YouTube video of Songlim making hiking boots
Feet Measuring
- tracing both feet on one paper
- pen 90°
- instep girth
- foam impressions
- measuring stick length with tape
- pours cork onto foam insoles, flattens out
- impresses plaster-looking foot-bottom shape onto the cork
- peels plastic
Patterning
- by hand
- thick paper patterns
- 30° box knife to cut patterns
- punch to knock holes in paper patterns
Clicking
- by hand
- white gel pen
- shears rough cut
- lining leather
- at least two foams, one tan, one blackish
- heavy fabric, coarse weave, maybe nylon reinforcement
- sew inner lining boot
- iron backing strips on seams
- careful trimming of leather with shears
- bell skiver
Closing
- hand pasting
- fabric pull loops
- French cobbler’s hammer
- machine sewing
- looks like maybe post bed
- lots and lots of pieces
- gluing board covered
- some surface roughing with flat knife
- Japanese-style snips
- also flat-tray sewing machine to close back
- punches tons of holes in white foam vamp lining
- piece of square tubing to hammer seams flat
- God, this guy is good at following stitch lines
- gluing white foam inside closed upper
- big padded tongue
- burning ends with a lighter all over
- hardware holes and setting by hand
- setting on the corner of a bench
- black foam under white foam under vamp
- quick shot of him pointing out the layers from outside in:
- leather
- heavy woven reinforcement
- white foam
- waterproof liner?
Lastmaking
- sheet with tracing and notes hung vertically on a clipboard
- last clearly build up around lateral ball, toe, little bit on medial forefoot
- laying the built-up last on the tracing
- rasping
- cork build-up hammered flat
- building up even more
- brush off all over the floor
- checking ball girth
- tacks foam-looking insoles, rough trims to featherline with flat knife underhand
- pulls them off gain
- glues cork-impression insole on top
- pares cork down by hand with flat knife underhand
- lines with what looks like felt
- mounts on top of white foam
- [this is big, plush bed of a footbed stack]
Lasting
- toe
- wide
- side
- cements down
- really grunting as he pulls
- laces up
- to the back
- one tack at bottom
- one at counter point, right through the upper
- cement down
- lining first
- pulls lining tacks
- trims lining
- cement on it
- lays in waterproof (?) cover
- irons it down
- vamp now
- big, heavy pulls
Bottoming
- Vibram lug
- foam or rubber sheets
- shaping steel shank
- vamps turned out
- shank liner, then shank
- so much cement
- burnish turned-down upper with a stick
- cement around the featherline
- lining strip / foxing
- hand welting
- maybe ½″ spacing
- poking from the top down
- hook awl for lockstitch
- looping on the right, with his awl hand, in a glove
- trims midsole
- tons of cement
- hammer outsole down
- trim with a straight knife, forehand
- manually gouges sipes on sides from heel black toward ball joints
- marks heel block edge with heel laid on
- cement
- manual heel press with a big-ass lever he cranks on with his whole body
- :
- midsole-outsole outside row of stitching is staggered with the vamp-midsole row, and right next to it
- uses white topside thread to match up top and black thread to match black sole on the bottom, lockstitch
- he’s poking right through the outsole
- he pokes up in the valley between lugs, then across through the lug with the hooked awl again, then down the valley on the other side
- really groans as pushes through the whole heel stack
- lubricates the awl
- final trimming with flat knife, backhand
- even the heel stack
- sanding
- oils the lower lip of the vamp before edging black with a brush, freehand
- beats on the toe some more
- pops the laces
- pries the last with a bit of rebase stuck in the side