How to Apply Tuff Toe Pro Softball Pitchers Cleats: Reverse Toe

Hey there softball and baseball pitchers, we’re going to cover the Reverse Toe application and show you what is the Reverse Toe and who needs this kind of custom application.

Best Softball Cleats For Pitchers:

Best Softball Cleats For Pitchers

Most pitchers drag the inside of their cleats, so a standard application is applied to the inside big toe area of the toe cap and bring it on to the inside just about to the flex point of the shoe because as you throw your foot turns out during your drag.

Some guys overpronate, and when they throw, they come over the top, and them kind of roll in then roll all the way over. For those people who are probably more pigeon toed, we have the Reverse Toe application, which means instead of the standard Tuff Toe, where it’s going to go from front center of the cleat to the inside, you’re going to go the opposite direction (towards the pinky toe).

Alright, so, if you haven’t seen our either videos on performing a standard application as well as other custom applications we commonly do.

But first, we’re going to cover the prep quickly. Why is the prep necessary here?

Well, the key to a successful Tuff Toe application is the prep, and we give you 80 grit sandpaper for Reverse Toe because we don’t do a ton of them. I do like the mark off that area so that you can take anything, and we’re going to cover that toe cap we’re going to follow the seam, and we’re going to end it right about the pinky toe.

Alright going down onto the sole, you can mark this off, and you can always tape off the areas that you don’t want so you have a border, so you make sure you keep control if it’s your first time. I would recommend you do that because when I first started doing this, I was running it over with the material, even though it’s so many years we can just kind of draw it where we want to go. Now following the seams.

Next, because we’re going to put a black toe on our example here, I want to come up and cover the white so that you don’t have too much going on visually. So I want to come up here, and you won’t be able to see it, but we want to come up, you know, a good inch and a half, cover up we want to go a good half inch onto the sole.

So now, now we’re ready for the prep, and you want to make sure you spend a good amount of time, if you take 10 minutes to sand this thing, you also got to sand the sole.

You want to get into it, and then the upper as well. Different material sand, differently. Some are going to be able to see the first layer coming off, but that’s okay because we’re going to end up a much tougher material here.

So how can you tell when you’ve done enough prep work on this?

The cleats upper’s going to discolor because you’re taking some of the dyes out, you’re getting into the real leather. And you can feel the difference because of most cleats, and plastic shoes they have a mold release, silicone mold release when it comes out, so they feel shiny, and they feel slippery.

As soon as you get in there with the sandpaper and start digging into this, you’ll see that it takes the sheen off. If you want to make sure you’ve sanded enough, just rub your finger over the area, and you be able to feel the difference.

When we perform the applications here at Tuff Toe, we do this with a Dremel because we don’t want to do this for every pair that we have to do, so if you have one go ahead and feel free and prep it makes your life a lot easier and its quick. So, we’re going to do that and fast forward to get this guy prepped up quick.

Okay so here we are, we got this guy prepped up now. So what’s our next step along this guy?

So, generally before you prep, I didn’t do that step, but we can do it just as well now, is that you need to stuff the shoe with paper. Just to make sure that it’s nicely [inaudible] as soon as you have your shoe in there. And we’re just filling it up so that we apply the material.

Yeah nice and tight.

Yeah nice and tight, so that’s beautiful and tight, so we’re ready to go. The cartridge, in your package, you get everything you need. You get the cartridge, and we call this a wing and a plunger, and mixer tips and put it together like a doctor’s syringe.

There you go… they’re easy to wrap, we have a gun, so you can pick this up as well to make your life a lot easier, but just pop the guy in.

So besides prepping the shoe, (remember to do a great job on the prep!), the next key is equalizing the cartridge. We equalize the cartridge by removing the tip, and we’re going to dispense just enough material until we see both sides are dispensing equally.

We have to equalize the cartridge because sometimes the cartridges start to come out unevenly and if you don’t realize then you’ll get a clump of material A without the B, and it won’t set up. So we need to make sure that side A and B are coming early and reaching the tip at the same time.

And one side is clear, and the other guy has the colored pigment.

Right, right. Then we put our mixer tip on there, and we do the same thing, and we dispense about a 1 to 2-inch line material, and then again we’re ensuring that side A and B are reaching that tip at the same time.

That’s beautiful and solid color, and we’re good.

That’s it. And then I always like to allow this material to set up for about 15-20 seconds just because it helps us control our first dispense, and it doesn’t ruin all the [inaudible]

Alright, so set up a little bit, not too much, just about 20 seconds, and then on this guy…

For baseball, and softball pitchers, we want to do a– we want to start at the bottom and get a coat along the sole edge.

Alright, so the first coat is just along that. Just on that guy, and then we’ll come and do a second layer.

Then the second coat then runs as we start at the top and run it and wrap it around the sole again, so we ensure that we get two coats at the sole edge, which is where the most of the damage is. You can see how it’s going slow.

You have the tip of– the mixing tip in the material constantly. Why do we do that? Why do we suggest that?

Well, you want to keep the tip in the material as you dispense, so that, I call it the corn row effect. If you do a zigzag pattern, it kind of looks a little wavy when it cures instead of a nice fluid finish…

Which,  if you look online, you can see some pictures. Some guys that’s what they did. So if it looks like it’s just jumbled up, we can keep it to one edge.

So you can see, I’ve just done the sole edge, and wrapped it on to the bottom there. And I could take the stick and flatten it out, push around wherever I need it.

Alright, so the sticks are included in your package, so those little popsicle sticks… After you apply this, well you have about 30 seconds to a minute to do this after that

Yeah, with the bottom, the bottom coat doesn’t matter because we’re going to coat over it anyway. You want to make sure you get the material on this edge, because we’re going to apply a second coat, so it doesn’t need to look perfect at first. So now we’re just rotating the shoe, holding it at an angle so that gravity helps us concentrate the thickness right there.

Our standard coverage is from here to here because it’s this is the reverse, just flip over.

Okay. And then you’re going to let that set up for how long?

I will let that setup; it’s not going to run. You know, you can always use your stick to see how we’re doing here.

It’s firming up so another 10 seconds or so, I’ll be able to, then we’re going to start at the top, and go slow, and it’s just going to roll over slowly, and we’re going to wrap it around so that right there you get

Yeah, it looks like, with this Reverse Toe, you’re not going back as far as you do with the standard toe but just about to the flex point is.

So there’s plenty for this guy to be able to apply that so if ever need to do any touch ups you can do that as well.

Alright this is where you go, we’re going to do our top coat, and we’re going to start in one corner… top and you can see that first squirt because it’s set up in there for a little while…

And it starts to get a little runnier because of the– now it’s is fresh material reaching the tip. But we want to go slow, back and forth.

You can see the difference in the stuff that came out after a few seconds, that’s runnier there.

Just let it run down into itself so it can go in slowly. When you get down here, if you want to, you can let it go a little faster because it’s running into itself, so it’ll slow down.

So you can see a lip there form as you run down into the first coat.

We’ll make sure there are extra materials right there, so you get extra protection.

And you know, I’ve done a ton of these, so I know that if it gets away from there, you just flip it over. Let it run back into itself and let it flow back into itself.

Thicken up. You have about a good minute or two before it gets to where you don’t want to be messing with this, so not any big hurry, you can apply it entirely. Guys when you apply it fast we’ve seen it causes air bubbles to form. If that does happen, just blow over the bubbles and try to get them to dissipate.

So I think we’ve got a beautiful, thick coat on that sole edge right here.

If people ever want another layer on top of this, then that would be a lot of material.

That would be a lot. I mean, there are some fast pitch soft ball pitchers that will do a triple layer, but we’re doing the bottom layer twice.

But most baseball pitchers don’t need it.

Ok, we’re going to let that sit, set up for 24 hours before we use it.

BUT, if you need to speed up your cure, with heat it will cure much faster. So if you have to use it in 8 hours you could put it in a hot area, (for example, in a car on a hot day).

But you want to let it cure for 24 hours, and you’re ready to go.

Alright, so that’s a reverse toe and if you have any other questions, hit us up. We’ve got other videos as well on the other applications. check them out!

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