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!

Studying the essence of a high heel

For those that missed my morning announcement on facebook; I'm currently having a three day educational period in Kankaanpää, as a part of my Master Shoemaker studies.
When I first came this morning, I had no idea what was going to happen. So I made a mistake by not bringing some high heel lasts or previous patterns I had made. Even though it was all awkward for me, my instructor quickly guided me to begin a test project from a pair of vintage heel lasts.

Let's see  what happened today:

This is the last. Now, I won't modify it in any way, just design something and eventually make it.  Luckily, they had some components ready: the heels and the insoles are ready :) which makes my work alot easier.

I'm currently not a big fan of pointy heels. Maybe that'll change some day?

As another proof of their antiquity: they've been cast on a wooden block.

A wooden filling inside a brass tube. You ain't gonna see this kind of construction anywhere anymore. These babies have to be nailed.

The insoles are an almost fit. Needs some tinkering.

This is the sketch I did. A full brogue oxford cut. Well planned is half done.

Next up was making the tape copy.

And that 3D shape transformed into 2D.

And this is waiting for tomorrow's mockup.

Making Ballerinas - Part 8 Lasting

Lasting is the actualization of the shoe: the lasts and the insole merge with the uppers to create a three dimensional object: the shoe. It's done by placing the uppers on the last and pulling them tightly under the insole where they are attached to with contact glue. There's something magical and rewarding when you've lasted a pair of beautiful shoes. The previous phases of taking measures, designing, shaping the lasts, making the patterns, fixing the last and the patterns, cutting the leathers, sewing the uppers and making the insole come into completion in this phase. The shoe comes alive! Let's see how:

The uppers are placed on the last.

The side stiffeners receive some carpenters glue.

The first pull after checking that the back strap is at the correct height and the uppers are straight.

The uppers are attached to the insole from three key points, this is called the front pull.

At this point it's good to check out the upper side. If the uppers are straight then we can proceed. With this kind of design I thought it would be easier to nail the excess lining to the last so that they won't drop too low when pulling them.

Then the back part of the uppers and lining are glued and nailed. The front is left open so we can glue only the lining to the insole.

The uppers are lifted so that a toe stiffener made of leather can  be glued on the toe part.

After attaching and some grinding the toe stiffener is covered with carpenters glue.

And the upper is again turned on everything and some contact glue is applied. After this the uppers are attached and nailed to the insole systemically.

And voilá! It's a pair of shoes!

A side view.

And the ever lovely toe part with the bow.

Next up: building the outer sole! Almost finished!

Making Ballerinas - Part 7 The insole

I'll make a mini post of this because the picture volume would've again been too much with lasting attached. Insole is a very important piece in a shoe, and you can find it basically from any shoe that's been lasted. The insole makes it possible to attach the uppers and lining beneath it, so this way it's possible to stretch them tightly on the last. This might not make any sense now, but it'll open to you soon.

Here's the lasts to the left, in the middle and right you can see the leathers and the  synthetic stiffeners. Below is a pair of strong leather scissors for cutting, since the leather and the stiffeners are about 3mm thick. Both the leather and the stiffeners are cut from bigger sheets.

The stiffeners are glued to the leather and the insole is attached to the bottom of the last.  The insole is then cut to the precise shape of the last, and final shapes are grinded as seen in this picture. The upmost picture has the insole attached to it before grinding, and the lower shows how I shaped the edges to be about 1mm thick at most. This way, when the uppers are pulled over the last, the shoes appearance seems a lot slimmer. I left the backside thick, so it's look better when finished.

And here's how they look from down up.

Strips of alcantara are glued to the whole back part of the insole. This way we'll have a neat look to them when they're ready. The lower insole is what comes next to the last. Then they're attached to the lasts and we're ready for some lasting.

Next up, some lasting.