Hand Sewn LARP Shoe(s)

Hand sewn historic shoes from proper shoemaker are quite expensive, so I decided I try to create a pair. I have some experience with leather, but I am not by any means a shoemaker. I highly encourage you to try project like this, you'll learn a lot.

Shoes I made are not meant to be just pretty or to be used on some cheesy expos. Quite the opposite, I wanted them to be used in the woods and any kinds of timber environments and survive harsh handling. Materials are corresponding to this fact.

• Vegetable tanned leather 4mm
• Thick waxed thread
• Leatherworking tools (I've heard Mikaela has a pretty good instructable on this)
• Oak wood (for pegs, if you decide to use them)
• Water
• Deerskin for the inside
• Nails
• Shoe last (you can buy it, make it from wood, 3D print it, there are lot of possibilities to obtain one)
• Office supplies for making templates (papers, pens, pencils, tape...)
• Painters tape
• Contact cem
• Rasp
• Metal pliers

First off, I surfed through internet pictures of historic shoes and made my mind on what will my future shoe look like. I decided, that my historic shoe will consist of three parts:

• Heel cap
• Quarter
• Toe cap+vamp (as a one part, it's medival, m'kay? :D )

When I obtained shoe last, that fits my foot, I wrapped it in painters tape. Took a marker and sketched parts of the shoe. Lines were cut with x-acto knife and peeled from the last part by part.

Peeled tape was then sticked to paper and flattened. I had to make some cuts to toe cap part, in order to properly flatten it.

I've added some space on both parts (toe cap, heelcap), to make room for seams.

Paper template was cut around the extra line and has holes, that represent original shape of the template. This way I know where extra seam space ends.

I transfered template to flesh side of the leather with sharpie. Missing lines of the original template were added by hand. Because I don't have fancy leatherworking knife I thinned extra seam space with box cutter.

But what I did have was one specimen of edge beveler tool, so edges that were not meant to be sewn, were beveled.

Because of this box cutter thing, my fleshy side of the leather was all hairy, so I decided to burn some of it with candle.

I put my quarter on the shoe last, and decided where the seam should be. I carefully removed it and made mark with sharpie on fleshy side, where the leather overlaps.

I proceeded with leather groover tool and scored the seam place.

To make things easier for me, I used contact cement, and glued two flaps of leather together. The cement was applied just where I marked overlapping.

After the cement set I put quarter on the last once more and made holes with awl, for the thread. Two parts were then sewn together.

Because of the leather thinning, two ends of the leather joins without thick overlap.

Of course I used leather spacing wheel marker...why do you ask? :D

This was the same process as before, only this time I measured two seam lines and marked them from the inside.

It was at this moment, Kudlas knew, he messed up.

I realized my quarter part was not long enough to wrap around shoe last, so I had to glue and sew another part, to compensate for this. It was glued with contact cement which I put all over the place and peeled off from areas, where it wasn't needed.

To make shoes more comfortable, I repeated last few steps with soft deerskin to use it as lining. Only this time I used automatic sewing machine, to sew them together. They were thin enough, so sewing machine had no problems.

Both parts, the tanned leather and deerskin one, was put onto the last and sewn around the topline

I transferred foot shape of the last to piece of leather. Insole is hidden, for the most part, so I didn't bother to mark it from fleshy side.

I roughly cut it with exacto knife and nailed it to the last. I then cut it once more and beveled edges with a rasp.

Alrighty, now its time to soak leather good and then shape it. I put bucket inside my tub, just to not make everything wet. Water inside bucket was lukewarm, to make leather comfortable (and not distorted or destroyed in any way). Leather was left soaking for an hour or so.

In the meantime, I covered whole last with baby powder, so It could be later extricated from completed shoe. And yes...this was a mistake too. Next time I will use food foil, It was real problem to get it out.

As you might guess, lasting is stretching the whole thing on the last. So the first thing I did after putting wet leather on the last, was driving nail into the top area of heel cap. This allows me to stretch top of the shoe onto last. The next thing I did was stretching the sides.

I wont lie, this stage was the tedious one and in the first moments I feared, I will have to repeat soaking a try once again. The work of uncurling both layers of leather and driving in nails was cumbersome. But enduring this stage and carefully adding nails will bring you succes.

Of course there are these fancy lasting pliers, which serves as a hammer to drive in nails and pliers to stretch the leather, but I don't have them. So I used ordinary groove pliers. They left mark on the leather, so I clamped leather only in areas thats gonna be cut off later.

To compensate for only two hands of mine, I put the shoe on my lap, holding it with my thigs, stretching the leather with one hand, driving nails with the other. Nail was first pinned into leather with bare hand and then quickly hammered before it felt off.

Now the future shoe has to dry. Too cold environment make it rot, warm and not ventilated makes the same thing. My shoe dryed for two days on top of my warm computer case :D.

After it was all nice and dry, I trimmed excess leather. Plus I also unfolded the tanned leather so I could cover lining with universal UHU glue and glue two layers of leather together. After this I massaged two layers together to get best bond.

To make it look less shabby, I decided to put some stamps on. I first tried several different stamps, on offcuts until I find one, that I liked the most.

I stamped these leafs around seams, and it turned out pretty good. After stamping I applied alcohol based leather dye of mahagony tone.

Okay, now we have a wearable part of the shoe completed, we need a way to attach sole to this shoe of ours. There is this leather strip, which is (again) sewn onto the shoe, but before that, I've made holes into it with awl, groove with groove tool and soaked it so it will accept shoe shape I will force onto it.

In the meantime, while the strip was soaking, I made holes into the other side of the shoe. I then sewn wet strip onto the shoe, using my semi-circlular needles.

The strip covered whole front part and I planned to use pegs for the heel part.

Most of the shoes contain wooden or metal part, called shenk (No, it's not the same thing as the guy who served wine to Cercei Lannister). This shenk adds structural integrity to the whole shoe. If I was about to make barefoot shoes, I would skip this step.

I made my shenk out of scrap of IKEA bed slat. Cutted out the right size, boiled it and put it into vice to cool down in desired shape.

After all of that, I tested if shenk fits in and made adjustments with knife.

I glued shenk in with PVA glue (any brand will do), as you can see I am using scrap of EVA foam as glue applicator.

For a good shock absorbtions, most of the leather shoes uses cork for the midsole. I bought my sheet of cork (1x2 meters) in hardware store, it was cork floor tile for $7.

To get the exact shape, I once again used painter's tape and covered inside of the sole. Outlined the hole shape and sticked this piece of tape onto cork. Then it was cut to the right shape with excacto knife, covered with contact cement and glued in (few gentle smashes with hammer helped the case...this helps in every case).

For attaching the heel part, I needed some pegs. You can buy lime wooden pegs on amazon, but I decided to make them out of piece of oak I had laying around. Its no rocket science, I just choped small chunks with axe (you can use saw).

I once again used my favorite technique with painters tape. This time, it was not because of template shape, but to capture location of shenk. This prevented me from pegging into shenk, which would result in catastrophic scenario.

Glue I used is UHU universal glue.

I made holes into the heel with my small awl first, partly to test if there is no shenk to hit and to make pilot holes.

Next I hammered thick awl, that I made from thick nail into the pilot holes. I then hammered my oak pegs into the holes. But before I nailed them in I coated them with PVA glue.

After the glue dried, I cut overlaping part of peg with metal shears. As you can see in the photo, I made two lines of pegs.

Day after when was glue properly set I filed them flush.

During the pegs setting, I made another layer of cork in the same fashion as before.

With the last layer of cork, sole was all flush and it was time, to cover it with layer of leather. To prevent marks I made into leather with groove pliers. I covered them with leather scraps, to prevent any markings.

The sole shape was transferred using sharpie onto flesh side of another leather piece. The piece was cutted to shape, covered with contact cement and glued together using modified pliers.

After glue have done its work, I've trimmed the sole to shape and beveled edges with beveler.

Leather part was also sewn, to increase strength of the bond.

The heel has now somewhat concave shape and that is not desirable for comfortable footwork :-). So I ended up adding more layers of leather and cutting it / rasping it flat. I even added more pegs to final layers.

To increase sole life, I decided to add rubber sole. I even considered adding combat boots sole, but that would be too visible, and might have ruined this wannabe historic feel of shoes.

To make it look more uniform, I dyed sole parts of shoe same mahagon color as the rest.

This was my first time making a shoe (and second time making instructable), now I have to do the other one :D. I was too afraid to screw up so many things, that I decided to make other one after completing the first. If I made them together, they would not be perfect, but It would took less time. So next time I am making them together.

Thanks for sticking with this till the end, I hope it was entertaining.

Until next time, cheers!

Kudlas