Texas boot maker Jack Reed is completely responsible for the whole “lemonwood peg” thing, and he made it up. No one knows why. I’ve heard this from several boot makers. The only way to disprove this theory would be to find a source referring to “lemonwood pegs” prior to around 1980. If the phrase only came into existence somewhere around that point in time, it points to Jack Reed inventing it.
I do know that hardwood maple pegs used to exist and were from all accounts wonderful.
When you import anything made from wood into the US (as I do) it requires a Lacey Form, which documents the species of wood and where that wood was harvested. This is why I have no doubts when I say the pegs are Birch.
The cobbler laid the thicker slab of maplewood on the bench before him. He took a long, sharp knife and cut the whole top of the slab into tiny ridges. Then he turned it around and cut the ridges the other way, making tiny, pointed peaks.
He laid the edge of a thin, straight knife in the groove between the ridges, and gently tapped it with a hammer. A thin strip of wood split off, notched all along one side. He moved the knife, and tapped it, till all the wood was in strips. Then holding a strip by one end, he struck his knife in the notches, and every time he struck, a shoe peg split off. Every peg was an inch long, an eighth of an inch square, and pointed at the end.
The thinner piece of maple he made into pegs, too, and those pegs were half an inch long.
Thankfully, that thread hasn’t yet been consigned to the CD archive.
This isn’t so different from my own whittling methods, but I might try notching first and splitting off from the pointed bottoms. This also seems to be the way some factories may have done the job, as described in “The Plane That Tried”, also cited in the Crispin Colloquy thread:
I haven’t tried maple yet, but I’d be surprised, based on past experience, if there’s any splitting-based method that pops out truly uniform pegs. You get to choose where you try to split, but where the break goes from there is up to the grain.
@Customboots, I asked the counter guys at MacBeath Hardwood in Berkeley if they’d ever heard of “lemonwood” referring to birch or another species. They hadn’t.
Not conclusive proof, but I thought they might know.
@thenewreligion made a point a while back that “lemonwood” might have been used more loosely in times past, perhaps for nearly any pale, yellowish hardwood.
We know it’s being used loosely enough to not mean wood from lemon fruit trees. And, apparently, to mean birch, by all the shoe companies buying Blau Ring, or that used American mills like Kearsage in the past.
Maybe it was hooey. Maybe Jack Reed meant one thing, people heard another, and it stuck.
The state tree of Texas is pecan. The state tree of Oklahoma is redbud. @thenewreligion mentioned he’d fancy purpleheart. I’m holding out hope we can find a method for DIY’ing boot-size batches of serviceable pegs out of whatever we please. As long as they split, drive, and hold, we can go nuts. Or juts buy more Blau Ring from you and hoard for when they go out of stock.
Oh is Blau Ring what we get from Lisa? Shoot im sorry in that case i did have some I could measure! I didn’t realize that’s what you meant.
I have some honest to god lemonwood on order from the UK that I’m going to use to peg some boots just for the hell of it
@Customboots was kind enough to confirm by e-mail that the lengths are tip-to-top, including the point. I’m all set there.
I’m feeling awfully sure the pegs from @Customboots are Blau Ring. But come to think of it, I don’t think I ever heard it directly. I’m not aware of any other company currently manufacturing new pegs. I don’t know where else they might come from.
“We came very close to entirely losing wood pegs for boot and shoe making. Some heartfelt begging has resulted in one company agreeing to make shoe pegs again and promises from another that they will go back into production.”
I am pretty sure that the company I’m buying from is the maker of Blau Ring in the little square boxes, but I don’t know if they’re selling them in the little boxes yet. They had stopped making wood shoe pegs entirely and only did so again after much pleading, so they may have just decided to only sell them in bulk.
After finding out that they added sulfur to the pegs for no reason other than color, I have also become convinced that “lemon” wood was used to describe the color of the pegs and not the wood source. We could have all been trying to run down what “yellowwood” or “sulfurwood” or “butterwood” was.
Fort what its worth: I called Blauring the other day and they told me that their pegs are made of Beech wood (not birch) . The same wood is used for the lasts in Germany. Since lemons don’t grow in Germany I would be very surprised if they were ever made of lemon wood.
I have a feeling this might be a translation error. I buy directly from Blauring and I’ve discussed the wood type with them. I also have the Lacey Form which is required anytime you import a wood product; the Lacey Form must show the scientific genus and species name, which is betula pendula – Silver Birch.
Interesting. Thanks for clarifying! I agree with you that betula pendula is silver birch. I guess if its on the Import form, birch is most likely correct.
Its odd though. I was talking to the people of https://www.polierholz.at in German. Their website says that they are using Birch and beech for their products.
Beech certainly for the shanks but for the pegs they don’t specify it on their website.
I am pretty sure though that she said “Buche” which is beech in English. Maybe the person I was talking to was misinformed or just mixed it up.
I just wrote them again for clarification and report back once I get an answer.
In case you’re interested, one of the interesting conclusions we came to earlier in this forum discussion was that “lemonwood” rarely if ever means “wood from lemon fruit trees”. These days, it seems to be used mostly to mean lemon from a variety of different other trees. The Oxford English Dictionary says:
a. A New Zealand tree, the Tarata; b. a name for several tropical American trees or their light-coloured wood, esp. the Cuban Calycophyllum candidissimum.
We’ve also seem some evidence that "lemonwood’ may have been used in the United States to mean pretty much any light hardwood tinged slightly yellow with sulfur or other treatments. For products produced here, that means mostly likely birch, which is plentiful in the northern part of the country and Canada.
My favorite takeaway from our discussion so far is that good shoe pegs can likely be made of many different kinds of hardwoods. We could potentially even use fancy woods for different colors and effects. But I personally haven’t found a way of making them myself at home that I’m excited to recommend to others.
