Making Bespoke High heels - Part 8 The Insole and Heel

Well, before lasting, one has to have an insole. Insole creates a spine on which the other components are fastened. By various methods I might add. My method is the cemented (glued) structure, which originates from around the middle part of the last century. It's quite modern, but one of the most common structures these days. The  gentleman with an keen eye on quality dress shoes despises this structure, but to my mind it's well fitting for ladies shoes. Although there's only the adhesive (another english word for glue ;) that keeps the structure together, it's a long lasting shoe construct that's quite easy to repair and faster to make too.

Back to business:

First to draw an approximate outline on a 3mm thick purely oak tanned insanely beautiful german traditional  leather.
Too much adjectives? ;)

After cutting, the pieces are scraped with... a piece of broken glass?
Yes.

Many of you might not know about the great qualities of vegetable tanned leather: it might be quite stiff when dry like this type of leather I'm using, but after soaking them in water they turn into the mother of all elastics and completely formable. A beautiful traditional material. <Sorry for the blurry pic!>

The wet leather is fastened with nails to the last.

A carefully applied rubber band.

Voilá! All wrapped and left to dry to shape.

To add some modern high tech; I put the first supportive layer out of 0,8mm carbon fibre plate. Heat formable stuff.

And because with high heels the arch needs to be as stiff as possible, I'm going for the ultimate. I'll laminate this piece of steel between two layers of carbon fibre.

Sadly, I didn't have any more detailed images on the actual process of making these.
But here's one, all ready for action. You can see that right after the heel part the edge is trimmed almost to zero. But there's a heavier supportive ridge at the center, which you can see better in the picture below.

A bottom view. The steel shank is laminated within those layers of carbon fibre.
And the heel is what I actually worked on for a full day's worth of time... For nothing. I found a perfect match for these lasts from a box. At my work. Perfect. That was a bit annoying. All that work for nothing.

Another rub of salt on my broken nerves.

And these are the babies I found. I've done some grinding on the top parts only. To get them fitting perfectly to the insole.

Next, it's lasting for sure :) See you soon!

Shape that high heel last, baby! Shape!

After an embarrasingly quiet week for blog posts, it's been a less embarrasing week of actual shoemaking. Niina's second mockup is sent by mail and she's going to try them on and we'll propably take a look at them via a video chat. And if they're a fit, it means a step closer to their completion :)

Meanwhile my main concern has been Ms. Melissa's black knee-high boots, to which I started to shape the lasts. Her concern is a wider-than-usual ball of the foot, and a higher heel hight (9,5cm). Her lasts came ready today, so ladies & gents, let's take a look!
Shape, rattle & roll!

This is the beginning stage. an untouched high heel last.

I just dig that asymmetry! This is a front view and one can see the skill of the guy who originally made these. This asymmetry makes the shoes more elegant and even functional. Qualities that come rare on everyday common shoes. The art of last making is for some reason losing it's glorious heritage, and nowadays it's more common to see ugly and bulky lasts. Even for women.

She wanted a higher heel, so I started to build it to this area.

And here's the finalized shape.

After the heel hight, it's time to make the lasts more fitting to the clients foot. Here's a traditional ink print of the foot with measurements and the ball of the foot marked.

We'll place the last over the print and start to estimate the new required width of the last.

The growth areas are marked and sanded and cork material is added.

And after some time we'll have something like this. The lasts are shortened and the girth of the ball of the foot has already been modeled.

Whaaaat?! :D Yes, I'm serious! You're propably wondering why did I ruin them? Well, they're going to be boots so I thought of extending the shaft for a better fit. But it does look more like a terrifying sculpture than a last.

*Bling!* After a few hours of making friends with Mr. Grinder, Ms. Last became ready to be patternized ;)

Put a sock on it!!! Literally! This is a great way to see how they're really going to look like.

Next up with these boots is making some patterns and a mockup.

When you're fixing, do it right!

Ladies and gentlemen, for starters let's hit off with the marvelous rag time band:

Vince Giordano & The Nighthawks!

And after my favourite band of the moment, we'll take a look at why I decided to do changes for Niina's lasts:

Here's the before and after shots. On the left you'll see a normal last, but it's meant for normal pumps and low shoes, rather than boots. With red I've marked the lines in which the shape should approximately go, and on your right you'll see the changes made. Why? Well let's see below:

In the circle you'll see a close up of the fitting I did for Niina, and you'll also notice the creases that for along the shaft of the boot. This is because the shape of the last is too steeply shaped from the upper part of the heel, as you can see on the picture to the left. This position is fixed properly on the boot to the right. This will lessen the creases and also make the front part alot more good looking and sturdy.

I'll hopefully get to try the left boot on Niina's feet before actually starting the manufacturing, this thursday?
The black boots are also due to begin their journey towards completion tomorrow, so we'll see what's up with them later this week. Have a good one!

Making High Heel Boots - Part 5 Fixing

There was only a few things to fix with Niina's lasts, but I managed to spend a good full 10 hours on them last weekend. Mostly because of my uncertainty about the changes. So I really had to sit down alot and think about what changes would affect which parts of the lasts, and how would that work while worn. All in all last shaping appears to be something magical, but it's not rocket science. It's bloody challenging and hard, but it's not too much so. It's a trickery between a few things: anatomy, bio-dynamics and aesthetics. And one has to find the perfect balance between them.

Let's see why:

I first circled the areas that needed some more mass. Just a few millimeters thick though.

Here's the cork/rubber sheet pieces glued on the lasts.

After smoothing out the excess and checking the measurements, I decided to go for a boot  styled lasts. So I attached a block of wood with a screw on it.

I grinded the meeting joint to zero and added a plastic "cup" on it. The idea is, that when you take the boot shaft out you'll still have lasts ready to be used for low cut shoes as the original lasts were meant for pumps, not boots. My bad.

I added a ridiculous amount of cork/eva sheets to the back and front, as I had barely a thought of what I was doing.

And there it is. Smooth shapes, and a last that now looks alot more like a boot last instead of  pumps. I decided also to make the shaft a lot lower, since it would've been a headache to figure out the measurements.

Next up, it's either having the second fitting, or I'm going to start to finish them. I haven't decided which.
Pahoitteluni kaikille suomenkielisille. Postaukseni menevät aina niin myöhäiseen että käännöksen pähkäily kaiken tämän päälle tuntuu usein ylivoimaiselta. Sori.