Shoe Stretcher Repair Kit and Addons (Thread, Big Toe, Longer Heel) - with FreeCAD source

I always wonder why they make narrow shoes. Are there people who don't have big toes on their feet? I've bought a shoe-stretcher to widen space for the big toes, but it also has non-anatomic shape (the left and the right foot is the same). So I've made this "big toe" adapter to make the stretcher look more or less as a real foot. I've just made a photo of my own foot and traced it in the sketch, but you can adapt the model for your foot in the attached FreeCAD document. Edit the shape of "toeshape-Sketch" to redefine the shape of your own big toe...

Print sideA and sideB (pins lay on the bed, no support), glue the halves together. Left and right toes are the same. The model is attached to the stretcher without glue using 2 pins (there are holes on the stretcher for such adapters, but the ones in my set were too small and useless).

Update: now there are 2 versions:

• h26 for loose and spacey shoes.

• h22 for tight shoes where h26 won't go inside far enough.

Sometimes it's useful to stretch tight shoes with h22 for one day, then replace it with h26 and stretch for one day more for the best result.

2026-03-06: added longer heel.
Fits to 10cm shoe back height. Works well with my shoes.
Print settings: 1mm nozzle; 0.32mm layer height; 40mm/s; PETG (1h17m/pc).
The seams should be painted at the thickest places of the model from different sides to maximize the strength. Make sure you have at least 2 mm everywhere without seams:

2026-04-07: added enforced thread.

The original thread is unreliable and breaks fast. I've made an enforced replacement. It is a little bit thicker than the original.

It is made of 2 parts: the thread itself and a removable handle. You can also use the thread without a handle using a M19 wrench, ha-ha :) The handle is removable because these parts take a long time to print and if you break the new thread you won't need to re-print the handle again, just reuse the one that you remove from the old broken thread. I recommend hot glue gun or other easily removable glue to fix both parts together by gluing a handle cap only.

IMPORTANT: the thread seems to be a standard M18 bolt with 2.25 mm thread. But the original thread has 17.3-17.6 mm outer diameter which is lower than the standard requires and feels rather loose. I recommend ~17.7-17.8 mm, but to print it on my printer I had to specify 18.1 mm. As the thread prints ~3 hours, you should print and test a small piece of the thread sample (10-15mm) with your stretcher to ensure that it fits well. If it goes too hard, go to FreeCAD, open "thread" document, "ss" spreadsheet and edit "d" value as you need, then export the "thread-Body" as stl/step and test a small piece of it again. Repeat it if needed until you are satisfied with the smooth movement, and only then print the whole thread.

My experiments showed that the thread printed in the vertical orientation is not strong enough (I've broken 2 samples). This is why I've separated it into 2 sections and printed them separately, and then glued the parts with a CA glue. This is called "horizontal" version. The result is MUCH stronger than the vertical version but it takes 4 hours to print just one thread and then some glue and accurate fingers are  required, but finally this is what I use now - I still didn't break it although I tried hard :)The difference between the horiz and vert versions is that the horiz version has some compensation for overhangs (the inner circle is replaced with an ellipse). If you use OrcaSlicer, just open "thread-thread-horiz-OrcaSlicer.3mf" as a project and slice - it already has proper orientation all good and tested settings to print it well.

NOTE: If you have issues with FreeCAD compatibility, these files were designed in "FreeCAD-Link-Stable-Linux-x86_64-py3.11-20241003.AppImage" by Realthunder - can be downloaded at github.