Carreducker Intensive Shoemaking Course August 2014 Days 10, 11 and 12

And so our brave students started the final push to the summit of their shoe making mountain. With the heels built, they were ready for finishing.

Here are their finishing packs complete with rasps, sanding blocks and various grades of aluminium oxide paper.

Heavy rasping was followed by glassing and then the 3 kinds of paper until a smooth, blemish free finish was achieved on both the heels and the sole edges.

It was Blake's 21st birthday so the cake and champagne was enjoyed a day early. He even had the pleasure of some balloons!

With the sanding done, it came time to set the edges. Here are a selection of the tools of choice.

The final stage is inking and polishing, starting with the soles.

Last of all, late on Saturday afternoon, they pulled the lasts on the lasting jack and tried the shoes on. The moment of truth, as it were. Because the lasts are standard sizes, some fitted well and others required a bit of tweaking, but we managed to get a decent fit for everyone. Of course, if you give us enough time in advance, you can have a bespoke pair of lasts to work on if you decide to do the course.

What a sense of achievement for everyone. It really is something to have made a pair of shoes by hand in two weeks. All the students were very happy with their hard work and results. Well done to all of them from Deborah and myself. You guys were a lovely group. Nice work or jo da ho ho (spelling?) in Cantonese.

If you would like to try your hand at shoe making or pattern making with Carréducker, our next courses are in October 2014 and January 2015. Get in touch or look at the website

http://carreducker.com/shoemaking-courses

We will be setting exact dates for 2015 in September and will announce them here and on the website.

Until next time, happy shoe making!

Breaking Glass

Broken glass is usually a bad thing, but when it comes to shoe making a well broken piece of glass can be the making of a smooth sole edge, sole or heel. It is a vital part of finishing. 

Whilst rasping the edges blends the layers of leather together to make one surface, glassing then smooths that surface, before sanding with the differing grades of sandpaper.

Picture frame glass is ideal - not too thick and not too thin - and we keep a ready supply in a sturdy box in the studio. The ideal thickness of glass is 2-3mm because it breaks cleanly. Any thinner and you're likely to get more shards and any thicker and breaking it is more difficult with less clean results. 

  

Use another piece of glass or a file to nick or chip the edge of the glass (make a small dent in the edge).

 

Rest the edge of glass with the dent in it on a sharp edge such as the edge of your work table or burner. Position the nick so that it is right on the sharp edge. Lean the glass forward at about 45 degrees.

Press gently forward and down with your thumbs, slightly rotating your wrists outwards. 

This should take very little effort. Do not force it. If it does not break first time, then adjust the angle of the glass slightly or nick it again. The gentle pressure from your thumbs should break the glass into two pieces, one with a convex edge and with with a concave edge.

It is the outwardly curved convex edge that we use to scrape edges and soles.

And in case any of you are wondering how the hammered boots from the last two posts turned out....here they are finished!

 Until next week, happy shoe making!

Finishing with a difference - part 2 - painting and decorating

Last week I was back at square one after taking off my first attempt at the heel. With the heels finally rebuilt in heel lift this time, I finished the heels and sole edges as usual - rasped, glassed and sanded - but concentrated on rounding the sole edges...

leaving the top edge with a prominent lip and the bottom edge squared off.

I used a mix of dark brown and black edge dye and then rubbed dark tan and black polish on over the top. A warm edge iron burnished in the polish and then I found a nifty little tool in my armoury that was perfect for setting the top edge, to keep that all-important lip.

Then my attention turned once more to the heels. Just how to get the finish the same as the samples?

I mixed a number of different pots of edge dye with various amounts of water, so that some were less opaque than others.

Starting with the darkest black/brown sections, I carefully painted in the layers to copy the pattern from the original.

Once I was happy with the painting I used first dark tan and then black polish to darken down and burnish the edges with a warm iron. This time is worked really well.

 The last piece of the heel transformation was to make the bumpy surface. This is what I used!

Not the usual treatment of a carefully built, squared-off heel, but ideal to get the results we wanted. With just the rubber half-sole to go on, and a bit of bunking at the waist, we're nearly there, so until next week, happy shoemaking.

Finishing - with a difference - bumped, rounded and coloured!

This week everything I have ever learned about shoemaking has been stood on its head as I took on the challenge of replicating a particular finish on a customer's boots. The customer is very keen that they should be as close a replica as possible and everything about these boots totally goes against the norm. (I know, I know - what were we thinking!)

Anyway, where sole edges should be sharp and square, they are round; where the heels should be smooth they are dented; and where our usual finish is waxed and smooth, although high-shine the texture underneath is raw.

The boots' journey started with the channelled soles...

For now I'm sharing the trials and tribulations of shaping the heels. As you'll have seen last week, I kept the welt full, under-welted with my sole stitches and then sunk the stitches in a channel on the underside of the sole. (The fore part will be covered by a thick rubber mid sole).

With the split lifts in place, I contemplated how best to recreate and colour the heels. We spent some time earlier in the week mixing a variety of dyes to paint onto the edges and also soaking the heel lifts in baths of dye. much was to no avail - the dye penetrated the surface but did not soak into the leather as we wanted despite glassing the surface. Water based dyes were more successful, but still the results were not ideal.    

Finally I decided to just crack on and build the heels and then to tackle the colouring after they were finished. To add to the challenge each lift in the heel is a different colour and is made up of a number of different pieces. My first choice was stiff toe puff belly cut into sections and skived where appropriate.

I got one heel built, but unfortunately it turned out the lifts compressed too much and looked a little too thin.

Disappointed, I pulled the heel off and started again, this time with thin heel lifts. Rather than cut each lift into sections I left them whole aiming to use a screwdriver blade to recreate the dents in the surface where the sections would join.

Although these lifts are a little thicker looking than in the original, the overall result is more successful and will be stronger longer term. At this point I was in two minds whether to rasp, glass and sand as usual. I decided to go ahead as usual. However, when I inked and polished the lifts the end result was too pale and blended; too neat a finish from the original.

Today I will be re-glassing and then staining the lifts darker to see if that will improve things. Fingers crossed.

And that, fellow shoemakers, is what they call 'a cliffhanger'! To find out how they turn out, tune in again next week. Until then happy shoemaking!

Setting up a shoemaking work space

First off congratulations to Frances, Marco and Mathilde who finished their two-week intensive last Saturday. There were some beautifully finished edges, so much so, that one student was allowed to do a natural finish! See the results for yourselves. 

 

 

 

More and more students want to keep on making, but how much room do you need to set up a shoemaking bench? Well. when we first arrived at Gieves & Hawkes we luxuriated in the 'goldfish bowl' on the shop floor, giving visitors to No.1 a glimpse into the world of Cordwaining. Three years later, we now have a beautiful display of bespoke shoes on the shop floor and we have joined the cutters in the heart of the store's tailoring workrooms.

It is a great working environment and we were fortunate to have a bright, airy space purpose-built to our needs. In terms of space, you really don't need very much, but it is good to use walls and ceilings to their utmost. Good light, ventilation and a sink are a must.

Space wise, you need room to open your arms to their maximum and space to sit behind a low table. Our new space measures some 3m square and incorporates rails overhead to carry our clients' lasts and bends of leather...

a desk for stationery, packing materials, our measuring kit, first aid kit, laptop and telephone. (Underneath is room to store leather samples and laces).

A workbench and chair, standing some 75cm high, with tools in pots and hung from the table edges, a spotlight for close work...

and less-often used tools and materials stored in the antique drawers to the side. Purpose-built shelves to the opposite side, house some of the work in progress waiting to be delivered and for fittings.

Our contact adhesives and burner are stored in a special fire-proof/chemical store cabinet...and other tools and templates are hung on the wall partly as a display, but also within easy reach from the bench.

Hand-held tools are an important part of the storytelling around our brand and product - after all,  they are what we use every day to make our shoes - so it is irksome when other brands try to claim a handmade element in their marketing. The example below is case in point. Can anyone guess which brand these 'handmade' shoes are from?

You'll know what we mean when you see them in reality...fortunately we think that most customers are discerning enough to recognise the authentic from the inauthentic.

Until next week, happy shoemaking!