Lace Boots – Toe Cap

Lace Boots - Toe cap Now that the uppers are sewn and the insoles prepared, it is time for the first lasting. The upper is moistened to make the leather more flexible, and using the shoemakers pliers, it is pulled in shape over the instep, heel and toe. This will be the first and roughest of the lastings, so the nails are placed a little bit further apart than I intend to do on the final. The boots are then left to dry until next day.

The outer leather is carefully pulled back while the lining stays on the last. Placement marks for the toe caps are made on the lining. The toe cap is made of vegetable tanned leather, skived to nothing at the edges and sanded down with sand paper. It is soaked in homemade shoemakers paste and lasted on the toe. Finally it is compressed with a shoemakers hammer to obtain stability of the leather.

Here is the lasted toe cap, now left to dry before the next process. The heel cap is done in the same way.

Lace boots – Stitching upper

Inden sammensyning limes delene sammen. Her ligger de og tørrer, holdt sammen med klemmer.

The pieces are glued together before stitching. Here it is left to dry, fixed with clamps.

Lynlåsen, yderlæderet, underfald og foer syes sammen med én enkel søm.

The zipper, outer leather, facing and lining are stiched together in one single stitch.

Til sidst syes overkanten sammen med belægning og foer. Støvleoverdelen er nu klar til at blive læstet.

Finally the upper edge is stitched together with the facing and lining. The boot uppers are ready to be lasted.

Lace boots – Design

Så har jeg kastet mig ud i et nyt skomagerprojekt. Denne gang et par korte støvler med lynlås. På skaftet vil jeg lave et blondelignende hulmønster. Herover ses en skitse fra min designproces.

I am off to a new shoemaking project. This time it is a pair of short zipper boots. On the shaft I will be making a lacelike brogue pattern. Above is a sketch from my design process.

Læsten er tapet, mønsterdelene optegnet og skåret og her arbejder jeg med placering af hulmønsteret. For en mere detaljeret beskrivelse af udviklingen af et skomønster, kan du se dette tidligere indlæg.

The last has been taped, the pattern is drawn on and cut out. Here I am working on the placement of the hole pattern. For a more detailed description on the development of a shoe pattern, see this former post.

Mønsterdelene lægges på skindet og skæres ud. Jeg har valgt et lækkert, kraftigt men blødt sort koskind med masser af struktur og charmerende uregelmæssigheder.

The pieces are placed on the hide and cut out. For these boots I have chosen a nice, heavy yet soft black cow leather with lots of grain structure and charming irregularities.

Hulmønsteret udstanses… et noget langvarigt projekt, men jeg tror det bliver anstrengelserne værd.

Lace broguing… a somewhat time consuming task, but I believe it will be worth my while.