Insoles and inseaming

[tmattimore]

No offense. I am not often as clear in my written words as when I can babble on in person. I think these fora are the best idea since sliced bread as we by nature tend to work in isolation.
Tom

[chuck_deats]

Nasser, Tom,

Very nice welting jobs. Don't think I will be using that type welt in the near future, but it does bring up a question. What type of finish is used on the natural veg tanned welts and threads to at least delay the stains and dirt that comes from wear and polishing? I have used some of the leather lacquers, but not sure that is the right answer. Happy Thanksgiving to All.

Chuck

[dearbone]

Al,
Thank heaven I am still safe with you and safe again with Tom, I always loved to come to the annual HCC gatherings, I like your analogy, "we all went to school togather in past life", It is my desire to see this forum in light of your analogy. Now if all goes well and God and Crispin will it, I will attand the next year meetings. Happy boot&shoe making.
best regards
Nasser.

(Message edited by dearbone on November 22, 2007)

[dearbone]

Chuck,
The finish on the boot and welt is kivi shoe polish, it will be dyed brown before it is pick up by the owner, The thread is hemp, I recently bought. I have boots sewn this way going back ten years and they are still in good shape with the original thread, well waxed and twisted thread will keep or maybe it has something to do with our clean Canadian cities.
Tom
I found small quanties of hub nails here in my shop, I have three & half by eight, grooved head and the other one is Hungarian with smooth, Dome shape head, if you do not find them where you are, let me know how many you need and I will ship you some.

[washek]

I have severe difficulties in preparing the mid sole for welting. I have to put enormous force on the awl to get it through the leather. Perhaps, my awl is not sharp, but I do not know how to sharpen it. In any case, I am doing something incorrectly, and I would be grateful for any advice.

[artzend]

Washek,

Are you working with a mellowed insole? It also pays to keep the insole wet by painting water on it as you go.

Trying to make your holes in a dry insole can be hard.

I always sharpened my awls from the top or outside of the curve, although I have seen awls sharpened from the underside of the curve but that is harder to do. Fix the awl in a vice and using a fine file, work from the curve out to the sharp edge and past it with each blow of the file.

I am quite happy to be corrected on this if anyone else wants to have a go here.

Tim

[romango]

... and you can stick the awl in beeswax before each hole.

[dw]

Washek...

Both Tim and Rick have really good advice.

Although I do sharpen my awls from the underside of the curve a good deal of the time, most of the old awls I've seen were sharpened from the top/inside of the curve.

Almost as important is the choice of leather for the insole, however. For many years I just used soling leather I cut from bends that I bought for outsoling, heel lifts, heel stiffeners and toe stiffeners. Even though I cut the insoles from leather close to the belly, inseaming was always difficult. But that's the way I was taught and what I expected...many makers still just use outsole bend.

And then one stormy Christmas eve, Saguto came to town ...and my shop...and seeing me huffing and puffing, and breaking a sweat, asked "why are you trying to inseam in flint hard leather?" To make a long story short, he recommended that I switch to shoulders...specifically Baker insole shoulders.

Well, Baker insole shoulder is hard to come by but Stevenson-Paxton carries a double shoulder that they import from Mexico that is adequate if not up to the standards of Baker's. In fact, I think it is more than adequate...I recommend it.

Once you start making your insoles from shoulder, you'll not only have an easier time holing the insole but you'll make a better footbed when you wear the shoes for a little bit.

Tight Stitches
DWFII--Member HCC

[washek]

To: DWFII, Rick Roman, and Tim Skirme

Thank you very much for the advice. I will try to sharpen my awl. Concerning the leather, I got a piece from my shoemaker friend, who has now moved to Bali. I do not know what kind of leather it is. As I do not understand leathers, I always relied on my friend's advice. I used the same leather before, and even then it was difficult to poke the holes. However, never as hard as this time, so I think a dull awl is the problem.

Thanks again, and best regards.

Washek

[romango]

I have a welt 101 question...

I have used welt that I made from horse and commercial welt from Oregon Leather, whatever that is. Both are naturally more frayable than the sole leather.

Could I just use sole leather from a sole bend I purchased (split and stripped appropriately)? My goal would be to have the welt leather be 100% consistent with the sole so that the edge of the shoe could be finished where both the welt and sole would behave the same for sanding and/or trimming operations.

I've been not entirely happy with how the top edge of my welt looks at the edge.

What leather do you other folks, out there, use for welt?

[dw]

Rick,

Good question! I've asked it in one form or another several times.

I think the horse...when it is good...is very good indeed.

That said, I read somewhere recently (Golding ?) that welt was traditionally taken from the belly. So a side of soling leather would yield shoulder for insoles, belly for welting and the "heart" of the bend for outsoles as well as the heel stiffeners and toe puffs from the margins.

Baker sells welt strips and I have a few coming in the coming shipment and I have every confidence they will be the best I've eve used. But someone else will have to honcho the next order from them--I've done it twice now.


Tight Stitches
DWFII--Member HCC

[big_larry]

DW,

WHEN YOU ARE JUST A NATURAL BORN "HONCHO" YOU MUST LEAD THE WAY FOR THE REST OF US FOLLOWERS TO FULFILL YOUR DESTINY. Besides, I have heard it said that the third time is the charm. I do sincerely appreciate your efforts and your sage counsel. In addition, you and Jake Dobbins have the most technically perfect construction I have ever seen. As if by "magic."

Cheer up, I am sure the worst is yet to come.

Best wishes, Larry Peterson

[jesselee]

Rick,

I never skimp on the welt. I use a good grade inner sole which has no fraying. My feather edge on the inner sole matches the edge on the welt. Also on the innersole, my cut for the inseaming is an angled cut as per old school techniques, AND, my inner sole is cut 'grain side out'. This serves 2 purposes: 1- The sweat from the foot does not eat away the grain side. 2- Stitching through the grain side is much stronger than the flesh side which is considerably weaker. One last 'old school' note, my welts are always soaked and molded to the boot before they are stitched down.
Cheers,
JesseLee

[romango]

Jesse & DW,

Very interesting. I put the grain side toward the foot on my insoles but I don't recall the logic for this.

I might try some welt made from insole shoulder. I'm generally impressed with the quality of this stuff I get from Stevenson-Paxton.

I think the horse I have used is not the best quality.

[das]

Jesse & DW,

There is history behind reversing the insoles too. I've seen a few (very few) 17thc.-18thc men's shoes made with the flesh-up inside, as well as 19thc. and later heavy hiking boots, etc. on the Continent done this way. Makes sense for just the reasons Jesse says. In fact the only drawback I see, it that the insole wants to flex the other direction, so they might end up more rigid.

[dearbone]

Beaware when the shoemaker is also a shoe historian! thank you Al for your insight and clarification, Good to have you here,maybe that's why i joined.

[das]

Nasser,

Thank you for those kind words. I guess my perspective is/has ever been for 34-35 years at this, as long as we're making footwear from leather or textiles, stitching them together, on lasts, with soles and heels, we're more or less imitating what generations of shoemakers before us have done for centuries--sometimes better than us, sometimes worse--sometimes very successfully, sometimes not--but in all events facing the same advantages/limitations from the materials, methods, and purposes. In fact, the late "great" John Thornton used to emphasize this "three legged stool" model--1) materials, 2) methods, and 3) intended purpose or function--as being the only sound model for planning, envisioning, or designing footwear. So, as long as we're using seams ("historical" methods), leathers ("historical" materials), and fitting feet to walk, hike, ride, dance, look sexy, etc. ("historical" purposes), a keen awareness of how these three basic factors have been balanced and exploited (successfully as well as unsuccessfully) down through history is our "decision tree". The starting point for us needs really only be, "how did they do this before?", "what were the advantages?", "what were the disadvantages?", and that is historical enquiry in its purest sense, a forensic science indeed.

Imagine being put into a fully equipped kitchen, with flour, eggs, milk, etc., and trying to bake your first cake without any cookbook, unsure what ingredients to add, without granny coaching/advising you, or a well defined sense of what a good cake ought to look or taste like? While it may be true that 100 monkeys locked in a room with typewriters might eventually learn to type, and eventually produce all of Shakespeare's works, why in the world prefer that approach when there is a body of tradition to build off of. Shoe and bootmaking can easily make monkeys out of any of us, even under the best guidance or tutors, and with a host of examples of the best work to study. Ours is a long tradition (40,000 years if you believe that article about shoe wearing in ancient China somebody posted the other week)--we'd do well to pick up where the past left (us) off, IMO, rather than trying to reinvent the proverbial "wheel". The first step in history is to realize that you, me, everyone around us solidly immersed in it--it's the continuum on which we all move, live, work, and have our being. While some may argue that we ought not necessarily worship, imitate or venerate our ancestors, who like the dinosaurs are gone from our midst (except for bones and fossils) and hard the envision over the passage of time, none-the-less, it's harder to argue for wide-spread, voluntary, concerted cultural amnesia, where our past is deliberately ignored or forgotten

For all of the books written on how to make shoes and boots, most merely dating from the 1700s onward, our trade was never "book-learned"--no trade or art can ever be. Just like paper or fabric upper coverings to protect them during making, or these "reserved", flesh-up insoles, etc., these tricks of the trade seemed to have escape record even in the best textbooks. So, for as well-papered as this trade is with books and guides, much of the practice has still been lost, or threatens to disappear entirely, since it was primarily an oral-tradition transmitted from master to apprentices, with the books as only a recent novelty, a supplement, or secondary resource. We may not have the "old" men of the trade around us to consult anymore--the ones who understood the whys and wherefores of such "crans", but we do have some examples of their work, lurking in the hulls of long ago shipwrecks, down wells, and nowadays stored away unceremoniously as grotty old leather bits in archaeological collections and museums.

Al

[jesselee]

Al,
The advantage to the stiffness of the direction the leather wants to bend in ie. grain up innersoles, I believe adds strength to the shoe or boot. Also, one does not 'slip' around on the insole if the fitting preference is loose. I prefer my boots to fit like a sock and relatively tight. So I don't get slippage, even with the old school sole leather counters which are straight with no heel pocket and the old school throat which is not as pretty and elegant as DW's style of pulling the throat in over the cone nd tops of the last.

This conversation may just go to counters, which i feel are of paramount importance.

JesseLee (straight out of the 1870's)

[das]

Jesse,

Before this jumps over into counters, I can see how putting the flesh up, grain down, would result in a stiffer insole. And of course the flesh being up, on the inside, would create more "grip" via friction with socks. In my experience, though, when you make un-lined uppers flesh-in, they eat through socks much faster than a smooth grain surface. True enough, it'll prevent slipping around inside--good (?) for hiking boots. As to flexibility, I can't think of too many cases where I'd want to stiffen the bottoms--it's usually a matter of getting them flexible enough. Now then, I'm making 95% all hand-sewn welted footwear, but pegged soles, as well as nailed/riveted or screwed, and even MacKay sewed, are inherently "too" stiff already. IOW, if you start out with a limp floppy insole, but peg, nail, or MacKay the bottoms, it stiffens up to almost a plank.

In what cases would you want the added rigidity in the bottoms that a flesh-up insole might increase?

[jesselee]

Al,

I am not finding extreme stiffness in my soles, and my pegging is tight, like 2 rows- 13 to the inch. The rigid aspect gives me a better arch support and no sole splaying from the shape of the foot. I had that in my early years where the toe would curl up on the little toe side of the toe of the shoe or boot. Also, all aspects of the boot/shoe are done 'wet', ie. my innersoles are molded to the last as are my soles. I wonder if this allows for flexibility at the end of the shank (?)As to the last question, I find that when I make boots for the working cowboy, they want an added stiffness to the sole in order to curtail the wear that stirrups can give. On my very light 20's-30's dance shoes, I use a thinner innersole and sole, lower heel, light leather shank and only glue the soles, which makes them supple for dancing.
On the other hand, the more pegs, thicker welt and say 10 to the inch stitches, will give a stiffer sole. Either way, I have managed to get good flexibility which works with the action of the foot without a break-in period.
Nw you have me thinking of 'why' this can happen!
Cheers,
JesseLee

[das]

Jesse,

Thanks for the continuing observations on this. I may have mis-read your last line, but the "why" seems easy enough: a welted (sewn) bottom is an indirect-attachment construction, the welt and uppers are sewn horizontally through/to the edge of the insole, therefore not impeding its ability to flex, then the outer sole is stitched to the welt--the outer sole is then "indirectly" attached and can ply against the insole, sliding across its surface.

With pegged, nailed/riveted, and even MacKay-sewed footwear, these are direct-attachment constructions--the outer sole is fastened directly to the insole all round--and these constructions use rigid vertical fasteners (or vertical stitches in the case of MacKay sewn), which to greater or lesser degrees impede flexing--the bottom layers simply cannot ply or slide against one another, whence the stiffness.

This rigidity is advantageous in the waist and rear-foot of course, and for certain types of footwear (like working cowboy boots), not "bad" in the forepart either, as long as it's a controlled design feature and not an unwanted, consequential side-effect.

With fully pegged soles, however, if the pegs-per-inch are reduced to increase flexibility in the forepart, their ability to hold the sole on firmly is reduced. Enough peg-per-inch to hold well adds unwanted(?) rigidity to the bottoms I find. In 19thc pegged boots/shoes, the "rounding" strip that goes around the bottom before the outer sole goes on (that looks like a welt strip), I've found, adds no more rigidity. I think the "rounding" was only to make the finished sole edge look thicker ("better&#34, and to fill the crevice at the feather-line where the uppers rise up from the otherwise unfinished flesh side of the outer sole--kinda like the (modern) filler "rand" in knocked-on stacked heels IOW.

I made some pegged footwear years ago for the Civil War/19thc set, and unless they were adamant, I tried to sway them towards "riveted" (brass nailed) soles instead, because the brass nails clinched and held tighter per nail than pegs; they were not subject to coming loose from wearing wet then drying out like wood pegs, and the number of nails-per-inch could be reduced until the bottoms were almost as flexible as welted (when desired) without loosing a good strong sole attachment. I eventually gave it up. As for authenticity, little "riveted" (nailed) footwear survives to copy (in the US--plenty in the UK), and that which does survive is mostly iron "riveted" (nailed), which I detest doing, because the iron reacts with the oak-leather soling and galls it out in no time, turning it as black and crumbly as burnt toast. Maybe the 19thc. US Hemlock-tanned soling didn't react so dramatically to iron, nor as fast, but I didn't have access to Hemlock leathers.

[jesselee]

Al,

Good points all the way around. I believe it was 1876 or 1878 when the US Army brought in brass nails (and the brass 'screw nail')for the 'new pattern' boots and brogans. I have examined originals and the soles are much more flexable and done in one row. I think the Auto-soler (TM) machine is the modern version of the brass screw nail machine. I really like brass clinch nails for soling also, and they are period authentic. Totally agreed on the iron nails eating away the inner soles, welts and soles. I have examined Civil War period boots where the welt was iron nailed and as you say, it turned the leather to burnt toast. I do still make some models this way for the purposes of authenticity. Some have welts, some have a midsole of perhaps 9oz. leather as the inner sole. I saw some repro brogans on the net somewhere with a midsole McKay stitched and then sewn to a sole. It seems a novel idea, but I have never examined a pair of original period boots or brogans done in this style, and many hundreds have passed through my hands. By the same token, I have used sole leather which cut like butter and other stuff would dull the cutting wheel on my Champion cutter.
I think now, with this thread i will be asking customers if their preference is a rigid or more flexible sole.
Perhaps another factor is whether the sole is glued to the inner sole at all. I would think a welted sole glued down would be more rigid than a welted sole with no glue. I have seen and experimented with both.
JesseLee

[das]

Jesse,

Fun conversation... You ever going to get down to Ol' Virginnie so we can have a confab face-to-face like you were threatening last year?

I'm with you on the brass "screws"--Syndey Brinkerhoff's little book on Indian Wars era US footwear types sums all that up pretty well I thought--I hope it's still in print? Seems that wooden pegs (made and inserted out east) dried up and fell out in the desert S.W. dryness. Tom Mattimore is really up on this period...Tom? Thoughts?

I asked Frank Jones about the relationship between our Auto-Solers (threaded steel screw-wire) and the BUSMC Standard Brass Screw machines. Apparently, he felt at the time, they were similar in design; however, the Auto-Soler will not feed brass screw-wire--or rather that, brass screw-wire thin enough to feed through an Auto Soler would not be stiff enough to behave like the steel screw-wire. The only Standard Brass Screwed footwear I'm real familiar with are the mid 20thc. British Army's "ammo" boots, and in these the brass screw-wire is a much larger diameter than Auto Soler wire. D. B. Gurney's "oval headed brass" clinch tacks can be mackled-up into a fair substitute I've found. David Ross (Scotland) bought out Tebbut & Hall, the last UK makers of Standard Brass Screwed "ammo" boots, and was re-issuing them as repros. He has all the machinery, and knows it well, however David has dropped off radar in the last two years, otherwise it would be fun to get him to weigh-on on this topic.

If the adhesive used to stick the outer soles on is flexible, like AP (Barge), I don't think that it will stiffen-up welted work. And welted work, made with outer soles stuck on with mere paste (e.g. Hirschklebber), likewise will have more "give" because the bond is not very strong, and allows plying. Of course, remember the cure for creaking soles is adding a few wooden pegs to prevent the soles plying/rubbing/squeaking.

Well, we ought not mention brands or makers by name, but I, too, am aware of several repro shoemakers currently using MacKay'd midsoles with machine-stitched outer soles to mimic welted work, without the added expense and difficulty of putting together a complete Goodyear Welted plant of machines. This construction is a legitimate one, known as "Faire Stitched" from the 20thc., but it was notorious for making a stiff, rigid bottom even then. I think what's made it worse in recent decades is the wide-spread adoption of the newer lock-stitch MacKay machines, which have all but replaced the older, original, chain-stitch MacKays. I consider the latter (chain-stitchers) far better for "Fair Stitched" work, as the chain-stitch is much more flexible in wear than the tight lock-stitches produced by the newer models. And, in "Faire Stitched" construction, the "chain" loops of the stitches are completely hidden under the outer sole, so they never get worn. The stitches inside are single thread, just like a lock-stitch, and they can easily be protected by adding a good solid in-sock or sock-lining to completely hide the threads. I've experimented with this by splitting the insole in a 6" splitter, MacKaying the flesh split insole, then re-laminating the grain-split layer back inside as an in-sock/sock-lining with AP--no threads, no how, no way, get worn, felt, or seen inside. If one of the "modern" synthetic threads ("Can't-Strand" brand of braided polyester comes to mind), I think there's renewed hope for "Faire Stitched" as a viable alternative. The key, though, would be to use the chain-stitch MacKay, open the stitch length out to +/-3 per inch, no tighter, (for flexibility), and use a thick but soft mellow leather for the midsole, beat it up tight to the feather-line to avoid any gapping there, and set the sole-stitching carefully like you would do on a Goodyear Welted welt.

Some of the current crop of "Faire Stitched" repro shoes (low 18thc. style buckle shoes) are in fact so stiff the wearers walk right out of them, or eat a hole in the heel of their sock from heel-rubbing/slipping, before they ever get a flex in the bottoms across the joint-line. Of course I have experienced the same problems with some Goodyear Welted, but quite stiff, double-soled Oxfords made by a leading UK firm for the pipers in the British Army. They are a handsome brute of a shoe, but man-oh-man they're like wearing wooden-soled clogs.

[jesselee]

Al,
Yes, I will be heading out to visit yourself and as many as I can this summer. It will be good to see techniques that I have missed. Sydney is correct about the leather and pegs drying in the desert conditions. This is why the brass screw nails were introduced. In my examination of them, the 'screw' part (wire twist) is more severe than the high twist of the autosoler wire, and you are correct, the brass screw nails were a lot thicker. I saw a patent description of the machine and it is as close to the mechanism of the auto-soler as you can get.
As for McKay stitched shoes and boots being authentic to the Civil War era, this is correct, but they were done on the Blake stitcher, whose only problem was it could not stitch around the toe because the horn was stationary. With a wooden platform it was converted to a flat bed for uppers. Most if not all Civil War period boots, when machine stitched used a chain stitch. For fine work simple domestic machines were used. Lock stitch work was done on the forerunner of the Bradbury A1 Stitcher such as the 2 i have in my shop, and the stitches were about a 2 oz. like common patcher thread. I have only seen one pair of CW boots which had lock stitched side seams. they were ID's to an Ohio officer. Amazingly, the cord was a very heavy #12. Obviously done on a heavy duty harness machine.
Oops, off topic!
While I agree that soles were Blake/McKay stitched, I have never heard of a midsole being McKay stitched and then stitched to a sole as a welt.
As a side note, the boots I normally wear are of the 1860's style, Southern of course (I have pics up here somewhere). The soles are thin, as many were (not all CW boots and brogans had thick soles). My 1880's Tex/Mex cowboy boots were made for heavy wear in the stirrup as opposed to walking. They have 2 layers of prime sole leather, thick innersole, iron nail shanks and 13 pegs to the inch, double row. I will admit those are not flexible soles.
jesseLee

[headelf]

Al, in an aside during an ancient post, you mentioned that you cut soling leather into strips for easier use and storage. How do you cut it? Parallel to the backbone or backbone to belly and what dimensions are the most useful. I'm staring at a few difficult to store sides of 13-15 oz that I'd like to wrangle more efficiently so please review your method.
Thanks, Georgene