We’re a little suspicious about the motives of Instructables user “Corwin.” What kind of guy sees a woman biking down the street in high heels and becomes “immediately taken with idea of making high-heels with a clipless cleat?” A foot fetishist? A sneaky orthopedist? A guy who assumes women wear heels because we enjoy tottering on foot-spikes, and not because of the patriarchy? We’re not judging, though; in fact, we’re impressed that Corwin actually went ahead and made those biking heels. And then provided instructions for doing so.
It’s a bit of an effort:
You’ll need a decent woodworking setup for machining and sanding, polyurethane to weatherproof the shoes, and some sheets of nice wood if you really want to make all the other guys feel like crap by building your woman her own bike-shoe box.
While we applaud anyone who has the fortitude to make their own shoes and loves biking enough to make their own pair of bike-friendly high heels, we can’t help but notice that these shoes are quite ugly and that we would not want to wear them on the ground or on a bike.
Especially when there are other biking heels out there. Atlantic Cities dismissed one alternative as “costing an arm and a leg,” but, honey, have you shopped for women’s shoes lately? $110 is par for the course at most department stores. And these come without the hours of time and investment in woodworking equipment. The ones with the pink straps could be weird or could be awesome.
![](https://grist.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/sunflowers.jpg?quality=75&strip=all&w=768)