I remembered sometime after I wrote you yesterday that my notes say Lee Miller in Austin sticks with 5.5/12s. Here’s the video link from my notes:
He whipstitches the heel seats of his uppers down and doesn’t do additional pegs through leather shanks covers:
He stacks heels with nails:
I got thinking about how to increase my success rate driving wood pegs, and realized there’s a whole class of tools for driving things in straight: put a tube around the fastener, then drive a punch through the tube. The tube keeps the punch straight.
Oftentimes these tools are meant to make it possible to drive fasteners in tight spaces. Tubular nailers help nail heels from the insides of tall boots down through heels, rather than up through the heels into insoles, for example. But there are other, more common versions of the same idea for other trades.
Here is a punch I found that’s marketed for setting trim nails in carpentry, going for less than $10 USD:
The inner diameter of the tube is about 5.5 mm. The travel of the punch is about 25 mm or 1 inch. So it’s a bit wider than common wood pegs sizes, but with enough travel to drive them completely. There’s very little side-to-side play of the punch within the tube.
I’m concerned the mouth of the punch might mark leather as I drive. But I wonder whether I can’t smooth any marks out with a concave faced hammer or burnishing.
Using one of these would obviously be slower than driving pegs freehand, if you’re perfectly accurate with the hammer. But it’s a handy little tool.
I’ll share notes once I’ve had a chance to give it a try. I have a pair coming up to heeling pretty soon.
