Making Ballerinas - Part 2 The Last

The shoe is built piece by piece on a last. Last is the most central part in shoe making: the shape that defines basically everything that makes a shoe. There are some exceptions, to which I'm not going to now. Because of it's importance it's the most difficult and diverse to master in the art of shoe making.
I'll now show some phases of shaping the lasts to my specific purpose. This is not a tutorial, so I'm not going very deep on the subject but rather give all you readers a chance to take a peek at the phases.

Measurements:

The customers feet, pencil, paper and a tape measure is all one basically needs to  start the show.

The image of the foot is drawn on paper, and careful measurements are made from key parts  of the foot.

And this is more or less the template you'll end up with.

Shaping the last:

For lasts I took some old pair laying around my shelf at work. Now the ideal would be to have their heel height the same as the one you're making, but since this wasn't possible I did some fine tuning to them.

The heel height is transformed into a flat shoe.  Top left is the original last with a blue cut line. Next down is the  changed last with it's bottom shape to the right. The last last with the final shape.

The toe shape had a dramatic change.

To try out the shape of the last, a handy heat formable plastic is first wrapped on  the last and then cut to an estimate model to be fitted on the customers foot. Kinda like a pre mock up. I'll go with these!

I couldn't help myself to try on a peace of leather :D It's also difficult to see all the shapes of the tip, so  this gives a better view on how things are gonna look. I'm quite satisfied with the result :)

Next up is making patterns and a mock up. See you soon!

And away he went...

...But he came back! Mr. Shoemaker just took a cruise yesterday, and had the opportunity to try on those Spectators with an all black suit. And, even though the suit's nothing special, it brought the attention to the shoes quite nicely!

Luckily it's time for my trusted barber, Rody Maher in viisikulma, Helsinki to do his magic on my head, coz it's starting to look abit... hmm, bushy.

The blacks

Yeah, I know my size in french is 48 :D

I do make men's shoes too:
I first started to grow my hair back after a long time, so I needed a neat and cool hairstyle -> ended up in a 50's quiff -> ended up buying more of the same styled clothes -> needed winklepickers -> decided to make a pair :D. So after long hours, mostly up until late night, I was building from scratch or more precisely out of plaster a model that turned out to be the lasts for making a pair of decent winklepickers.

As a kind of a test pair, I wanted them to be practical and simple, so I could use them with varied types of clothing. By practical I mean that while being all black they're really easy to maintain, and I chose relatively softer uppers and lining to be more comfy. Black, as I've come to understand is also an easy but maybe abit boring color for shoes. By simple I mean the style is just your very basic oxford, plain and simple. The heel and outer sole are all rubber/EVA for a quick manufacturing process.

All in all I was very pleased, but through some days of wear I noticed a few things: The toe stiffeners were too soft, the outer sole rubber material was crap, and maybe I should've used something better for the uppers too.
So now the lasts and "The Blacks" are back at my work for some fine tuning. I'll post the repairs project later on. Tally ho!

Yenni

As my first official post, you see a pair of shoes that I made to a friend. They're truly bespoke, with full leather lining and uppers, wooden leather covered heel that I sculpted and a leather sole. This was a visionary project given as a surprise birthday gift to a friend <3