Here they are, the first shoes. They’re pretty comfortable, though I haven’t put in my anti-arch supports. The neck of the shoe is too large, which I expected. I really have trouble with the laces crossing my arches. It’s really uncomfortable though I used a very heavy spongy piece of leather for a tongue to try and protect my arch. I’ve rerun the laces to go from side to side on the top and up and down on the foot side (not pictured). That’s proving to be more comfortable.
After this next pair of shoes (in the works) I’ll know how much I need to reduce the last’s width in the toe box area. One step at a time . . .
It’s very much a Mr. Rogers kind of day. The sun is out, the crocuses are in bloom, the elephant garlic is showing green shoots. Spring is just around the corner. I need to get a pair of shoes done so I can get out and play!
After completing the fitter pair, I made some adjustments to the lasts and to the pattern and I’ve started a second pair of shoes. The first pair is at Sunshine Shoe Repair having soles sewn on and grommets added for lacing. They won’t be good for anything except running around the house because they don’t come up high enough to stay on if I try and do anything but walk gently. Making them told me where I needed to make adjustments to my pattern and my lasts. We’ll see if the adjustments I made are adequate.
So here we are, new shapers are on the lasts. I’ve cut triangles out of the shapers at the heel to reduce the bulk and help shape the leather around the heel. This set of shapers come all the way to the top of the heel in place of the heel counter.
As you’ll see when I get these out of the wrapping tomorrow, my butt stitching needs more practice. I like what I’m doing and I’m learning new stuff which is always fun.
Here it is, fresh off the last. I’m going to need to make some changes to the pattern. The shoe isn’t tall enough around the ankle. I will fix that. I think these will be a good light-duty around the house shoe. All in all, I’m fairly pleased.
I’ve got a lot done in the last couple days. I fnally got thread that works and the sewing has been fairly flawless. I finished the sewing on the second upper and have started lasting. I have detailed images if you need to see them, just let me know.
When the glue dried completely I will rasp the lumps and bumps in the lining to smooth it. Once that’s done I will do an infill to make the bottom completely smooth and glue on my shaped bottoms. These I will have to clamp in place to ensure I get firm smooth connect.
Here’s the lining, all stretched on and tacked in place. This is glove leather. Preshaping it works for me, I can’t say why. I soaked the leather before stretching it over the last. I didn’t use a pattern, just stretched the single piece of leather over the last, tacking it in place and trimming away the excess.
Next I will unlast and sew the back seam, then relast and trim the lining at the top, turn the top of the lining down and fasten it with white glue. Then I will unlast the lining again and sew the upper to the lining and attach the tongue.
Before I can tackle the actual lasting I have to sharpen my skiving knife. I bought the equipment to do that on my trip to town yesterday.
I’m working on a “fitter” to make sure my last doesn’t need adjusting before I start making *real* shoes. So far it looks pretty good! I’ll try and get the second one done today so I can take them both with me tomorrow to get the Vibram outer sole and the grommets for the lacing.
Out of the blue this morning I got a call from halfway around the world. Frank Jones from England called to introduce himself, laugh about our life experiences and extend some advice.
He directed me to a shoe making school (run by Bill and Julie Shanor) fairly close to me that might be able to help smooth my learning curve as it applies to making shoes. I did a bit of snooping around on their site and ran into the shoes pictured to the left. Are those perfect or what?! <LOL> A little too fancy for running around in the field but the shape and function is totally appropriate.
I’ve extended the question to the Shanors (a bit of custom instruction), thanked Frank for the proffered advice and will now sit back and see what happens. Life can be SO much fun . . .
I was trying to find out which needle would be the best for the stuff I’m doing and I was getting confused. I watched a guy sew a pair of moccasin loafers using glover’s needles, but that doesn’t help when you’re sewing curved seams. I’d read something and one person would advise a certain size Osborne needle and another would say use a Tandy in that size and my brain would begin to whirl . . . If you’ve done research trying to learn stuff, you know just what I mean. Everybody’s got an opinion.
Did you know . . . you can make a steel boars’ bristle type needle out of an E guitar string? How cool is that!? I knew I needed a flexible needle as I’m going to be doing butt joints on some stuff. I’ve looked at threading and using boar bristle needles and have winced. I happened upon a link to a YouTube video on making a steel bristle needle and I’m gonna give it a try!
I ran into a link for a last making school. Not only do they carry the plaster of paris bandages to use for modeling your foot, they also have the fiberglass bandages and the fiberglass socks!
We’ve got snow, I’m waiting for more leather to arrive (sow hide, goat skin and goat kid skin), I still don’t have needles and I’m bored. So, let’s research! <grin> It is one of my favorite things.
I was reading up on leather needles and different cords and what threads others use for stitching leather stuff. I was wandering through the forum at www.leathermaker.net and I ran into a link for a forum for shoemakers. I kid you not, I have seen some of the coolest shoes and boots!
There are masses of people there making sandals, shoes, chukkas and boots! It is an AWESOME forum! I’ve seen everything from Roman soldier footwear and huarache sandals to award winning cowboy boots! Before you go visiting, make sure you’ve got the time because there’s a tremendous amount to see! The shoe pictured to the left is an example . . . and the pattern is really neat and conserving of leather!
I got a good buy on a gray kangaroo skin. It’s tanned as shoe leather. I may use it as the liner. It’s nice leather and I don’t have anything else suitable to use for lining except black, but with the black, if my feet got wet the liner would transfer black to my socks. <wince> I’d be better of using the gray.
Rough shape ready to skiveSkiving completeA judicious spray of water . . . Starting to shape . . .A few twists and more nails, more hammering . . . Sufficiently trussedOutside
Inside
Lots happened today . . . and now we wait. While we’re waiting for the leather to dry, let me give you a recap of the steps.
The day before yesterday I cut stabilizers from light weight soling. These are to replace the toe box, side stabilizers and heel counter. This may not work, but you know me . . . I have to try.
I got the stabilizing mid-sole (the one between the inner and the outer) wet and wrapped them in newspaper overnight, then tied them to the bottoms of my lasts using strips of t-shirt material. I wasn’t worried about perfect at that point, I just wanted the general shape so I could see if I needed to do any additional trimming before I skived the edge.
Yesterday my skiving knife came. After carefully sharpening the knife, I skived 1/2″ of the outside edge, feathering it down to nothing. I only cut myself twice! <LOL> Neither was serious enough to require bandaging so the job got done. I want the edge to not show on the outside of the shoe so the quality of the skiving job was important.
The I sprayed the leather on the grain side and set my last into place and, using a piece of t-shirt material began conforming the leather to the last, spraying with water occasionally as I worked.
Next came lots of nails, some rubber bands, some more strips of t-shirt material, more twisting and hammering lumps to make sure all was smooth and lots more nails.
Now we wait for them to dry.
I need to get the other pair of lasts lengthened so they match this pair. With two sets of lasts I can do two steps at the same time. I could be shaping the uppers ready for gluing . . . Or, if I’d been smart enough to lengthen the other pair of lasts and use them for this step, I could be gluing the liner to the insole on this pair of lasts.
I’ve got my shoe last stuffed into a crappy Hanes NOT 100% cotton sock. When you wear kid sized socks and you buy a low end brand, don’t expect the content to be consistent from year to year – this purchase was a really unpleasant surprise. I’m using them up any way I can until all six pair are gone.
With the socked last covered in ~3 layers of painters tape, I’m ready to start drawing lines for the pattern breaks.
Once I cut the pattern off the last (cut right through the sock) I traced the parts onto card board (cereal boxes work great) and added seam allowance where appropriate.
I need to do more to this pattern. I need to figure out whether I will use a separate tongue or draw a tongue onto the front portion of the pattern. Decisions, decisions.
I’d like this first pair to be fairly simple. I’ve got a bunch of fairly thick really good quality leather I might use to make a pair of kickers while I’m waiting for my shoe leather to show up.
I bought some shoe leather yesterday . . . gray kangaroo. I’ve had kangaroo leather gloves before (different tanning method for glove leather) and they’re tough. I also bought a skiving knife that can be sharpened. I did not want the kind that had replaceable blades. They may be safer but they’re more costly over the long run and they take more passes to get the job done.
The leather won’t be here for a week. That gives me time to play with patterns.
I found a pair of Doc Martins at Goodwill for $5. While I couldn’t comfortably wear them for very long as they were (they tipped me forward and squeezed my metatarsal bones too much and have zero support in front of the heel on the outside of my foot), they will hopefully provide something I can work with for a pattern.
Once I got the bottom deconstructed I stuck the upper on my last. You can see the difference in shape between my foot and the Doc Martin last. I can wear them but they’re really uncomfortable.
I would re-last this upper onto a new sole, but the trick here is, I don’t know if there’s enough material at the bottom edge to fasten the upper to the sole. The second part of the problem is, the lining of the toe is fabric that doesn’t stretch. I either re-line the front of the upper or build a new upper using the disassembled upper as the starting point for a pattern.
By now you should know that I don’t do much “normally”. I research, I see what others have done, I think a lot and I dive in. Here’s the first splash into serious shoe-making, sink or swim.
I had some cured leather (neither vegetable nor chrome tanned) I’ve cut to act as the form for the bottom of the shoe. Okay, maybe that’s the wrong way to say it. The last is actually the form for the shoe, but once the last’s taken out, I want there to be something that stabilizes the shoe lateral, a second stabilizing connection between the sole and the lining/upper.
If you’re wondering why all the cord instead of nice tidy row of finish nails to hold the leather in place . . . I neglected to get the right size finish nails on my last foray to town. Maybe next time, assuming I remember to put it on the shopping list. For now, I’ve had to settle for a couple horse shoe nails and bounteous amounts of cord. On the plus side, that seems to have worked pretty well. I think I could have done nearly the same thing with a cut up t-shirt in less time, something to try next time.
Sans cording and nails
Here’s what I have (tentatively) decided to try.
The leather you see wrapped around the bottom of the last is being shaped to the last. Once it has completely dried, I will trim and skive it so the top edge is a uniform height and the thickness graduates to nothing at that level. Once the trimming and skiving is done, I will set aside these pieces of leather to be added to the assembly later.
Next step is to start normal shoe construction with a leather layer on the bottom of the last that ends at the edge of the bottom. This layer is skived/rasped at the edge to graduate it to nothing as it comes around the corner from bottom to side of foot.
The upper will be constructed of two layers (outer and lining) with a welt (around ankle and lace opening) and tongue. The upper is then stretched over the top of last and the lining is pulled down over the bottom of the last where it is stretched, shaped, trimmed and rasped to a harmonious and flat meeting with the initial sole.
At this point I will insert the leather form I created at the beginning, gluing it into position. As well as stability, this will provide some base line waterproofing. Toe and heel counters are then added using judicious applications of Barge cement. Then the sole will be applied to the bottom of the assembly and the upper outer will be pulled down and stitched to the sole. I’m thinking I’m going to have to have one more layer of leather before the sole is applied. If I stitch this layer of leather to the previously formed shaper, then apply the shaper to the last, then apply the sole and attach the upper to the sole catching this additional piece of leather, the build will be ultra solid but hopefully not too stiff. The sole and upper outer will then be trimmed and finished and a sole bed liner will then be added to the inside of the shoe.
I can see a couple problems with this approach but I won’t know how it will wear until I try it. I am hoping to produce a shoe with a lot of lateral stabilizing support that isn’t too rigid. I’m a little concerned that I didn’t make the initial shaped leather tall enough at the sides and back. We’ll have to see how they wear.
While they lack to sophistication of complex break apart lasts, they have all the necessary function.
Lorr’s making more than one set of lasts for me. This set has been cut into two so they can be removed from boots, which is my first project.
Wadly and I are headed to Lorr’s Saturday. I’ll get a little more detail on exactly how he did the molding, what product he used for the mold and what he used as a mold release agent.
"I made a box and then I filled it"BottomTop"Now it's full of product. I'll pull them in the morning."
Pretty new lasts!
My son, bless his heart, has taken on the task of molding my lasts. He makes molds at his work so has much more knowledge in this area than I. I know he struggled with how to make the molds, trying different things before reaching this pinnacle. Success at last!
I sent him a text asking what he used as molding material. He replied saying “some industrial crap. Any off the shelf latex will work.”
These pictures were taken with his phone and texted to me. The fuzziness is, I’m sure, smudges on the camera lens.
I’m so ecstatic about having lasts that match my feet! <grin>
Andrew Wrigley makes shoes. He also has a really nice set of videos on YouTube on making shoes. So far he’s uploaded 5 parts which includes all the clicking (pattern cutting), skiving, dieing, decorating and stitching of the uppers. He is doing it all using common tools. The first video is here.
Wrigley’s videos are the first I’ve seen that show how to construct the uppers.
Clog upper, prepped sole and appropriate tools.Bottom of the sole and side of the clog. The back portion of the clog was trimmed to become a strap.
The shoe, all finished. Both were done in under 3 hours.
Marie Antoinette, totally bereft of the concept of people too poor to buy bread, advised the intake of cake instead, totally missing the point altogether. Not being able to buy shoes to fit is a bit like that. I tell people manufacturers don’t make shoes for my size/shape feet and I get a bit of the, “eat cake” thing.
So I had a moment of brilliance this morning. It happens occasionally. When it happens Wadly steps back well clear of whatever chaos is about to erupt and watches warily as I forge ahead on some mad scheme.
A couple years ago I had Mark of Multnomah Leather make me a pair of clogs with a radically slanted sole. It turned out my brilliant idea wasn’t so brilliant but rather than get rid of the whole shoe, I pulled the uppers off (pulled all the brads) and chucked the bottoms. I’ve played with the uppers a bit trying them on this and that but generally they sat in my shoe materials box unloved and unappreciated.
While waiting for Lorr to cast my lasts I’ve been digging in my shoe materials box. I had a pair of soles I had prepped with my anti-arch supports and a leather liner. It occurred to me I could put the clog tops on my prepped soles and I’d have a pair of shoes. And darned if that didn’t work!
It’s nice to have something comfortable I can wear that doesn’t readily let the water in. A bit of spit shine and they’ll look pretty spiffy!
I still have a tremendous frustration with getting lasts that match my feet. Winter’s coming and all I have to wear is a poorly fitted pair of expensive custom boots. Honestly, the 10th century shoes I made are more comfortable, though they rub the ends of my toes, have zero support and are worthless in the wet. If I can get lasts made I can remake the boots into something that will work for me and be worth close to what I paid for them. I can also make shoes for everyday wear that are comfortable.
Not my foot, cast in RTV Silicone
So, I’ve been doing more research. I found a guy who made shoe lasts out of A20 RTV silicone rubber. Hmm. To make a mold to accurately reflect the shape and size of the foot, the foot should be weight bearing during the casting phase but that’s the only issue I have with his method.
I want to make a clay base to stand on, then pour the alginate around my foot while standing on the clay pad. I don’t need to come up my leg as far as he did. Using clay for the bottom should give me a reusable 2 part mold, though alginate is not a product I expect to hold up for long. There’s a potter on Main in Chehalis. I’ll stop in and see if I can buy a couple pounds of worked clay. If not I can stop and dig some out of a bank somewhere. It’ll take longer to get it ready but it will work as well. It’s been decades since I’ve wedged clay but I haven’t forgotten how. I have Plaster of Paris for a wedging table and enough scrap lumber to knock one together.
Once the casting is done I’ll add material around the toes until I have models I can make molds from whenever I need to. I can get 2 part fiberglass resin for permanent molds. Lorr says he’s got a casting material that mimics spruce. That’ll be a good test material for lasts.
I occasionally toy with the idea of carving my own lasts. I’d need more chisels and gouges than I’ve got. I wouldn’t start from scratch. I’ve got 5 pair of women’s lasts I can cut apart and scab material to to get the right width. With the models of my feet to work from I think I can get really close to what I need. It’s a lot of unnecessary work if I can get molds made and find the right casting material.
Wadly visited the neighbor to see if he could cull from his wood pile the right type of wood for lasts. I’ve given up trying to find commercial lasts the size of my feet. I’m going to try to make them. This should be fun.
I’ve got two pair of clogs made by Mark Casperson at Multnomah Clogs in Portland Oregon. I got an email from him today about a new blog he’s started. I just had to check it out.
Boots! Mark’s making boots! How cool is that?! I think I’m going to have to have a pair of those . . .
I still haven’t gotten around to sending my boots back to be resized for my fat little feet. I admit to being slow . . . not just in getting them packaged up and sent back but also in connecting the dots on how to fix the problem.
My boots went to town to Sunshine Shoe Repair (Korean guy and his wife, really nice people) and he put them on stretchers for four days. I got them back and they were better but not enough so I planned to take them back and have them stretched some more. Then something I watched months and months ago finally clicked. Duh. I’d seen a video wherein a young lady showed how to use ice to stretch shoes. She was stretching peep-toe heels, but why wouldn’t the same concept work for my boots?
I put water in a couple of sandwich bags, stuck them into my boots and put them in the freezer. Yup, that was better but still not enough so I did it again. MUCH better on the right, but the left is still tight. I’ve got my thinnest wool socks on (lime green with white and pink polka dots) and I’ve been out in the snow! How cool is that!?
I don’t know if you can really call these “boots”. They won’t keep moisture out but they’re really comfy and healthy for me feet. I wear them ALL the time.
The uppers are the tops of a pair of felted wool slippers made especially for me by Cindy Gleason. I wore those slippers until I wore the bottoms out. No, I don’t hoard things but I also don’t throw out something I might be able to use in another way. Cindy went to a lot of work to make these for me and the only worn out spots were the parts I walked on.
At some point the light came on and I harvested the soles from a pair of kids’ slippers I got max cheap at Target (cardboard between the foam sole and felted top was a dead giveaway) and had worn until the uppers fell apart.
I pulled everything off the soles, trimmed them to more closely match my feet, attached my anti-arch supports (I need support on the outside of my foot, not at the arch) and covered the works with a layer of leather. Then I trimmed the worn out bottoms off the felted wool slippers, serged the cut edge and hand stitched the felted wool uppers to my prepared soles.
I wear them with Smartwool socks and stay out of puddles and wet grass.
