I had an epiphany last night. I need to rethink how I’m making my shoes. I don’t need to change a lot, but what I need to change will make a significant difference to how my shoes fit and my feet feel.
Because I have a really high arch and correspondingly high instep, I can’t wear a regular shoe and expect it to not hurt my arch. Any pressure I put on the arch is downward as the lacing tries to press my arch down to fill the void left by the arch of my instep.
I need to do one of two things. I either need to make an orthotic to fill the void or I need to build the shoe to fill the void. Of the two choices, I prefer the later. I hate having to move supports from one shoe to the next.
I’ve started on my first pair of *real* shoes. I’m going to make a glued “sneaker”. This will take one additional piece of leather. I’m going to glue the lining to the insole, add the fill to level off the bottom, add the fill for the instep, glue the upper down over all that, add the fill for the upper, glue on my shaper (yeah, I’m gluing it outside the outer) and then add the final outsole shaping it to come just to the feather edge. The last bit I’ll have to have Sunshine Shoe Repair do as he has all the wonderful shaping machines.
That should give me an all leather sneaker with superior support. It should be fun. Let the games begin . . .