One "Last" Question

[luckyduck]

Ok,

My envisioned use of this sort of thing is to make a pair or 2 of lasts a week at most. Using it would be like using an old fashioned lathe where you have to advance the cutters by hand. It you are thinking of a machine that will cut the whole thing out while you have a cup of coffee, think $100k.


Imagine the 2 mini lathes rotation driven by hand. That way you can go slow. The gun stock carver video shows the operator loosening a bolt to turn the work pieces. That would be horribly high effort to use and not give a smooth girth on the last. The lathe motors go FAST and the follower would not stay on the model. The slow turn motor might be good for turning the lathes, but it is also nice to be able to rock back and forth over a tricky section, like the top of the cone or edges of the feather line.

I think you could make a frame out of the extrusion that holds both the router and the follower much like the gun carver above. It would need to move in X and Z to move along the length of the last and the countour of the last. Rotating the lasts on the little lathes takes care of the R around the girth of the last. So in use you would advance in X a bit,let Z follow the last and then make a turn around R. Repeat until done. You would probably want to limit how big of a bite the router takes the first passes.

The aluminum extrusion mentioned above is very rigid. I have used it in systems that move 100+ pound electronic instruments thru environmental and functional test chambers over fairly long distances. I would bet it could hold a router at +/- .2mm if you didn't jam the feed speed up too fast. (Another reason for hand feeding)

Bummer I don't have the CAD package to draw the extrusions any more or I would throw up a sketch.

My quick estimate is that the sort of frame shown on the web pages holding the routers and capable of holding 2 mini lathes would be about $1k. Adding the router, lathes etc the whole thing is likely in the $2.5k neighborhood in parts if everything were purchased new.

Paul

[johnl]

Paul
Are you figuring labor in this 2.5K?
I did a quick and dirty add up in my head, and I can see about $1200 in complete material costs Lathes, router and all not including labor.
Of course, I have never been real good at figuring costs. :-)
I would think about a butcher block maple work table top, or a table with 2 3/4 sheets of plywood glued together and bolted together for a frame. Bolt the two lathes down on it, and hook them together. the copy carver does not look to difficult to build, probably not over $350 material in it and that includes the router. Add a hand wheel and some sort of friction brake, and you have it. (I think) What am I not thinking of???
John Lewis

[johnl]

You might have seen this before, but check this out. Plans for a homemade carver. Cost under $200 I dont believe the router is included. If you used the lathes with this, the cost should still be under $800. Might be worth building just to try it out.

[luckyduck]

The $2.5k is figuring pillow block bearings on Thompson shafts for motion and nice 10 turns per inch screw feeds for the motion all mounted up on some structural aluminum with a custom machined plate to hold the router. That is a high end amount, but would be a piece of equipment that should last the life of the shoemaker except for the router. It would also most likely be able to replicate a last within a couple thousandths if you are careful the last pass or two and set it up well.

The mounting on wood seems like a plan for disappointment as it swells and shrinks over the seasons.

I am off to other things for a while. Maybe we will have more to add after I take Marlietta's class and we can talk about it in person.

Paul

[johnl]

Paul
You are thinking a lot higher end than I was. Your way would be an excellent piece of equipment.
John Lewis

[last_maker]

Paul,


Your creative and imaginitive imput is amazing. thanks for your inginuity in this project.

As far as utilizing the lathe motors, how about putting a speed control on one and take out the motor in the other. You can get a speed control from FORDUM ( it is what detnists use to drill) that is a dial control. It can slowly turn the lathe motor or speed depending on what you want.

No I wasn't thinking of something totally automatic, but if it turned you could get all the accesses.

For that matter you could put a plug in speed control on the router too.
But no, I wasn't thinking something totally automatic, but I am still concerned that the two work together in unison, the model and the blank being shaped..

Just a thought

Marlietta

[last_maker]

The machined clamp plate to hold the router can be an aluminum cast job made from scrap aluminum. I have done metal casting and can make solid pieces. You can make the blank out of styrofoam and utilize the lost foam aluminum sand casting method. You can get scrap aluminum from old torn up engine blocks at the junk yard and some times in the trash old aluminum door frames and the like

I like the high end thinking though, I like somthing that although the parts came from the junk heep became something really nice. Linsey publications has a worm drive lath plans. and how to cast all the parts.

Might be something to look at. http://www.lindsaybks.com/dgjp/djgbk/series/index.html

http://www.lindsaybks.com/bks4/lbldg/index.html

Another thing we can do is do a worm drive timed advancement like a spirograph wheel on the bottom of the frame.A center gear would turn on a pully driven by a slow motor, and would advance the frame with the router and follower slowly.

You would still have to watch your piece to speed up or turn off the motor but you could control the speed with the speed control

So if you find scrap aluminum and you can get stock pipes like the ones at the plumbing section at the local loews from steel that might keep the costs down. I can imagine the router would have to be that expensive.



(Message edited by Last_maker on March 07, 2010)

[last_maker]

Rhinoceros cad program you can download for a free trial. thier older verson you can download for free and the trial doesn't time out.

[last_maker]

check this out: how to make a bench top lathe

http://books.google.com/books?id=b1JLAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA64&dq=%22lathe+making%22&as_b rr=3&cd=5#v=onepage&q=%22lathe%20making%22&f=false

[chuck_deats]

A nice feature would be the ability to reverse the rotation between the pattern and stock. You could then turn a left hand last using a right hand pattern. I think that would work.

[jkrichard]

Marlietta,
I was looking at your website and noticed that you briefly apprenticed under two Italian last makers and one French shoemaker (or was it lastmaker?). I am in Hungary at the moment and I am currently scheduling travel to Italy for taking measurements and France to visit one of my favorite French shoemakers. Would you mind providing me with the names of the last makers in Italy so that I can contact them and hopefully drop by (like many here I would love to see a last made by hand)...also the French shoemaker if you don't mind.
Thanks!

Jeff Richard
Member, HCC

[luckyduck]

Chuck,

Your are on the money and it would be easy to do with a belt. Sort of like the leather belts used on treadle lathes, but with no slippage so they stay indexed. This would make it easier on the pattern maker, too.

Paul

[producthaus]

What are the functional/aesthetic factors for making the feather edge of a heel seat rounded VS giving it a bit of an edge on a last?

I've seen lasts which have a completely rounded heel, while others the heel bottom is flattened and there is a bit of a pronounced edge where a counter meets sole.

[das]

Nick,

My 2 cents: a rounded/radiussed feather-line though the waist and heel seat makes a closer, better fitting shoe/boot, as it's more anatomically-correct. Lasts' architectural features have been dictated by the factories for ages, and they need that sharp feather-line to follow, plus seat-lasting machines have problems if the heel-seat is too round/convex, or "twisted", so the trend was to flatten.

[dw]

Nick,Al,

I've used both kinds of lasts. If the heel seat is the proper width to begin with, I don't see a significant comfort advantage with round seat lasts...but maybe that's just my foot.

I like the idea and theory behind the round seat last but I will admit that it is easier to trim an insole precisely with a feather edge around the heel seat.

Just my 2 cents...

Tight Stitches
DWFII--HCC Member

[last_maker]

Nick, Al, DW,

The argument for a round anatomical heal is that it allows the bottom point of the calcaneaus( the heel bone) to rest -settle into the heal seat instead of kicking out with a flat heal seat as it the case with a flat heel seat with a feather edge. For many people, a flat heal seat can cause excessive fitigue when wearing footwear for extended periods of time and on thier feet all day. The calcaneaus( heal bone) was designed to flex out first heal strick load and retract upon lift off. However, footwear disables this function. Thus, if building boots or shoes for someone who is on thier feet all the time, utilizing an anatomical rounded heal instead of a flat heel, will allow them to be more comfortable for extended footwear use allowing the calcaneaus to settle into a cavity that is more natural for it.

- Marlietta
http://lastmakingschool.com/classes/Intermediate%20Last%20Making.htm

[courtney]

Rick, whats your verdict on the Koleff method of last making?

Did you make any shoes for yourself to know how they fit?

What tools are needed?

Thanks,
Courtney

[romango]

The Koleff method works fine. It's about as much work as making a pair of shoes, however.

In some ways, it is better than adjusting a commercial last because you use your customer measurements to set the bottom and profile of the last.

I make good use of a band saw (but a jig saw would work) and my finisher - lots of sanding and grinding.

I get hard wood from the local bargain wood store.

[lancepryor]

I have used the Koleff book, and I think it can yield very acceptable results. At the end of the day, it gets you to a starting point for a last, but the final parts of the process are up to the maker. As Rick wrote in his pictorial last year, it is very helpful to have a finished last to help guide you in removing the wood from the block and finishing off the last. Also, if you look at Rick's post and the subsequent follow up, as well as my posts on my lastmaking efforts, there are some things I would do differently from the book (e.g. the generation of the insole pattern). However, none of this is to detract from the value of the book. I think Koleff's methodology for generating the last profile, in particular, is very helpful. For the generation of the 'top line'/last outline and insole, I work more directly from the actual tracing, with certain modifications.

Here are some pictures of a last I've made from Koleff merged with my own variations thereon -- I haven't cut the block out yet. I bought some 1" thick hard/sugar/rock maple boards off of e-bay, and used these for making my laminated block. You could also use a somewhat less dense wood -- perhaps beech, which is also commonly used for lasts. Aside from cutting the wood from the board with a jig saw, all of the work was done with a last knife, rasps, microplanes, etc., i.e. hand tools. As Rick says, quite alot of work, but kind of fun nevertheless.

Also, FWIW, I am planning to be offering HCC members the chance to buy some last blanks (at cost, but certainly not cheap) again sometime in the near future. These get you alot closer to a finished last than does Koleff.

11335.jpg

11336.jpg

11337.jpg

11338.jpg

11339.jpg

Lance

[dw]

This is kind of unrelated to what has been being discussed but very related to lasts.

I am having a dicken's of a time getting lasts out of the shoe. The heel curve is such, and the taper from heelseat width to the comb is such, that I'm near busting a blood vessel to pull the last.

And I'm always afraid that the backseam or the topline at the back of the heel will be damaged in the process.

Anyone have any consoling words or words of wisdom?

Tight Stitches
DWFII--HCC Member

[dearbone]

DW,

Is this a scoop last? Is there a hole in the top back of the island to help you pull the last by using a string to pull the shoe out.

Nasser

[dw]

Nasser,

Thanks for responding.

No, this is a spring last and yes, there is a hole drilled at the top of the heel. If, and when, I get the the heel fully sprung, I can usually pull the last without too much trouble but it is still difficult to get the topline at the back of the heel past the bottom of the last. After that it's no problem at all.

Tight Stitches
DWFII--HCC Member

[dearbone]

DW,

If the seat is pegged,tacked,they might be driven into the wood a little which you might need to be forced, move/push the last from side to side around the heel to loosen the driven pegs/tacks out,if that is the case.

Nasser

[dw]

Nasser,

As you might guess I deal with pegged heelseats and waists quite a bit making boots. I know exactly what you're talking about, but this is not the problem. The only place I peg shoes is in the heel seat. Once the heel of the last clears the insole any pegs would be cleared of the last as well.

No, I'm having trouble from about half sprung to full sprung.

And I've had this problem with every shoe last I've dealt with from West End lasts to nearly commercial lasts attributed to Allen Edmonds.

I take it you don't experience anything similar?

Tight Stitches
DWFII--HCC Member

[romango]

I've always had more trouble getting the lasts out of cowboy boots!


Generally I put the shoe on my inseaming jack rather than use the hole in the last to pull it out.