Shoe School! Laughing Crowe and Internal Stitchdown

Finally - another shoe post!

In late April, I made it to Portland to study with Jason Hovatter at Laughing Crowe.  Jason does a variety of non-lasted shoe techniques, and is a real innovator and super nice guy.  I met him at the footwear makers' symposium last June, and was very excited to take his class.  Lucky me, nobody else signed up for that session, so I got a *private* class!

This is his own construction method, that he invented. Sort of like a stitchdown, it turns the upper to the inside, instead of the outside.  Here's what we did in class....

Casting the foot in duct tape, and drawing the design:

Making patterns: 

Cutting the insole and making channels for the stitching, and punching the stitchig holes themselves

: 

Cutting, skiving, punching and sewing the uppers; adding reinforcement where needed:

Stitching the uppers to the insole:

At this point, the shoes were soaked in water and given some vigorous shaping, and put in a dehydrator to dry back out.  Then, I added a layer of foam, for cushion, and a purchased sole.  Those were then trimmed, and laces added.

These are pretty comfortable.  I think there's still room for tinkering, to get the super comfy walking shoe I'm looking for in the long run.  But these are a huge step in that direction!

Insoles, home-made tools, and a foul epoxy smell

My box from Baltor & Sons arrived today (yay!).  Turns out they tried to deliver it on Friday, but I wasn't home, and didn't see the sticker they put on the front door.  Note to self:  B&S ships with a "signature required", so have them deliver it to work.

This means I now have my tacks, soling, and Hirschkleber - a special elk-hoof glue from Europe.  This is the one place I know of in the U.S. that will sell you an 8oz jar of it, rather than a gallon bucket.  It's used to stiffen the counter (a piece of leather that goes in the back of the shoe). 

Also today, I spent a little under $20 and made myself a lasting stand. 

 

This would be a piece of scrap wood, with a threaded plumbing flange screwed on.  The pipe is a 2' piece of threaded 1/2" steel pipe (I'll need to cut it down about 8" when I'm ready to start lasting, as it's too tall for that currently.)  The pin is a 1/2" x 5" bolt, with the bolt head ground down to fit in the pipe, a 1/2" nut half way up, and the top end with the threads ground off.  It fits the pin holes on my lasts beautifully.  I have a spare bolt, in case I need to make a second pin of a different diameter.

 

 

 

I glued the celtec insole to the shank board, and tacked it back onto the last.  Now that I have tacks, this is much easier to do.

 

 

 

Next thing to do was to cut the fiberglass shank to size, and glue it to the bottom of the insole.  The tape on the ends is to keep the liquid activator from leaking out.  This stuff is available from Georgene at Shoedo.com - otherwise, you have to pound steel shanks, which is less fun.



 

 

Then, I folded up a bunch of tin foil, and tacked it on around the shank, to protect the insole from the heat gun.  The heat gun worked great - all my shanks are hardened just like they did in class!

 

 

Once they were done, I pulled off the tin foil and tacks, and sanded down the ends of the shanks until they were flush with the insole.  Here's where I wish I had known more - the fiberglass sheds everywhere when you're sanding it on an electric sander, and it gets all over your clothes, and hands...  I would have worn gloves, and a respirator, had I realized.  But I didn't.  I'm now wearing my third shirt of the day...



 

 

Similarly, the fiberglass cloth (purchased at the auto parts store) sheds, and once you've got sticky epoxy on your fingers, that stuff just shreds everywhere.  Gloves will definitely be my friend the next time around.  I mixed up some bondo epoxy resin (also from the auto parts store), and painted it on the insole.  Placed a (pre-cut to the pattern) piece of fiberglass cloth on top of the epoxy.  Painted on more epoxy to saturate the fiberglass. 

 

I had also pre-cut some orange suede into a shank cover.  I painted the back of the suede with the epoxy, and placed it over the top to cover the whole shank/insole thing.

 

 

I laid a strip of scrap leather down each side of the shank to help form the suede around it:

 

 

Then tied it down with duct tape, to hold everything in place while it dries/cures.  Duct tape with rainbow flowers on it, no less. 

 

So at this point, I'm waiting for the epoxy to dry - probably overnight - and then I'll do a bit more finishing/shaping/sanding on the insoles. 

 

Next comes the patterns and the uppers!

Insoles, Part 1

While I'm waiting for some other supplies, as well as for inspiration to strike for that second pair of shoes, I'm getting started on the insoles.  So - first order of business is to cut the insole pattern from celtec  - sort of a foam board stuff.  It's directional, and bends more in one direction than the other, so it's important to line up the long axis of the insole with the arrows on the back of the material.

 

Also, two lines are drawn across the insole pattern at the ball of the foot, and the spot where the shoe first contacts the ground (a spot that's easier to determine and more crucial on a higher heel).  The line where the shoe hits the road is the pattern line for the shank board - the dark green stuff.  

 

Shank board is really hard to cut - at shoe school, we used a 5 in 1 cutter, but those run about $1,900 used, and I'm not really in the market for that expensive of equipment.  So, I used a jig saw to cut the shank board, which I'm not very good at, and then made up for my crappy saw usage with the bench sander.  I love my new bench sander.  

 

The bench sander is also very useful for skiving the edges of the shank board.  It's important to get a nice feather edge on these, because otherwise, it would make a lump across the inside of the shoe where your foot would feel it.

 

Next step is to soak the shank board for at least an hour, or up to a week or two, to get it really saturated.  I dumped them in some water, and watched The Bourne Ultimatum. 

 

Once they're well-soaked, stick them on the bottoms of the lasts, wrap them in elastic, and let them dry.  Again, if these lasts weren't flats, it would be more dramatic - the shank board molds to the shape of the bottom of the last while it dries.