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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.
Hindsight. It’s a beautiful thing.