shoes

[DWFII]

Very interesting, DWFII, and thank you for posting this.

Last night I tried to split some fishing line, like you were talking about, it wasn't easy...

Tell me about it. Not all mono splits well. And as it gets older it gets even worse. I usually use 30 lb. (?) Maxima but I have split 10 lb. It's surely a useful skill to have...no telling when you might want to split some mono.

Or rent a pig...

This is the identical technique that is used for boar's bristle...

[Bugbear]

Guess we really are splitting hairs here.

I was trying to split fifty pound mono, I think.

[KFCarter]

I'd say you can't toot you horn too loudly about such quality work. My father was quite a horseman of the old school and instilled in me a real appreciation for fine boots... and leatherwork of all kinds, actually. The real thing lasts a lifetime and isn't actually expensive compared to what you pay for the multiple, disposable pairs of second rate work you go through when you try to "save money". I can't say for sure I'd be able to swing it soon, but I'd like you to PM me with more details about the procedure and the cost.

[DWFII]

The final stages of making a shoe always involve dying, inking and burnishing various waxes, as well as patterns, into and onto the surface of the leather. The heels are cut, filed, and sanded smooth. This often involves wetting the raw edges of the heel and sole, which in turn will "raise the nap." When the leather is sanded in this state it becomes very very smooth--almost polished in appearance. The "grain" surface of the outsole (this is the visible side and is the surface where the hair grew--the outside of the animal, IOW) is often scraped with pieces of broken glass or tools that are very similar to wood scrapers. This technique removes a very, very thin layer of leather but does not damage the grain the way that a little too heavy a hand with sandpaper can.

Hand tools, known as "collices," and which come in many different shapes and sizes are heated over a small alcohol burner (very much like a Bunsen burner) to a varying but rather specific temperature range and applied to the previously dyed and waxed edges edges of the outsole and heel. Besides burnishing the wax into the very fibers of the leather, almost all collices apply some sort of ornamental effect. Originally these ornaments had a purpose--to disguise seams and joints and draw the eye away from minor but unavoidable unevenness. Some collices, the "heel seat wheel" for instance, apply a series of small ornamental hatch marks around the heel seat. Some are used around the edge of the sole to create "wires" at the top and bottom edges of the sole edge.

In the photos below, the first shows the outsole edge from above. This is another hand stitched outsole I did some time back (on a pair of boots) and here you see the even little bevel that is waxed into the edge of the welt. The second photo shows the edge of the outsole from the side and the "wires" are indicated. The third photo is of a buckle shoe and the "heel wheeling" is quite evident.







One of the distinguishing features of really high quality work is that when looking at the outsole from the side (either side) the "shank" or waist will appear much thinner than the forepart. This is deliberate and not easy to do as it requires a judicious thinning of a limited area of the outsole (from the back, or "flesh," side) even before it is mounted and a equally careful fitting of the outsole as it is mounted. Additionally the outsole will be channeled in a manner similar to the way the forepart is channeled but in this case, because of the thinning, there is much less leeway for a mistake. In lower heeled shoes...below one inch...making such a "fiddleback waist" is a bit more problematic because there is less room to accentuate the fiddleback.

In the next two photos, the first shows the medial side of the shoe and the thinned area under the arch--the waist. The second shows the bottom of the shoe and the pronounced ridge down the middle of the waist which is the distinguishing characteristic of a "fiddleback" shank.





BTW, you may notice a little "notch" cut into the medial corner of the breast of the heel. This is there so that a gentleman will not snag his trousers (or his kilt hose) with the corner of the heel....in the unlikely event that a gentleman did not have perfect control of his feet at all times.

Very little if any or this hand finishing work is done on commercial footwear. It does have a function...to seal and preserve the leather. But since so much of what goes into an off-the-shelf shoe is no longer leather anymore, perhaps the feeling is that there isn't much that needs to be sealed or preserved. And I suspect it is reasonable to assume that if a customer is not interested in the quality of the materials or the workmanship that has gone into the making of his shoes, he will not be moved by the lack of ornamental fillips that serve no real function.

A good shoemaker will probably devote the better part of a week to making a pair of shoes by hand if he is working to the highest and the most traditional standards....and has no other distractions.

So, I have two more posts just for your entertainment but this really concludes the overview of how a shoe is made. There is so much that has not been said; much, much more has been left out than has been included; so much in the way of detail work and refinement that are essential for making a pair of shoes but perhaps not so much for understanding how they are made.

And in the process I come back to fairly close to where I started...the issue of fitting up. Feet come in all sizes and shapes. We say... with the weight of science behind us...that if the foot doesn't hurt, it is normal, no matter what it looks like. Although there is a large proportion of society that can wear off-the-rack shoes with perfect, or at least adequate, comfort, there are many, many people who are wearing shoes that do not fit them. Feet can be fleshy or muscular, solid or flaccid, bony or plump; they can be of a prescribed length and yet be all out of proportion. One of the most common reasons people come to a bespoke maker is that they have a narrow heel and a wide forepart. No manufacturer makes a shoe that will fit such a foot. Another reason is that, as mentioned, their size ten foot is really a size eleven and they have short toes. Or long toes and they are really a size nine.

Every foot "prints' in a unique manner. Two feet may measure exactly the same at every critical girth and yet one foot will spread wider than the other. Where and how wide the space in which the foot makes contact with the ground is critical for a fit...and sometimes for foot heath and comfort.

In my own case, I have a Morton's Neuroma from landing on a small rock when jumping out of a second story window to avoid KP. This was when I was young, foolish, and in the paratroopers-- "back in the day." Years later, it began to bother me to the point I could hardly walk much less run or dance. Doctors told me I would have to have the neuroma removed (with only a moderately fair chance of removal curing my foot pain) along with having a large chunk of change removed from my bank account. When I examined the boots I was wearing I found that even though they fit me perfectly in terms of measurements and room within, I found that the insole was too narrow--my foot did not have the ability to spread as wide as it wanted to. I modified my last, skipped the operation, and have been dancing for the last 25 years.

Manufacturers do not make a full range of sizes and as a result there are many people wearing shoes that are not even the proper size for them. Manufacturers may make a size 6D but they will seldom make a size 6A; or a size 12B but never a size 12E, and if your foot is a size 10A/D (A heel, D forepart) fuggetaboudit.

In the end, it's probably a good thing that manufacturers are so short sighted. If they were not, the knowledge and skills that are the Trade would have disappeared long ago...and we'd all be wearing plastic.

[DWFII]

deleted

Yr. Hmb. Svt.

[DWFII]

As an aside I thought I would post a few photos of some of the tools I use and may have mentioned. I have far more tools than I need. I have a dozen hammers, all different--French hammer, German pattern, two London pattern, beatdown hammer, flounder (a type of handle-less closing hammer), etc., at my primary bottoming bench alone. Same goes for lasting pincers, and awls, and knives...

Sometimes I think a person gets into a Trade such as this as much because they love tools as because they are interested in the outcome.

I have spoken about the curved sewing awl. I have about ten handled versions of these, many of which the handle or "haft" I turned on my lathe. The haft is patterned after a very old style of haft that was uncovered in a colonial era midden in Jamestown, Virginia. This style of haft is the only style used in the shoemaker's shop in Colonial Williamsburg. It is labour intensive to set up and mount the awl itself but much easier to use once set up and far more comfortable in the hand. I have nerve damage in the palm of my hand from using hafts of more contemporary design..."screw" hafts...in my younger days.



The awl itself--the metal part--is an inseaming awl...it is the type of awl that would be used for sewing the welt.

Many of the tools we use...or at least, I use...are no longer in production. Many of my tools are antiques with several having been hand forged and bearing hallmarks that date them to the 18th century.,

I mentioned using a square awl for stitching the outsole. These are very rare and not being made anymore.




This pegging awl haft is one I turned from Osage Orange



This old measuring stick is made of boxwood and ivory. It is over a hundred years old. The word "stick" is used to identify the length of a foot or last and undoubtedly originates with this type of tool.



Here is a small selection of collices... along with the burner.



A selection of hammers:



Some of my most prized lasting pincers



All these tools...but a small sampling of what I have...have their own unique abilities. And I use them all at least once during the process of making a pair of shoes. But, I use them mostly because I like the way they feel and the way they connect me to the traditions and past masters of the Trade.

[DWFII]

Some interesting facts:

Shoemaking is an old "profession." One of the oldest known purpose built foot covers is a sandal found under volcanic ash in Eastern Oregon. This is not a "footbag" and may have been built by a dedicated "shoemaker" bartering to his skills rather than as someone making only for himself or his/her "mate." This shoe/sandal is 7000 years old. I read recently that an even earlier shoe has been discovered...9000 years old.

Many words, most of them now fallen into disuse, that were once part of a shoemaker's lexicon derived from the Scots dialect--yerkin, whang, birse, yickie-yeckie, fit-fang, dubbin or dippin, cashel, whittie, pykin, Patie Bowie, turkiss, elshin--but whether they have survived or not, it is interesting that so many have been recorded.

A shoemaker's kit of tools was once known as St. Hughs' Bones...after Hugh, the son of Aviragus, king of Powiesland (Wales). Hugh fell in love with Winifred, the daughter of the King of Flintshire. She was a Christian. Predictably, while in the throes of what ultimately proved to be unrequited love, Hugh converted, as well. An act which won him no points with the Roman upper classes among whom he had previously had some acceptance. To support himself in his newly found penury, Hugh preached Christianity during the day and made shoes at night. Eventually, he was taken up by the Roman authorities and condemned to death. He was martyred in 300 AD. After his death his fellow shoemakers pulled his bones off the gibbet and shared them out to make tools for themselves. And from that day forward shoemaker's tools were known as St. Hugh's Bones.

There is an almost identical legend surrounding St. Crispin who was also martyred about the same time--288 AD--at Soissons in France. St. Crispin is the patron saint of shoemakers. The 25th of October is St. Crispin's Day and since medieval times has been known as the "Shoemaker's Holiday" to commemorate St. Crispin's martyrdom. It is still celebrated today among the more "Traditionally" minded.

Leather, especially bottoming leather--outsoles, insoles, welt, etc., is measured by thickness in "irons" with one iron equaling 1/48 of an inch. Most outsoles are 12 iron=1/4 inch.

Many measurements which are in use today, both shoe related and not, were adopted centuries ago. A "foot" was quite literally the length of the ruling monarch's foot. Foot or shoe sizes were measured in "barleycorns," with three barleycorns equaling an inch. Even today, sizes of lasts increment in one-third inches.

Kilts and heels on shoes appear to have come on the scene at about the same time in history. There is absolutely no evidence, material or anecdotal, for any form of raised heels on shoes before the last half of the 16th century.

With the Great Leather Act in 1603, the Crown of England codified most of the practices, measurements and standards which defined the Trade of Shoemaking, and the master practitioners of it.

The first guilds of shoemakers received their warrants as early as the 13th century...800 years ago. Much has changed but much is the same. Most of the British Trade Guilds such as The Worshipful Company of Cordwainers have become much like the Lions Club or the Rotary here in the US, with little or no material connection to the Trade. The Guild that I belong to--The Honourable Cordwainers' Company--is a 501 C-3, non-profit, tax exempt educational organization devoted to the preservation and protection of the Art and Mysterie of bespoke Shoemaking

At one time in American history, shoemaking and its allied trades employed more men than any other occupation.

================================================== ===

Well, I could go on and on. But I suspect that like raw fish and house guests there is a limit to how long one is welcome.

I hope that those of you who have been following this little discourse have been amused and informed and perhaps even enjoyed it.

If anyone has any questions, I will be glad to answer them.

Thanks for your interest, your tolerance and your kind words...

Tioreadh

[Bugbear]

Thank you, DWFII.

[piperdbh]

I admit I had never thought much about how shoes are made, but I'll examine them more closely now.
I really appreciate the time and effort you've put into these posts, DWFII, and hope you've inspired members to commission a pair of your shoes. You've shown us a lifetime's worth of experience and learning, for which we all are grateful.

[DWFII]

Ted, Piper,

You are very welcome.

If anything else came across I hope that it was that I was not trying to sell a pair of shoes. I could not help but refer to my own work on occasion but I tried not to promote my business.

It was a lot of work. But I have said many times that I am a teacher"...I think I come by that naturally...so trying to help people understand and appreciate bespoke shoes, in particular, as opposed to off-the-shelf shoes, was no great burden. But part of what made it hard, was trying to not be too pedantic.