All,
My ten cents worth...and I'm gonna do it in one long post rather than a bunch of short ones.
I hand sew about three inches of each side seam for all the reasons both Jake and Al mentioned---precision, strength, control, etc.. I am an absolute fanatic about lining up the vamp and counter cover junction. I will tear a boot apart and hand sew the whole side seam rather than let a boot go out that way. Or with too puffy a side welt, either.
Why? Because in the end, if the only ones we are making boots for are customers who can't see or tell the difference when the edges don't match, then we are letting ourselves and our work be dragged down to the lowest common denominator. We *do* make boot for other bootmakers...if only the dead one's and the old guys that taught us (in your case, that's me, Jake
)--if only for their memory or the pride they might take in us if they could only see us now.
But we also make boots for other reasons...if it's not a process that we enjoy at every level--the creativity, the feel of the leather, the simple joy of working with our hands at something tangibly productive, as well as the pride and sense of accomplishment in bringing together such a wide assortment of techniques and materials into an object of beauty and functionality; if it's not a process that we enjoy...even in the talking about it, then why in the world pursue it at all? Anyone who thinks they can make a better living making boot than they could working at the local Toyota plant is living in a dream world.
I would like to learn to hand sew outsoles. I would like to learn to do it for several reasons...the pride in accomplishment, the connection to traditional techniques and the old masters, and to add another dimension to my work--not just in terms of technique but also in terms of...ahem!...*money*!
The simple fact is that our natural customers are folks who have a lot of money or a lot of physical need. Not the ordinary guy on the street. And the guy with a lot of money, sooner or later, if he's smart enough to keep that money, is gonna start developing a taste for refined work and all the things that make a hand made boot or a hand made violin, for that matter, worth more than one bought off the shelf. In the wealthiest circles--the old money, the smart money--it's common knowledge that a hand sewn outsole, if done right, is *the* standard for excellence. Lobbs don't hand sew their outsoles...anymore than Janne or Jan Petter...because they can do it faster by hand than with a curved needle. They hand sew them because their clientele--the rich--demand that standard of quality.
And it *is* quality...by any measure. With a capital "Q." I agree with Al on that, one hundred percent, even though I use a curved needle. Many of these techniques, many of the techniques that we have long ago abandoned in favour of something quicker or simpler...or simply easier to do...survive in the "uptown" shops simply because the results are manifestly prettier, longer wearing and more elegant. And elegant--in concept, in function, in appearance will always command a better price than mundane.
In the end, I would probably end up a little like Janne--doing most of my work on a CN and some, for select customers, by hand. And I would hope that as time went by, I'd get a name for doing the most exquisite, most elegant and refined work--"although he's terribly expensive, don't you know, but worth every penny"--and end up doing nothing but hand sewing.
It's probably too late for me, at this point, to reach that goal, but if you command those kinds of skills, you can literally command any price you want, once you get a name for it. And especially in this day and age...and the age to come...as factories become more computerized and machines make everything, we simply *must* start seeing ourselves from a different perspective. Once we *were* the "factories" so to speak, but that time is long gone. To continue to compete with the factories, as so many of us do, is a fool's game, in my book. It's evolution at it's most primal, my friends, and the only niche left is that of the specialist...who does something so unique and rare that it *cannot* be duplicated by machines.
"Do not go gentle into that good night...
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light."
Tight Stitches
DWFII--Member HCC
