There are many ways that feet and lasts differ. The particular question I have now is about where the ankle meets the foot at the upper instep. Most feet have a pretty dramatic change in angle as their shin meets their foot. But last don’t have this.
Additionally, as I’m trying to make sure that the short heel measure and upper instant measure are correct, I also get this “kink” at that point (red arrow). Should I be filling it in and accepting larger measurements than what is accurate to the foot at the upper instep, small heel measure, and ankle?
Last shapes do differ from foot shapes. You’ll see that even comparing boot-height lengths that model the transition from foot up through the ankle to the lower leg. For one thing, lasts usually have a pronounced “cone” shape with sharp ridges up the insteps. These are really handy for patterning, pulling over, lasting, and delasting, but not direct copies of any structures in feet.
On the other hand, I think your clay model might be exaggerating the differences a bit. Did you sculpt or cast your model based on a foot without any heel elevation?
Even if you’re planning to make a last without any heel spring, you may still want some changes around that area. If you put your foot flat on the floor and wiggle your toes even a little bit, you may see tendons rise and fall in that area, like the fingers of a puppeteer pulling strings. It’s easy to cause pain binding too tight around that part of the foot.
Thanks for the welcome! I just found out about your forum and I’m excited to be here. Feeling a little overwhelmed trying to learn this stuff.
The cone was such an enigma to me for a while, and I’m glad to see that I mostly had come to understand them correctly. I still don’t understand it well enough to create one that has all the uses you mention, but at least it’s to the right measurements.
I do plan to make zero-drop shoes.
I see what you mean about not being too tight at that point. Would you recommend adding a transition at that point as the blue line shows, and not being too strict on those measurements being larger than the foot’s?
That seems pretty normal, especially if you’re working through your first pairs on your own, without a hands-on teacher.
I thought you might be. Unfortunately, I really don’t have any tips for you there. I’ve never done a zero-drop last, and haven’t really focused on it in my research.
I believe 3DShoemaker may have zero-drop options that you could look at. And I vaguely recall some posts on Reddit about boots made on those lasts.
Nicks Boots in Spokane has also rolled out a “barefoot” last. I suspect they would have posted a video and perhaps also a blog post with pictures of those lasts. You might try and spy a few angles to get a sense of how their lastmaker approached it, though Nicks typically uses shoe-height lasts to build even very tall boots.
Jim Green in South Africa also recently started offering zero-drop boots. I think I may have seen some shots of those lasts in their custom boot configurator/wizard, which is online.
I don’t remember any of the more athletic or sneaker-type “barefoot” companies publishing lots of information on their lasts. But I haven’t looked at those sites since I started making shoes.
First of all, thank you for being so quick to reply with so many helpful tips.
I took a peek and it seems that they don’t do that transition to the leg.
So I’ll either leave it as is and see what happens, cut the leg part off, or add material at that portion of the last. Given it’s a low boot, maybe it won’t matter too much on the end. Even though you don’t have experience with zero drop, I’d still be curious which one you would choose.
Thanks again for telling me about this forum! So excited to be able to turn to the wealth of information in your notes and be able to tap into expertise already here.
Please understand that I am just a beginner, too! I don’t have The Truth, just my own experience, a willingness to share it, and some tools, like this forum, to welcome others of a similar mind.
For the process of making boots, I have had no trouble using shoe-height lasts with alpha hinges, like the ones @Customboots sells. Neither, apparently, do all the boot companies in Spokane. Several other hobbyists I’ve met online have done svelte boots on lasts that stop below the ankles. It’s done, and done well.
I’m working on making original boot lasts now. Those will be divided rather than hinged, because it’s will be way easier for me to make a block, saw it into parts, and drill for screws than engineer, acquire, and install a hinge. Some Internet friends 3D printing lasts for boots are also dividing, for the additional reason that they can fit the pieces into the working areas of their printers that way.
My lasts will also be boot height—above the ankle—because I have been dogged by the problem of getting the curves of the quarter facings right through the ankle, given a shoe-height last and using the last taping method:
I’m getting better at patterning quarters so they end up close to my target facing gap when laced up. Not perfect, but close. The big helps there have been:
using half the short heel measurement to plot an arc the curve needs to intersect
taking ankle girths at specific heights just below and just above the ankle bones
taking another ankle girth at the intended shaft height
plotting the last form over a ground plane, with the heel lifted up by the heel pitch, so I can plot a perpendicular, vertical line for the fronts of the facings up the shin
prototyping the pattern in cheap shelf liner foam to testfit
One other thing that can help with plotting the facings.
Watching the Kirby Allison series with Lee miller I saw him take a top tracing of the foot. I started above the ankle with this and it improved my ankle fitting of the last two pairs of boots immensely.
Thanks for sharing this video! How did adding that additional ankle information to your tracing translate to a better fit? What adjustments did it lead to?
Thanks very much for all the info and the link to your shelf liner mock-up post. I’ll dice into it more when I can get a moment.
Since I’m working directly on the clay last, I use a different approach, with using a pair of big screws to hold each pair together, and leather handles on each part to have something to grab onto. I’ve developed a 3-part last that I’m looking to see how it will come out when I’m at that stage (fingers crossed).
