A cobbler has gone viral on TikTok after sharing his trick for fixing a broken zip in less than 60 seconds.
In a TikTok video, which has racked up more than 290,000 views, the cobbler shows people what to do when your zip stops closing and you only need two things to mend it – a pair of plyers and a small hammer.
@originalcobblersDIY zip fix for when I refuses to close #shoerepair #timberland #zip #ziprepair #diy
He explains how he often gets customers asking if they can have a new zip because theirs is no longer closing, but actually you don’t need to pay for this.
The cobbler says, “Now a lot of the time you can fix this kind of thing at home with a few very basic tools and I’m going to show you quickly how to do it.”
“What we do, if you put the zip itself on something hard, give it a hard background. The zip runner itself runs on two plates, top and bottom, they run parallel and after the zip wears a little while, they open up so instead of the teeth interlocking, one sits on top of the other and they don’t close.”
“Our aim today is to tap the back of the zip back into its original position using a pair of plyers on the very back of the zip, so right on the very back either side, a small hammer, we give it a little tap right on the back of the zip runner, not too hard because we don’t want to break it even though it’s broken, because if it needs replacing we can,” he adds.
Hundreds of people took to the comments to praise the cobbler for sharing the trick, with one person writing: “Can we just appreciate he told us this so people can just do it themselves at home, saving their shoes and money!”
“Thank you for teaching me something new today,” replied a second.
Another said, “This 100% works, thank you for saving my winter coat!!”
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