Welting Outside-In or Inside-Out

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Continuing the discussion from Balmoral-ish Roper Boots:

Thinking Through

I took a little time to try to think systematically about this. A few thoughts:

Strength-wise, if you’re using a pointed or tapered awl, the last layers you hit will potentially receive the smallest, tightest holes. Pushing the awl from the inside out, that means the tunnel will be widest through the holdfast and narrowest through the upper and welt. Since the holes through the upper and welt face out toward the elements, perhaps that could mean less chance of water seeping in. On the other hand, wider through the holdfast might increase the risk of holing or tearing it out.

Accuracy-wise, at least at my beginner stage, I’m much better piercing just where I want to where I start the awl than where it ends up when I push it through. That would seem to benefit piercing from the outside in.

On the other hand, there are real benefits to making your holes in line with the curve of your awl, and then being a needle or bristle to follow that curve through. Especially if your holes in the holdfast get pierced before welting, it might matter more to make sure the holes in the upper match the pre-pierced holes in the holdfast. Being able to pierce exactly where you want on the upper, from the outside in, doesn’t matter then. What you want to do is follow the holes you’ve already made in the holdfast and just find out where they point to on the upper, following the awl.

Reviewing Some Notes of Videos

I believe I remember an old thread on The Crispin Colloquy where at least one western bootmaker from Fort Worth argued fervently with DW Frommer II about outside-in versus inside-out. I vaguely remember DW’s point was that you couldn’t really know where you were hitting the outside face of the holdfast with it covered by the upper. The other side claimed speed and experience delivering accuracy.

Reviewing some notes, the vast majority of makers I’ve seen on video go inside-out:

Marcell Mrsan welting through pre-pierced holes from the inside out:

Lee Miller welting from the inside out without pre-piercing:

Ken Kataoka, inside out:

Imbrahim Demir, inside out:

Lisa Sorrell, pre-pierced, inside-out:

Terry Kim, pre-pierced, inside-out:

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Yeah, punching the hole from the inside to the outside is definitely the way to go. You want the outside hole to be the smallest. I personally like to pre-punch my holes when I’m preparing the insole and that way I know exactly where the awl is exiting the insole (and therefore where it will enter the vamp leather).

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Thanks, @Customboots! I was thinking having small holes on the upper and welt mattered, but it means a lot more reading that from you.

The evidence online is that makers overwhelmingly prefer inside-out. Which, in a way, only has me more curious about what might be going on down there in Forth Worth.

It seems somebody’s out there doing most everything every which way.

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It’s an interesting discussion because I think we may be seeing another shift in the way inseaming is done.

I’ve observed that cowboy boot makers are about half and half on where they begin inseaming. Shoe makers in Europe are quite insistent that the correct way is to begin on the left side, awl going inside to outside, with the toe pointing toward themselves. Many American cowboy boot makers (myself included) begin on the left side, awl going inside to outside, with the toe pointed away from themselves. My theory is that this change happened because of the Industrial Revolution and the inseaming machine. The inseaming machine starts on the same side I do. Boot makers who worked in a factory and used an inseaming machine may have left the factory, started their own shop, not been able to afford an inseaming machine and had to do it by hand, and they may have just automatically started where the machine did.

We may be seeing something similar happening here. Some boot makers use a jerk (hooked) needle to inseam. It doesn’t make the best/strongest stitch – it replicates the same stitch as the inseaming machine makes. When you use a jerk needle, you poke the holes from the outside in. The needle is the same diameter from top to bottom so it really doesn’t matter, and since the needle is straight it’s easier to start from the outside. So I’m wondering if there are new makers who either started with a jerk needle and decided to switch to a better/stronger stitch, or new makers who watched a video of someone using a jerk needle, and then they switched to inseaming with a curved awl but because of this influence they thought you’re supposed to punch the holes from the outside in.

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Super interesting!

I went through my notes and found a couple examples of outside-in lockstitching. Clicking these videos should jump you right to the relevant parts of the videos.

Brian Truong / Brian the Bootmaker / Role Club

At least in the videos I’ve watched, Brian carves his insoles in a really interesting way. He incises a flap around the outside edges, almost as if he were doing a hidden channel on an outsole, but much thicker. Then he turns that flat up with lasting pliers to make a very gemming-like rib to sew through. I think he actually ends up trimming some of the flap away when he trims the upper after welting.

Steve Doudaklian of Bedo’s Leatherworks

Steve pre-pierced holes from the inside out with a curved awl, but marks them on the insole and lockstitches with a jerk needle outside-in. His insoles don’t appear to have any feathers at all. He’s piercing out of, and apparently sewing straight into, square edges of the insoles, as in some kinds of Norwegian construction.

Thoughts

As a new maker, I can say from experience that there is at least one huge advantage here: straight jerk needles are way cheaper and easier to find, buy, and use. If you start lockstitching and decide to saddle stitch instead, straight saddle awls are even easier.

I’m only on my second all-original pair, and I’m already “on a journey” with curved inseaming awls. I’ve gathered from a few more experienced makers that the journey never really ends. But the whole story with jerk needles seems to stop and start with “American Straight 5 or 6” for many. With saddle awls, it’s “Osborne 42-52” or “just swing by Tandy”.

On the other hand, piercing dead straight really seems to call for different holdfast shapes and methods. The makers I see doing this are generally not carving broad, flat feathers, as on many dress shoes. Some don’t even bevel at all. When they carve holdfasts, they need deep channels, and usually fairly broad ones. It really seems to help if it looks more like gemming, standing straight and proud off the bottom.

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Another example of outside in jerk needle:

For the sake of discussion only, and i’m mot and could not advocate for one over the other, it seems to me that the most important part of the cosmetics of the welt is the outside part - even height and spacing of stitching on the vamp will create a more consistent look to the welt recess from the outside. Or in Frommers book he says “you can’t welt with a hammer” ie you cant fix it after the fact. And it seems the most structurally important part is the inside - a well made holdfast and consistently piercing it at the same angle and having the same thickness each time. So maybe some part of choosing one approach versus the other is about which of these you want more control of, since the side you approach from is going to get the most consistent stitching. Of course if you’re a master you probably nail both every time haha. But if you are a beginner and your welts have crooked teeth like mine you might be sorely tempted to control that part of it by piercing the vamp first

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Wow, great link! I’d never seen any of the Eradawn videos. I’ve a bunch to watch now.

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I believe Brian the Bootmaker preps his insole that way because that’s what his maestro/shop owner taught him. It seems to be the method done in Mexico. I think Arno shoes has his factory-made line in Leon being done with the same method, where I think they’re even opening that lip by hand with a knife. I believe it’s one of the many factory emulation things that has carried over from ex-shoe factory workers who set out on their own (before cycling back into bigger operations) - similar to the way jerk needles/lockstitching has been adapted to welting. If you look at the original Goodyear welt method with the all-leather sole sans gemming, you see the resemblance. It’s similar, although the channeling machines seem to cut the channels with more precision of course.

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I am by no means a factory shoemaker. I’m not fast enough! But in reading about the history of shoemaking, the interplay between craft or hand and factory methods interests me more than any other theme. And then there’s the whole other dialogue of manufacture versus repair. What do bottoming departments and cobbler shops do differently? Why?

I can see how repairers might start lockstitching welts with jerk needles in imitation of their machines. But I can also see how they’d get away with it these days, well into the era of synthetic cord. Is a welt sewn double-needle with flax or hemp coated in rosin really stronger or more durable than lockstitched twisted poly? Braided poly? Is double-needle stitching poly an improvement, or just massive overkill? It’s definitely slower than lockstitching.

@cjackson, to touch back on a theme from your intro, I’d say that it’s a big hope for me to see all the new energy and sharing hobbyists are bringing to shoemaking produce some new methods and ideas that follow the old path and trickle down to affordable, mass-produced shoes. Maybe part of that is just being more open to learning not just from repairers, but from machines, as well. It’s probably really hard for pro custom makers to admit to doing machine work slower and more expensive, by hand. But those of us poking our fingers for fun can try anything.

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Not in the same zipcode as a pro of course, but from the outside it seems like the reasons to do it slow are
1- demonstrably better quality, made for educated consumers who need the durability for whatever application
2- historical integrity and dang isnt that so cool value, made for educated consumers who have too much money
3- the piece is being made by a hobbyist, because it’s fun to do it the old or hard way
4- ok maybe you do some the slow way and build a brand and following and then you can design a lower tier for people who don’t care as much or have too much money and get someone in mexico to make them

But in this schema i think hobbyists become an important vector for both preservation of history and experimentation/discovery, because there are a lot fewer of 1 and 2 than there used to be. And before long Berkshire Hathaway will buy out the trademark for 4 and move production to china and a Strobel machine will make shoes with your logo on it out of PU leather :wink:

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This is just my take on it, but I feel that at a hobby or one-man level, it should be done with two needles/bristles and saddle stitched all the way. No lockstitching. Why? Well, once you get established with it and decide what awls and ends work best for you, a 180 like a boot, or even the 270 of a dress shoe is gonna take you a couple hours. What is a couple hours on a 50-75 hour build, when it is the most important part? The lockstitch awl simply can’t save much time over that anyway. Plus, I just love the amount of sheer power and tension you put into the shoe when saddle stitching the inseam.

Now, if I was making them to sell? It’d be either done the ‘right’ way and they’d be paying for that aspect, or I’d get a full-on GYW inseamer and it’d spiral into being a small shoe factory. If you look up the Nuova Obe 15, it’s an insole channeler that cuts the channels into a leather insole for “original” GYW (sans gemming) - it’s cool, but again, only makes sense to me to save that hour of time if you’re producing mad quantities.

Last, from a technical standpoint, I feel that welting is the “final” lasting step - and using a properly curved awl to saddle stitch the welt on adds that additional amount of lasting tension. I don’t think you’d get that when lockstitching with a straight jerk awl, going outside-in. From pre-lasting, lasting, folding the nails inward, and then finally inseaming - that’s like 4 stages of lasting you can achieve.

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Just to argue against myself here…
I think reasons to do saddle are either it’s fun, it’s traditional, or you believe it’s better. I do think there are people who do saddle because it was taught to them as the right way, and there is value in that- respecting your teacher and carrying on the particular tradition of which they were a part. But reasons to vary (eg lock stitch) might be
1-it’s easier or faster but you think its inferior
2- its easier/faster but you think it’s noninferior
3- you think it’s better
4- someone taught it to you as “the right way” and you are respecting that particular tradition

I think defenses for those could be:
1- i might judge you a little for all the reasons cjackson listed, but i guess to each his own :slight_smile:
2- one of the benefits of being unmoored in a particular tradition, and where pace doesnt matter, is that you can try different things and see how you like them. Results, difficulty, or guilt might pull you back to saddle
3- another great benefit of being hobbyists is that we should feel free to introduce a little science into the process. I wont make any claims based on principle or anecdote but, hey, rather than guessing which is superior, why not set up and experiment and choose a method based on results? Who knows what you might find?
4- i can totally respect this, unless some whippersnapper who did an experiment shows you are clearly going to have earlier failure with your lockstitch and working people are depending on your product

Just fartin in the wind but those are my thoughts. I agree with the core principle though - making choices purely based on efficiency and nothing else… just buy your shoes from the most efficient maker, eg china, since that’s where the science of efficiency has gotten us

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@cjackson, I’ll just chip in that personally, I feel the draw of saddle stitching very strongly, maybe too strongly. And just my choice to call it that might tip folks off that I started in leather on the Tandy train, pre-Internet, getting supplies and books from local Texas retail stores.

The culture of leathercraft at home in those stores definitely looked up to saddlemakers. They were the major leaguers. Down below, as a hobbyist, you wanted to sew every seam on your projects like a working seam or a cantle binding, even if you were making another one-fold wallet, because that was the strongest. Or you could lace it, because that’s the prettiest. Either way, you wanted to do justice to the material.

Well, that and I don’t think Tandy sold jerk needles. Where were you going to get one?

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And I’ll also throw in that saddle stitch feels much more meditative, and aesthetically i think you have more control over how the stitch lays and how deep it sets and how much tension is on either side. At least i haven’t learned how to get a lock stitch to look consistent. Once I watched the armitage videos on “modern” saddle stitch (which as far as i can tell just means no groove) I was hooked and wanted all my stitches to look like that.
That being said I don’t know how much those things matter on like an inseam. I did a jerk on my first inseam cause I had a jerk needle and my bristles hadn’t come in yet, and i did a boar bristle outseam cause it was just fun and pretty.

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2 posts were split to a new topic: Geeking Out About Saddle Stitching