I ended up rewelting a pair of Allen Edmonds this week and thought I’d share some notes. I’m sure there are folks out there with much more knowledge and experience on this.
Disassembly
You only need to pry off top lifts and peel away any heel layers as needed to reach the nails. Once you’ve pulled out the nails, you can take off the outsole and any heel layers still stuck to it.
I don’t have a sanding machine, so I’m stuck slashing and picking stitches to outsoles and welts off. The best way I’ve found to do either on boots like AEs is basically to get a McKay knife into between the sewn components and run it around.
For outsoles:
- Use pincers to pry a bit of the insole away from the midsole or welt.
- Hold the shoe in the crook of my left (non-dominant) shoulder, bottom up.
- Slide the McKay knife into the gap, blade facing my body, and pull it toward me to pop stitches.
- Turn the shoe as needed to keep pulling toward myself.
Sometimes it helps to rock the blade back and forth to get a particular stitch. The trick is to keep the knife flat on the midsole, without pitching up into the outsole or down into the midsole.
For welts:
- Find the splice of the welt, usually on the inside at the heel breast.
- Use a flat-blade screwdriver to to wriggle the two ends of the splice apart.
- Carefully cut one or two stitches on one side of the splice to create a loose tail of welt you can grab onto.
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- Hold the shoe in the crook of my left (non-dominant) shoulder, bottom up.
- Grasp the McKay knife from the sides of the blade, creating a depth stop with the hand, to keep it poking out past the welt and slicing the upper.
- Grasp the tail of the welt and pull. Insert the McKay knife in the gap and pull the cutting edge toward each successive stitch.
- Pull the broken stitches out of the insole with blunt-nosed pliers.
Awls
American Straight Needles
I’ve had good success with Groz-Beckert needles for American Straight stitching machines as jerk needles.
A few notes on those:
- They’re quite tough.
- The hook is a tad bit smaller than I’d like. I tried all the various widths of Maine Thread twisted thread, and 0.040" was the largest I could reliably catch and pull through without fraying or separation, which makes a huge difference for smoothness and speed. The factory threads certainly seem a bit thicker. It’s also possible to pull thicker thread through if you’re really careful, but for me it was much slower.
- The shanks are quite smooth and round, so it can be a challenge to hold really tight in an awl haft chuck without slipping. I’ve had the needle slip both forward and back, pushing and pulling.
- The straight shape mean’s you’ve got to get your awl hand down to the level of the welt, rather than working over top as you might with a curved inseaming awl. When repairing, I want to work on my cobbler’s anvil. But I set my cobbler’s anvil lower than my inseaming stand, since repair is often mostly hammering.
Barnsley Awls
I also tried a Barnsley curved hooked awl. These have flat duckbill blades, like inseaming awls, with hooks ground out of the right side.
@Customboots also imports one size of these.
I really preferred working with the Barnsley awl when I tried it. But I managed to snap it on the very first shoe I sewed. Of course, that’s probably just my fault.
Rewelting
Whenever possible, I find it best to leave the upper on the insole. It’s certainly possible to detach them, realign, and sew back together the same as factory. I find it really helps to run a few tacking stitches through while they’re still together, then clip the threads and leave the dangling ends in the holes as markers. But it’s just way easier to leave the shoe together.
When lockstitching with a straight needle, I find it really helps to rotate the needle to the mouth of the hook faces away and to the side. This makes it smoother to cast the loop over the hook on the inside, catch it, and pull it through without splitting or fraying.
I try to pull just enough of a loop through to make it easy to pull the outer thread through. I think about pulling the awl to “throw” the loop over the outside thread where it hands, so I can just reach through the loop with my fingers, without repositioning threads.
The best rhythm I’ve found so far is to pull the outer thread up and through the loop with my right hand, then immediately tug the near side of the loop to take out slack on the inside thread. Then grab the outside thread and pull it taught enough to create slight tension. Finally, grab the inside thread and pull until the point where the threads twist together sinks into the upper. On factory shoes, there’s often a slight thump as I do, and a feeling like pulling a wagon over a bump in the road.
To pull the outer thread to the inside to tie off, I just sew another lockstitch, then release tension from the outer thread and keep pulling on the side. This will eventually drag the outer thread through to the inside where I can pick it through with a scratch awl.
Storm Welt
I bought some pre-made storm welt for this job from Baltor & Sons. I’d never really thought about it, but indeed, it turns out storm welt is just flat welt with a matching leader bead cemented on top.
I suppose I could make my own storm welt, too. Might be fun to do the bead and the flat parts contrasting colors, or even to sew the bead down with contrasting thread.