, I did. But decades of doctors didn’t think much of chronic pain, unrelenting nightmares::night terrors. In late 2024, my new GP cautiously prescribed a low dose common medication (along with all of my other regular meds); no change. I increased to a moderate dose in early January 2025, realising the change about a week later: I’d slept, resting my poor brain for the first time in nearly 50 years. The long-term, unexplained neural inflammation in my braincase subsided. It’s not being over-dramatic in saying that I’m now able to hold a thought for more than 10 seconds without visceral panic. The seismic cognitive shifts are now plateauing, just in time for biting the New World Order. I feel ready.

12/01/2026

Not so much “the sewing tray” but the comfy couch. A lovely friend and I trade TCF (textile, clothing, footwear) mending and garden produce, seedlings, seeds. Yes, it would be much quicker to mend with a sewing machine. But. Handstitching affords our brains much needed quiet space and repetitive motion to start processing the absolute f**kery we are facing. Plus, I get to use the lovely gold sashiko thread from a mending workshop with .

11/01/2026

Something about this astounding location must say: “yes, of course, cover me with ciggie butts, assorted trash, discarded underwear.” 20c cooler than yesterday, so a wander at the point to eat potato scallops and collect discarded rubbish (with a litter picker, I’m not picking up sk**ky knickers with my dainty claws, ew).

09/01/2026

What’s on the sewing tray? Moonrakers (still) and socks (always). A few iterations of sewing the side elastics before I was happy with thread tension, then Dr Dog decided I’d done enough. Socks: lovely skiing socks from an opshop, but too big for my tiny feets. 1st iteration vs 6th. In making::mending::altering anything it’s always a few rounds of f**k around and find out.

07/01/2026

What’s on the sewing tray? Partly restored Moonrakers, tools & materials using at this stage.
Not on the tray: Renia CDC for setting the side elastics in place, heat-gun, lasts to block boots and new toe caps back into shape, Shoe Dr paint stripper and ~ 1000 q-tips to remove red enamel, and existential dread that it’s taken me so long to work through this repair.

17/05/2025

I will mend where I want to, won’t leave no socks behind. And if you don’t mend, forfend! You’re no friend of mine.

Address

Ulladulla, NSW

Opening Hours

Tuesday	8am - 6pm
Saturday	8am - 6pm

Website

http://damnedsoles.wordpress.com/

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