Pair 4: Obligatory "Service Boots"

[kemitchell]

With a little delay on shipping the last for my first pair for sale, I’ve decided to go ahead and do a practice pair of so-hot-right-now “service boots” on the built-up GC 200 lasts that I have. So not too different from my first pair, but a bit more refined, and on a much sleeker last.

General Plan

• Black Chromexcel
• Derby
• No Cap
• Relatively wide facing gap / throat opening.
• Fold the edges, for a little refinement.
• Gunmetal AA eyelets
• Shorter than pair 3. Maybe seven eyelets to a facing.
• Design on the lasts this time, rather than on mean forms.
• External Heel Counter and Cover
• Do some fancy tan contrast stitching on the quarter and other seams.
• Don’t go crazy with the stitch density on the uppers this time. 3 mm standard. Stick to the 0.020" braided thread.
• Handwelted Breast to Breast
• Brown Vibram Cork V-Bar
• Stacked Leather Heel and Some Brown Rubber Top Lift
• White Outseam
• Try my new fudge wheel.

Last Taping

It was good to get the last taping practice again.

I tried laying strips of tape down the foreparts and backparts to mark main axis with the edge of the tape, rather than by drawing on the strip before sticking it on. I think I like this method better. It’s harder to see the line in photos, but there’s no awkward step of drawing on tape, then peeling it up and resticking it on the last.

Since I’ve started seeing more when it comes to last shapes, I’m finding again and again that it really helps to put some kind of uniform covering over built-up lasts. The contrast between original and build-up material tends to attract my eye in its natural state. When it’s all covered up, I get a better intuitive sense of what the combined curves really are.

Patterning on the Last

I decided to do my design on the lasts this time, and also to do asymmetric patterns inside-outside. I’ll flip the same pattern for the left shoe.

I’d love to say I’ve achieved some kind of patterning insight this round, but the real lesson is that it has paid off enormously to keep a scrapbook of shoes I see online. It’s great to be able to tag a few pairs of other people’s and companies’ work as inspirations for a specific project, then riffle through them. This round, that helped a lot in making decisions about the lengths of the quarters, as well as the height and forward projection of the heel counter covers. Of course, it’s also nice to have some wearable shoes laying around to reference.

First Draft Pattern Pieces

I’m getting better at thinking through adding the various allowances, and also a bit more confident that I can make smaller allowances for turns and other features.

I did chicken out a bit on the pattern piece for the combined heel counter cover. I added allowance for the external heel counter, but also just widened the pattern overall, essentially planning to lay it over during fit-up and trim to length. My goal is to have the leading edges of the heel counter cover seams hit the featherline right at the heel breast. We’ll see how that goes.

Paper Drape Test

I had it on my list to try making a paper mockup to lay over the last, rather than pricier foam, this time.

@thenewreligion mentioned that I’d enjoy a nice section on “draping” in Jones’ patterning book. He was right, and I did, but I was surprised to see that offered as a method for sanity-testing last forms, rather than pattern pieces. My most direct inspiration for this was, I believe, a Terry Kim video. That’s where I first learned about fine continuous mist spray bottles, too.

Printer paper and PVA for basting certainly worked, and wetting with a micro-mister certainly helped it conform without soaking through in any spots. But overall, I don’t think I learned too much from this exercise, with the possible exception that it drove home how differently the quarter seams fit across the asymmetric inside and outside patterns. Even without any slashing or pleating those parts of the tape forms, they still curve quite a bit. The seam allowances don’t overlay nicely on the flat, only when curved.

I’ll probably do a quick test fit-up in old bedsheet fabric, too. I’ve still got myself confused about the quarter curve shapes. Apparently my years of getting by in shoes whose quarters pulled right together over my scrawny feet has left me a little wary. And I have a bad history of patterning tongues as an afterthought, which needs to change.

[kemitchell]

Good Idea: Shelf Liner for Mock-Up

I decided to try using some spare black-foam shelf liner for a mock-up, and it worked pretty well. Much better to handle and drape over the last than damp printer paper.

The make and model of my particular stuff was Con-Tact Grip “Premium Black Non-Adhesive Shelf Liner”. Mine happened to come from an Ace Hardware.

I had this stuff on hand for another project, but at $1 per square foot, I’ll consider buying more just for mock-ups. It’s not perfectly smooth. It has a ridged surface designed to keep things from sliding around. But it stands up to sewing and stretches a bit, perhaps a tad more than most upper leathers I handle. It’s significantly cheaper and more conveniently available than the white EVA foam sheet last time I tried a foam mock-up.

Being black, it does take a silver pen. The metallic silver gel pens I use on dark leather worked well on this foam, as well.

Symmetric Asymmetric

The upshot of very carefully creating a pattern piece for each quarter, inside and outside, is that they turned out almost exactly the same. Laying my current pattern pieces over each other, the only significant difference is a slight variation in the curve of each quarter from the tab to the featherline.

I didn’t intend for this to happen. I tried to make the tabs and facings symmetrical on the lasts, but drew the quarter curves freehand, referencing stock photos and shoes I have in my closet. With the backseam running down the main axis at the back, that was clearly supposed to be symmetrical. I was also going for symmetry in the facings and their curves. By process of elimination, that left the lines from the facings down to the featherline.

I think the basic takeaway is that if your design fundamentally calls for symmetry of two pattern pieces, design one, refine that, and perhaps split into inside and outside pattern pieces once everything else proves out in mock-ups, if you really want a difference in a particular line.

Another day to futz with it, I think I’ll be ready to click. I’m not totally happy with the back curve yet, but fixing it’s not a huge project. I need to do a tongue, but I think I’ll make this my first pair with a standard, loose tongue, rather than a fully gusseted one.

[kemitchell]

Good Idea: Keep doing studies on scraps before committing.

I’m going forward with a somewhat simpler hand stitch than I usually like for the quarter seams: three rows of slanted saddle in two colors.

I’m still not able to guess which stitch and color combinations will look good over black as opposed to brown or tan. The lighter base colors afford more chance for contrast between different thread colors, like black and white, while it’s easy for darker colors to fade into black background.

Spacing 3mm. I settled on Maine Thread 0.020" braided white and ochre. Some of the lines in the study photographed are using 0.020" twisted or 4-cord linen instead.

Good Idea: Cut mirrors of pattern pieces to lay out for clicking.

This isn’t exactly the layout I went with, but it’s close.

Especially with the inside-outside asymmetric pattern this time, it was nice to have a piece of paper to lay out and trace for every part I wanted to click.

Backseams

This is Maine Thread 0.040 twisted black thread on 5 mm center-to-center hole spacing. OKA Factory pricking iron and awl.

The acute points and straight shanks of the OKA awls makes it really easy to get consistent holes, at the price of making it harder to minimize the size of the hole by adjusting depth when you want to. I can see how the OKA style makes more sense for wallets, bags, watch straps, and other leathercraft-type projects.

Bad Idea: Gluing backseams together too well.

It makes sense to fix the quarters together and then pierce holes for the backseam through both at the same time. However, I did Aquilim 315 here, and let them cure. That made peeling the flaps past the backseam back to hammer down more difficult.

Next time maybe basting tape.

Starting to close.

This is 0.020" Maine Thread braided, ochre color, on 3mm center-to-center spacing. OKA Factory pricking irons and awl again. It’s so nice having irons in both normal and reverse.

These will have heel counter covers, as well. I’ve holed them, so they’re ready to sew on.

Good Idea: Use a French-style saddler’s clam.

I documented my DIY build from an IKEA stool here on the forum.

I’m definitely racking up a list of small modifications I’d like to make, but overall it’s been a joy to use.

Bad Idea: Not double checking original pattern lines to be folded over.

I ended up with backstraps of slightly different widths. It’s barely noticeable, but they are slightly different.

I suspect this came about from distortion to my pattern piece lines after skiving. I probably should have clicked for these pieces oversize, skived, and then cut to intended shape.

Bad Idea: Some hole layout mistakes.

One of the backstraps has one more stitch hole in each direction, toward the inside and toward the outside, than the other. I think this is partly due to the shape distortion and partly just a mistake I made with the iron. I should have fudged it to make them more symmetrical.

On one of the quarters, I also started pricking holes from the backseam, rather than from the from of the top band. This led to a hole at the front of the topband, where the stitchline takes the turn down the facing, that is not spaced evenly with the rest.

Lesson learned, I started pricking holes on all the other quarters from the front, rather than the backseam. Let any irregularity fall under the backstraps. There’s weird stacking going on there with the flattened backseam and all the overlapping pieces, anyway.

These aren’t done yet. I haven’t even drawn in the waist lines yet. But I wanted to get down that I’m using Keystone insole leather this time. I believe I got these from @customboots as “Heavy XLarge Insoles”.

I’ll be handwelting so I’ll see how that goes.

[kemitchell]

Bad Idea: Fitting the bottoms of the backstraps over the lasts.

As seen in photos above, the stitchlines for the backstraps get a little wonky toward the bottom. This really doesn’t show on the outside, and won’t especially at the very bottoms, which will be covered by the heel counter covers. But it shows on the inside, where the stitchlines aren’t straight.

I tried laying the quarters over the backparts of the lasts, pressing the backstraps down in place, and marking through the existing holes with a scratch awl. In the end I really should have just fit up like that to get the backstraps in place, then marked the end holes and interpolated by hand from there. That way I could have made continuous, sweeping lines.

Bad Idea: Almost going too light on reinforcement.

Big thanks to @carsten for encouraging me to think twice about adding some seam reinforcement tape here. My original plan to was to go without any reinforcement, since the toplines on my last original pair ended up uncomfortably stiff and almost too thick to put the top eyelets through. But that would have been overdoing it. Fabric tape adds good reinforcement for very little additional thickness.

I have it on my list, but not yet in my budget, to try some purpose-made topline tape. I’ve been meaning to make an order from Avetco, who stock both topline and basting tape, but haven’t been able to confirm with them that they’re still shipping orders despite a nearby fire in Los Angeles.

But for now I just used Howies hockey tape, which is a 68 strands-per-inch cotton-poly blend with natural rubber cement. I’ll be cementing the lining to the upper at the top, so it will eventually be fixed well in place.

[kemitchell]

Bad Idea: Forgetting I bought basting tape, then screwing up quarter-vamp registration.

I’ve ended up clicking and closing new vamps for this pair, after I noticed that the tabs of my quarters were sitting way too far back, relative to the tabs for the tongue seams, than I’d intended.

I’m not exactly how it happened in the first place. But I certainly enjoyed fitting up with basting tape for the first time. The pieces can still come apart from the tape with rough handling, but overall the stick was good. I was pleased to find that I could pleat the straight tape to match the curves of the quarter seams and still peel the backing away cleanly. It was also nice to be able to set the tape, then leave the vamps aside with the backing still on until I could come back and do the fitting.

[kemitchell]

Re-stitched quarter seams:

This is 0.020" Maine Thread braided in “ochre” and white. Holes are 3 mm from center to center, poked with an OKA No. 1 (2 mm) awl.

Good Idea: Use shorter needles when closing “freehand”.

I originally bought C.S. Osborne 517 needles in the sizes needed just to get the different gauges: 20, 19, 18, 17, and 16. I’ve since gone back and got number 4s and number 2s, which are basically shorter versions of number 3s and number 1s, respectively. 20 and 19 gauge.

I have long, narrow fingers. When stitching pieces in a fixture, it’s nice to have more needle to grab onto. But once an upper has turned into a loop, it seems to be easier to maneuver shorter needles in and out. I’ve had more luck developing a smooth, flowing rhythm with them.

[kemitchell]

Good Idea: Trendware Eyelets

I wish I had good photos to share, but unfortunately my iPhone 13 Mini is not a great macro camera. The long story short is that I’m very pleased.

The formula this time was:

• Trendware AA XLG Brass Eyelets, Gunmetal Finish (These are the ones I’m selling in sample bags of multiple finishes, while supplies last.)
• 4 mm Hole Punch in SPS twist press
• Kember DBS ballpoint stylus tool to seat the lining around the barrels of the eyelets
• Moro 051 setter tooling in SPS twist press to set

The 4 mm holes were definitely tight. I pulled the punch out and reamed it through the holes to widen them out so I could slide the eyelets in. The tight fit also necessitated the ball stylus tool. I mentioned the Kemper I used, which my local art store sells for about $5, but a Tandy tracing stylus or fine enough stick would work.

I originally tried to mark circles to target with the hole punch on the leather, using a mini compass. That really wasn’t worthwhile. What did work out was positioning the upper under the press, turning the handle just enough to leave a slight impression on the surface, letting it rise, checking the positioning, and only turning to punch through once the creasing on the leather showed the punch was centered. It’s no big deal to leave impressions from a few tries around the hole. They’re not cuts, so they’ll come out. And they’re mostly or entirely hidden by the flange of the eyelet once it’s in.

I also tried a 4.5 mm punch on a similar stack-up of upper leather and lining. That seemed tight enough, but I told myself I’d go with the tightest host I could get the eyelets in, extra work futzing with the lining be damned. Maybe that’s just wasted effort.

[kemitchell]

Bad Idea: Forgetting seam allowance when patterning heel counters.

My heel counters ended up a bit long to fit in the pockets under the heel counter covers of the uppers. I think what I did is trace base the counter pattern on the counter cover pattern, without subtracting the seam allowance.

I was able to just trim the counters back. But I’d already skived and pre-lasted them, so I have to wet to skive again after trimming. That lost me some of the shaping from pre-lasting, but I don’t think it’s worth pre-lasting again.

[kemitchell]

Feather Cut

I’ve cut the feathers in the insoles. No time for the channels quite yet.

My process here was:

1. mark in pencil
2. incise lines with mill knife
3. open channels with channel opener
4. gouge out with feather plow
5. burnish edge and rim with sticks

I wish I could say I did in each in one pass with the feather plow, but I ended up incising too shallowly, so I had to go back and do two passes on each insole.

Good Idea: Getting a channel opener.

In the past I’d used my dad’s old blunt-metal letter opener to widen channels, but I splurged on one from Viktor Starko in Ukraine a while back and used it this time. He’s been great to order from, and very helpful by e-mail!

Shoemaker tools - Channel opener CO-A

This is definitely better than anything I’d improvised. I didn’t really understand the shape of the metal blade with all its curves, and I still may not entirely. But I’m coming to appreciate more of the design of it. I suspect a big reason I was more accurate staying in incised lines with this tool is that it sticks out like an extension of my finger or a pencil. That made it easier to see where the point was, without losing my intuition about how to move it precisely.

Necessary? No, not at all. Especially if you’re not under time pressure.

Desirable? Right now, I’m glad I bought it.

I’ll note here that I have only held and used this Starko version, but I suspect the same may go for other makes.

Good and It’s Complicated: Starko Feather Plow

My Starko splurge also included a feather plow, which his site calls a feather knife.

Shoemaker tools - Feather knife

I’ve done all my feathers and holdfasts “freehand” with knives thus far. The guarded design of the feather plow is definitely better at achieving a consistent depth of cut than I am freehand.

However, it’s by no means automatic or fool-proof. You can’t push the guard down through the holdfast, so you can’t go deeper than the guard there. But you can tilt the blade part up or down toward the featherline.

This may actually be an advantage if you want to vary the angle of the feather ridge, perhaps higher in the waist than around the toe. But it doesn’t help you cut the ridge dead flat where you want it to be.

I also noticed that pressing the guard of the feather plow against the holdfast-to-be actually embossed a bit of a ridge around its outer edge. I noticed this while the leather was still a bit surface-damp from spraying, and rubbed it out with a stick. Not that it would have harmed anything.

One thing you can’t do with a feather plow like this is go deeper than the tool is designed to. That would require a different plow with a taller guard. I suppose you could cut shallower with it, by laying tape or some other material along the edge of your planned holdfast, to raise the guard and the plow. Maybe a scrap of leather you can move from section to section. That does sound a bit precarious.

Finally, I was pleased that it’s not at all hard to strop the feather plow on the same paddle I use for straight knives. Just flip it upside down and run along the side of the leather, so the guard hangs off the side. It’s chisel-ground, like a French edger, so there’s only one grind to hone. The bottom is flat, so deburring is easy.

Same note here as on the channel opener above. The feather plow I’ve got from Starko seems a very well made tool. But its design is very like other brands I’ve seen pictures of online.

Good Idea: Start hoarding hardwood sticks.

Various rubbing sticks, laying tools, chopsticks, and just plain chunks of hardwood that I’ve whittled into bars and pointers and rods are slowly winding their ways to the top of my favorite tools list. For the feathers, I was particularly glad to have some flat, bar-like sticks handy for rubbing the outer edge and burnishing the feather ridges.

Bad Idea: Sketching on the insole in pencil.

I keep doing this, forgetting that while it can be nice to erase, moisture and friction will smudge the graphite around.

Better just to skip to a pen. I’ve tended to use felt-tip pens in the past, but I’m now a full convert to common oil-based ballpoint pens, like the ubiquitous Bic stick pens. At least for marking on bottom leather.

I went back and drew over lines that I’ll be needing after carving the feathers. The lines in the photo above are the heel breast and the corners of the pre-lasted toe puffs where they fold over. I tried to make the feather just a tiny bit wider where the puffs will lay between uppers and linings.

[kemitchell]

Channeled and Holed

I decided to try following Max Sahm’s instructions from Arbeits- und Fachkunde für Schuhmacher this time:

• 7 mm wide holdfasts
• 7 mm hole spacing
• holes slightly angled through the holdfast

Tools this time were:

• Channeling
  • trusty Hyde model 62480 mill blade for incising
  • Starko seam opener
  • Starko Yankee-style welt knife
• Holing
  • Tom Carbone 3⅜″ inseaming awl via Sorrell N&F
  • F. Oskar Möller Perfecta-Nähheft screw-huck haft via shoemakercraft

I may actually go back and carve holdfasts through the seats, as well. I haven’t quite decided yet.

Still a Good Idea: Carbone Awls

I got a #2 inseaming awl from Dick Anderson last year, and have mostly been using that lately. But I decided to switch back to the Carbone awl for this pair, just to see how it feels now.

It’s definitely an adjustment switching to an awl with a different curve. But it didn’t take too long to get the flow of it again.

Bad Idea: Tacking too far back from the toe.

As the photo shows, I went back and added insole tacks a bit deeper in the points of the toes. I still found myself holding the feather down with my left thumb in some places, but the closer tacks definitely helped avoid lifting a little better up front.

Good Idea: Micro-Mist Spray Bottle

I took a gamble and bought one of these suspiciously cheap micro-mist spray bottles from Amazon:

Amazon.com: BeautifyBeauties Hair Spray Bottle – Ultra Fine Continuous Water...

The inspiration here was very directly a video of Terry Kim. I wasn’t aware they made spray bottles designed to shoot very, very fine droplets, so the moisture gets distributed more evenly. Apparently these were originally developed in Scandinavia—I can’t remember exactly which country now—but were either never patented or patented and expired.

I don’t think it does quite the same work as a brush and a water cup. There’s nothing pushing water into cracks or crevises. But it’s similar in the consistency of the film it lays down.

[kemitchell]

Bad Idea: Heel counters from spare sole bend.

Inspired by DW Frommer’s Western Packers book, I decided to try making some heel counters out of spare sole bend, even though I’d already made some from veg-tan tooling leather. I didn’t want to alter my pattern to sew the counters in, like Frommer recommended. But I’d left roomy enough pockets for thicker counters.

I’ve tried a few times now to skive down more and wet mold over the lasts, but I’m giving up and going back to the tooling-leather counters.

I don’t know what I don’t know, but here’s the best I’ve got for now:

Armed with a recently acquired cheap leather thickness gauge, I discovered my sole bend was actually even thicker than the 11 ounces Frommer mentioned he used. It’s also quite hard, rolled leather, and Frommer specifically called out that lots of imported sole bends aren’t suitable. It was really hard bending it over the featherline around the backs of the heels. I think I succeeded in getting a good shape to one counter, but the other just won’t seem to bend like it needs to in order to follow the back curve down to the insole.

I skived entirely by hand, and noticed only going back to Western Packers that Frommer specifically called out skiving first with a 5-in-1, refining by hand, and finishing on a sanding machine. It was pretty brutal trying to skive freehand, even very studiously casing the leather to best moisture level I could. The top and side edges weren’t too bad, but the long slope of the lasting allowance was constant problems and unevenness. I think it’s probably possible to do the whole job well by hand, but I really, really didn’t enjoy my first try.

I have to admit that I still don’t have a good grasp on some fundamentals of soling leather. Were the soling bends Frommer was talking about cutting counters from rolled, for compression, by the tannery? Are insoles usually cut from the looser parts of the same hides as outsole blanks? What’s the difference between insole leather that’s good for handwelting and other thick, undyed vegetable tanned cowhide, like saddle skirting?

[thenewreligion]

They cover a bit about oak tan in Sahm, but the leather eg Bakers makes or the old style pit tanneries made as referenced in Sahm, go out of their way to preserve hide substance, chemically mucopolysaccharides or glycosaminoglycans etc. Essentially the natural binding proteins of the skin, that give it some body and compressive strength. It also acts like a water activated binder, allowing things like burnishing and tooling by holding collagen together where it’s compressed most effectively when wet. These are normally leached out to a large degree with standard tannery processes like liming, bating, and pickling. In order to restore the temper and weight you have to acidify and swell the hides to accept overstuffing with tannins, which produces a denser, less flexible veg tan. But it can be completely tanned through in a matter of days with the modern processes. The pit tan processes preserve the hide substance to a greater degree and uses lower concentration of slower acting tannins at lower temperatures which results in the minimum necessary tannin binding to preserve the hide. The result is greater compressive strength with less tannin content and more flexibility and easier to carve/hole versus say a tandy econ shoulder. So those oak bark, non rolled hides are for great insoles. I think option 2 is looser parts of hides from modern veg tan. I havent tried it but I bet the hides tanned for tooling, eg herman oak, or maybe a bridle maker like sedgewick if you could get it crust, where the process is slowed down but not to a year, and with the goal of leaving low enough density and enough cohesive proteins to enhance tooling, would work pretty nicely. I also feel pretty confident saying anything labeled as a sole bend is rolled.

Can’t remember if i shared this one elsewhere sorry but this is what sahm would have been talking about

Leder gegerbt mit Eichenlohe 1962

[kemitchell]

Appreciate the notes!

I am thinking I should really try to get in touch with Hermann Oak.

[kemitchell]

Heels lasted.

[kemitchell]

[kemitchell]

Inseaming

I got one side sewn. But I’m not happy.

I decided to try unwaxed Maine Thread 11-7 coated with my own tar and rosin mix this time. That’s definitely come highly recommended, and I really see the appeal. But it’s been a bit of a mess.

I found myself feeding one wire bristle through, pulling its thread through, then pulling that thread a bit backwards to guide the other bristle through. I’m getting nice tight stitches, in the sense of really filling out the holes. But it’s really slow going.

Turns out I am not getting nice tight stitches in the sense of pulling enough tension. I learned that by surprise trimming my upper back to the outer edge of the holdfast this time, rather than at the channel, further on the inside. You can see a bit where the welt isn’t held right up to the holdfast through the inside arch in particular. Bummer.

The pile-up around the back of the heel wasn’t as bad I was expecting, using a sole leather heel counter. It’s definitely a chunky stack back there with the quarter, heel counter, and heel counter over, all chunky leathers. But it worked out alright.

I popped a stitch in the toe, as well. That only partly explains the big stitches up there.

I’ve a patterning mistake to report, too, revealed by lasting. But it’s late and I don’t have a picture yet.

[kemitchell]

Better coad helps many ways.

I decided to go back and add some more tar to my coad mix. I remelted what I had—melted rosin cut with a little tar—and added a bit more tar, then poured it into water and kneaded it again. Unfortunately, this meant I really can’t say what the exact mix ended up at. To get something repeatable, I’ll have to cook a whole batch, weighing things out again.

What I got might be too far on the slow moving liquid end of the spectrum, but definitely made coating the thread a lot easier. That in turn made it easier to twist and bind finer taws at the back of the wire bristles, which meant I could pull both ends through just by hand a lot more often. Still not on every hole.

Two wires through really helped.

Having improved the coad and the fineness of the taws of my waxed ends, I gave putting both bristles through before pulling any thread into the hole another shot. It really seemed to speed things up, and also put a lot less wear on the threads from pulling back and forth through holes.

Snapping plies.

I’m having issues snapping one ply out of my seven-ply thread every once in a while. When it happens near enough the bristle, it’s not such a problem. I just pull it through the holes and end up with two cords of seven plies passing through.

I’m thinking I might adopt an approach more like what I learned from the Stohlmans’ stitching book, and always prep threads that are only as long as my wingspan. Plan to splice as needed and get good at it.

Frankly, I’m also thinking that I might just do the next pair with Ritza 25, like Ken Hishinuma keeps showing. I can’t get that unwaxed, but synthetic threads so much stronger than hemp or linen, it may not matter at all.