Looking to get first machine for footwear making, any thoughts on singer 29 and Politype leather patcher clones?

[courtney]

If you’ve never made shoes, you are probably a few years away from being able to do what you are trying to do, and that’s with a lot of serious study. There is so much more to it than making a cover for your foot.

i learned a ton in the crispin colloquy, there’s a FB footwear makers forum.

the best book you can buy is bespoke shoemaking by Tim skyrme.

You can use a singer 31-15 or 31-20 to do almost all the upper making.

a shoe patcher leaves marks and doesn’t leave stitches looking very nice.

expect much disappointment and Frustration. It’s possible, but not at all easy 

[ljk]

Hello  This boot upper was sewn on Singer 44 20 with a Teflon foot. The insole to mid sole was sewn with

a saddle stitch and mid sole to the out sole doing a lock stitch with a jerk needle.  Handstitching on the

outsole takes about two hours (tv time).  The lining was butt stitched together using a 20u zig zag, you

can also do the same with a shoe patcher.  The cheapest way to go would be  31 or 44 singer.  Any old singer

with a front mounted stitch regulator can be locked at the beginning and end by simply moving to zero

and making 4 or 5 stitches.   My embroidery machines does this automatically between jumps.

The cheap way chinese shoe patcher ( beginners frequently forget something on a upper and have

to resort to a patcher). If you can find a Singer 29K newer version that will work) The use of a

teflon pad on a shoe patcher rely helps.  

[Matt S]

5 hours ago, AriShaster said:

Just for myself. I know people where saying I need so and so machine, and probably should have clarified I want this just for myself. My main interested are riding boots, and frontier boots with an emphasis on ergonomics using things like elastic like what you see with paddock boots or chaps. What is this planning and small cylinder machine planing you say used to be common? I will look into Jason Hovater.

Making for yourself is going to be several orders of magnitude easier than making for others. Shoes and boots are a surprisingly complex business, especially for somewhat technical and safety related purposes like horse riding. I admire someone with ambition.

The planning I mention is the order of operations, especially the order of which seams to sew. When sewing an upper together you're essentially taking flat pieces of leather and making an upside down funnel with overlapping and abutting parts. You can't sew every seam in whatever order you like because you either won't be able to reach or you will find you need to sew underneath something that's already been sewn onto something else.

Cylinder arm machines look like this: 

These give better access to sew 3D-shaped objects than flat-bed machines and used to be very common in the trade for closing (sewing parts together) shoe uppers but were largely eclipsed by post bed machines in the first half of the 20th century. To an extent I think that cylinder arm machines still are popular for the job in the far east but haven't done much research into the practice to say for certain. They are more generally useful and more common on the market than a post-bed machine.

Patchers, like you discussed initially in this thread, are a subtype of cylinder arm machine that sacrifice almost all other desirable features for a very small arm (for access into tight spaces) and the ability to feed in any direction. After about 150 years of development they still have massive shortcomings, as mentioned upthread.

Quote

 Im not big into hand sewing, especially with leather given that its difficult enough to puncture it by hand with a needle.

When hand sewing heavier leather (heavier than a welding glove, say) the leather is typically first pierced with an awl, and then sewn with one or two blunt needles. Only the very lightest leathers (e.g. for a dress glove) are sewn solely with a (sharp) needle. As you say, it's quite difficult to pierce leather with a needle. There is a sewing method with a tool called an autoawl which has a sharp, heavy needle mounted inline to a wooden tool handle that integrates these two jobs somewhat but isn't used very often.

For sewing soles onto turned-in uppers, you have very few options other than hand sewing of one sort or another. You either hand sew with a £10 hook awl or you buy a finicky £10,000 insole stitcher that weighs 300lb and isn't much use for any other job.

5 hours ago, AriShaster said:

Just for myself. I know people where saying I need so and so machine, and probably should have clarified I want this just for myself. My main interested are riding boots, and frontier boots with an emphasis on ergonomics using things like elastic like what you see with paddock boots or chaps. What is this planning and small cylinder machine planing you say used to be common? I will look into Jason Hovater.

Making for yourself is going to be several orders of magnitude easier than making for others. Shoes and boots are a surprisingly complex business, especially for somewhat technical and safety related purposes like horse riding. I admire someone with ambition.

The planning I mention is the order of operations, especially the order of which seams to sew. When sewing an upper together you're essentially taking flat pieces of leather and making an upside down funnel with overlapping and abutting parts. You can't sew every seam in whatever order you like because you either won't be able to reach or you will find you need to sew underneath something that's already been sewn onto something else.

Cylinder arm machines look like this: 

These give better access to sew 3D-shaped objects than flat-bed machines and used to be very common in the trade for closing (sewing parts together) shoe uppers but were largely eclipsed by post bed machines in the first half of the 20th century. To an extent I think that cylinder arm machines still are popular for the job in the far east but haven't done much research into the practice to say for certain. They are more generally useful and more common on the market than a post-bed machine.

Patchers, like you discussed initially in this thread, are a subtype of cylinder arm machine that sacrifice almost all other desirable features for a very small arm (for access into tight spaces) and the ability to feed in any direction. After about 150 years of development they still have massive shortcomings, as mentioned upthread.

Quote

 Im not big into hand sewing, especially with leather given that its difficult enough to puncture it by hand with a needle.

When hand sewing heavier leather (heavier than a welding glove, say) the leather is typically first pierced with an awl, and then sewn with one or two blunt needles. Only the very lightest leathers (e.g. for a dress glove) are sewn solely with a (sharp) needle. As you say, it's quite difficult to pierce leather with a needle. There is a sewing method with a tool called an autoawl which has a sharp, heavy needle mounted inline to a wooden tool handle that integrates these two jobs somewhat but isn't used very often.

For sewing soles onto turned-in uppers, you have very few options other than hand sewing of one sort or another. You either hand sew with a £10 hook awl or you buy a finicky £10,000 insole stitcher that weighs 300lb and isn't much use for any other job.

[AriShaster]

On 9/15/2020 at 2:20 PM, Aven said:

Check out the Chicago Shoe School.  It's not exactly next door, but it's closer than NYC or Portland.

https://www.chicagoschoolofshoemaking.com/

Whats in NYC or portland? I would love to learn to make riding boots. Any others your aware of?

[Aven]

Portland OR - Laughing Crowe Jason Horvatter

Eugene OR - Bonney and Wills are relocating there.

NYC -  I can make shoes.  They also have online courses

There are other in person courses around the US.  Those are the ones I know off the top of my head.

[Constabulary]

not riding boots but Lisa Sorrell is a custom cowboy boot maker and sells boot / shoe making supplies as well - maybe a good source for you:

https://sorrellnotionsandfindings.com/

[Aven]

I think this guy is doing what you want to do. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENjTdSGIdlw

Edited September 18, 2020 by Aven

[shoepatcher]

There us no way I would hand sew welts and soles on  shoes.  I build goalie pads.  I have hand sewn  a lot of them up by hand in 40 plus years.   I also have an Adler 205-370 to sewn them up the sides on a machine.  Machine sewn pads are superior because they maintain that constant same tension on the thread.  Shoes are harder to do.  A Mckay insole machine and Rapid E or Landis 12 curved needle will do a superior job and do it a lot faster on the welt and soles.  Just my opinion but also speaking from experience.  A shoe finisher will also make finishing the shoes and boot easier.

glenn

Edited September 19, 2020 by shoepatcher
spelling

[Snakeoil]

I am not an experienced leathet worker. Most of the work I do is hobby level repair. I own a 29K70. I have found that sewing a straight line with a patcher is a challenge. I suspect that you would never be happy with the appearance of you seams.