The shoelace anchor is an alternative to shoelace knots.
Instead of tying a shoelace knot, you grab the anchor, pull, wrap, twist until the desired tightness is reached, and finally secure the anchor in place by hooking it onto a small tie-wrap that's looped through two eyelets.
On e.g. Craftcloud, you can print a pair of anchors for ~5 EUR + shipping.
- very compact package when tied, no loose ends or loops
- even when untied, still no loose ends or big loops, so shoe can be used as slipper
- once tied, tightness can be adjusted in a second or two, with one hand
- torque combined with snug hook fit keeps anchor in place
- symmetric design enables twist adjustment in 180° steps
- thick shoelaces, e.g. 550 paracord (thin shoelaces don't twist very well)
- very small tie-wraps (≤ 2.5mm wide)
- OpenSCAD
- run build.sh to generate anchor.stl
- print anchor.stl in something reasonably strong (e.g. carbon-reinforced PLA)
- remove shoelace from shoe
- thread shoelace through big hole in anchor in the right orientation
- re-thread shoelace through eyelets starting from the top and going down, joining the ends at the bottom with a small knot (e.g. fisherman's)
- loop tie-wrap through the two topmost eyelets on one side, and close it