LIVERMORE FALLS – Bruce MacDonald and his crew are making custom-orthopedic products to help people with foot problems walk more comfortably.

MacDonald of Skowhegan, formerly of Leeds, and his son, Todd of Monmouth, have turned a former roller-skating rink into their Pine Tree Orthopedic Lab LLC on Park Street in Livermore Falls.

The company invested $50,000 in improvements to the building and installed equipment to make their specialized items when they decided to move here from Leeds in late 2007. They opened in February.

There are 12 people employed at the lab, including both MacDonalds.

Inside the building, the hardwood floors have been refinished to a natural shade in the retail showroom and the offices.

Aetrex shoes and more of that brand products including copper socks and inserts are featured in the space.

A specialized scale sits in the showroom with a computer screen on the wall. A person steps on the scale and a picture of the bottom of two feet appears on the screen, highlighting all the pressure points needed to analyze that individual’s feet. It helps determine what shoe or insert would work best for that person.

Beyond the manufacturing area doors, the flooring still resembles the shade it did after thousands of skaters took their turns on it.

Except now, workers are busy making leather covered ankle foot braces, diabetic inserts, custom orthotics, according to doctor’s orders and prescriptions, as well as putting the rocker-style soles made by Jones & Vining in Lewiston on Tru Gait brand shoes. The latter is a specialized shoe that was initially invented by a Japanese sports medicine doctor as a training shoe for the Japanese Olympic team, MacDonald said.

“Once they developed the shoe, they realized other than a training shoe, there were a lot of medical benefits to wearing the shoe,” he said. “This is the only sole that makes you walk like you were barefoot.”

Studies show that after wearing the shoe for 90 days, the wearer’s muscles increase from foot all the way up to lower back, strengthening the ankle and giving more stability, MacDonald said.

In one section of the manufacturing area, workers are making inserts and grinding them to specifications.

In another, stations are set up for each part of the process. One person works on a plaster of Paris mold, while another waits for a sheet of plastic to heat up in a small oven to just the right temperature before he wraps it around a plaster mold of a foot.

Once the plastic has hardened, the drape-molder cuts it to size, and it moves on for several more steps leading to stitching.

“The process is labor intensive,” MacDonald said. “We have five distributors that sell our braces in the U.S. as well as ourselves.”

Out in a stockroom, piles of plaster molds, all representing individuals foot shapes, sit on pallets, ready to be discarded since the necessary time period to be kept has expired.

The company now has its license to direct bill Medicare for those diabetics who qualify under the Medicare Therapeutic Shoe Bill.

“We have also trained four of our employees including myself so that we can take our exam in August to become certified pedorthists,” MacDonald said. “All four of us have taken the C-Ped course and passed that exam.”

“We’re here. We’re happy. We have a great work force here to help people,” Bruce MacDonald said.