A month of months

I had these really great sandals in the 90s, made by Bass. I guess I should say, I really liked them, not that they were great. They didn't fit at all - they were made for someone with much more volume in their feet. I took my sewing machine to them at one point to tighten up the back of the heel, which helped a smidge.

Cut to the 2010s, I got these sandals out to wear and the soles just... disintegrated. They were foam, and just crumbled into powdery chunks. It was pretty disgusting.

With my increasing desire to learn to make shoes, I decided to try to remake the sandals. I had gotten Make Your Own Shoes by Mary Loomis, and while it was about making your own high heels, which I had unsuccessfully done, I decided to forge ahead.

I used saddle leather and cork for the soles and reused the straps, just making them shorter, and the footbeds. Saddle leather is not soling leather, and those sandals tore to pieces the first time I wore them.

Then I took the shoe-making workshop with an actual shoemaker, and more people are making shoes and publishing better instructions. I found a book called The Sandalmaking Workshop by Rachel Corry and decided to remake my sandals from scratch. She used to be located in Portland, has since moved to California, and has kits you can buy with various supplies from her website Rachel Sees Snail Shoes.

The process is a bit different than making shoes, and I felt so much more confident having the book. The instructions are very good.


The leather comes in different colors, but I chose natural so I could dye it myself. I tried to carefully cut the straps, but there is some variation in the widths. I then burnished the edges just with water (I *just* threw out all my gum tragacanth, which is the stuff you're supposed to use), put the straps through the footbed and adjusted the fit, then dyed them.  I then dyed the footbed.

I decided to put an extra layer of leather in the sole to make them a little more robust, and to cushion my feet from the straps folded under the footbed, as suggested in the book.  The actual soleing leather is much easier to cut than saddle leather.

Sanding the edges of the soles to get them smooth was a lot of work. I had an adorable little belt sander purchase specifically for that reason by D, and I really needed something bigger. But it worked!

One thing I learned was not to put leather dye on the sides of the soles.  It swelled the fibers and negated a lot the work I did sanding the edges. Edge Kote is thicker and does not soak in.

They are so comfortable.  I don't feel like I'm going to trip when walking in them because the straps actually hold the soles snug against my feet. Because they fit!  I'm looking forward to wearing them this summer. Yay!

Some measurement of time passed and I cut some saddle leather for the sole. Saddle leather is about 3/8"(1cm) thick and difficult to work with. I cut the sole a little bigger than the pattern, in case of accidental crooked placement, and rubber cemented it on.  When it dried I started trying to cut off the excess. In saddle leather. My brain and hands said "no", so I set it aside to deal with later.

Last weekend I got so bored with everything, I was casting about for something to do, and my eye fell on my shoe.  I decided I wanted to try  it on.

I unscrewed the last. The heel part came out fine, the instep... not so much.

"Did I last it too tightly?" "I don't think that's possible. It's fabric. It's stretchy. That's not how shoes work."

As I'm wrestling with this block of fabric-covered wood, I'm noticing the heel counters I made from layers of glue and denim were waaaay too flexible and completely collapsing during the fisticuffs.

"Is it glued to the last?" I cut a line from the front opening to the toe. Still stuck.

*wrestlewrestle*

"Is the insole glued to the last?" I started prying it off with a screwdriver.

At this point, I was sweating.

Then I see the staples. Yup, I forgot to take out the staples holding the upper to the bottom of the last before gluing on the sole. What gives! I remembered to do it on the heel! Ugh, pandemic brain!

The next test shoes, I think, will be a basic front-lacing ankle boot like the final shoes I want to make out of corduroy.  And with stronger heel counters. Or maybe not. I don't normally tussle with my shoes.

I took it!  I'm still recovering from my cold!  I'm exhausted!  So, as usual, no write-up right now.

The negative molds used up 16 lbs of plaster. One 8 lb tub for each.  Two times what the instructions called for.  I used small boxes, too.

Filling the negative molds used the amount the instructions called for: 2 c water and 4 c plaster. Almost another 4 lbs.

I would be interested in trying casting high-density urethane resin in a mold. That would give me something machine-able (I could cut it into parts to make a hinged last?) and nail-able (for nailing the insole onto the last?). And a negative rubber mold would probably be a lot easier to get feet out of, and could take casting further up the foot.

Plus, the drying time is 15 min vs. a couple days, and the resin is much more liquid so it would flow into all the details without as much air getting trapped.

I am, however, concerned about the allergen and environmental qualities of said resin.

The heels are on, more or less. I'm not sure if they are centered, since you aren't supposed to try on your shoes at this point.  The chalk outline I used to line them up is still visible, as well as flecks of debris all over the shoes. I'll be happy to get to the point where I can clean them and see what they really look like.

Skiving is shaving the edge of the leather to a thin dimension in order to reduce bulk.  It can be done with a special skiving knife, or if you are on a budget, it can be done with a utility knife as explained here.

I chose the utility knife route since I had one, and practiced on scraps.  I thought I had it, but then, of course, gouged a chunk out of my sole on the first go. I think it's fixable, though.

I finally got the hang of it, and took a nice, long, smooth cut off one side, then immediately started having problems. The knife wasn't cutting anything and I realized it was dull.  My knife sharpener did a good job of bringing it back to working order and I had to sharpen it once more before I was done. Leather is hard.

I think I'm done for today because my hands are a little numb and I still need to play my harp!

Something that would make this process - cutting insoles, cutting off extra buckram, cutting outsoles - would be a table-top jigsaw.  I thought a Dremel would help, but trying to cut the buckram completely dulled my cutting blade and stopped the Dremel. I ended up sanding the bumps off with the Dremel and it even struggled doing that.

(Which reminds me that when the toe-area fabric is pulled into a bunch, it should really be well under the toe, not just at the end.)

My hands just cannot use scissors - because of my tendons I can't use them with any force, and that buckram gets rock hard! And actually, now that I'm trying to find an image of the machine I'm talking about, I realized I need a table top band saw, not jig saw.  Something sewing-machine-sized. Or maybe I need a scroll saw, but I'd want something with a continuous blade, not reciprocating.

I purchase the outsole leather yesterday, too, for a whopping $1.75. It's sold by the pound.  I'm now much less leery of resoling some sandals I've had sitting around for a few years because I knew someday I'd be able to fix them after the soles disintegrated while I was wearing them.  They were this gross, foam stuff with a plastic coating. Ew. But the straps and insoles are leather. I don't know why they didn't just go for all leather.

I plan to glue in the padding and cover the heels later today.

So far, my favorite part of shoemaking has been shaping the lasts.


After a brief hiatus, and while still designing my swimwear, I'm ready to start forming the uppers on the lasts¹. Loomis indicates everything from here on out is hand work and can be done at your leisure. Here's everything I need. Oh, except the counters, which are mentioned in the list of materials for this next step, and instructions are in the appendix. So there's an extra step.



The original counters I took out of the shoes are of a stiff, non-woven interfacing material. This procedure has three layers of buckram cut on the bias, wetted and shaped around the heel, then stiffened with Aleene's Fabric Stiffener. Each layer is put on and allowed to dry. The actual shaping took 15 minutes, and dry time was about 5-7 hours each, so it's a good thing to do overnight, or when you have other projects going on.  Or at your leisure, as Loomis says. :)


You also use aluminum foil to cover the heels so the buckram doesn't stick to your lasts. I was concerned about the bumpiness of the foil causing bumpiness in the counters. We'll see what happens!  And they sure are stuck on the foil, so I think I'll be picking that off for a little while.

Then, I'll be ready to form the uppers.

^{1. This hiatus also gave my lasts time to fully dry, and I'm much more comfortable handling them now.}