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

[Constabulary]

How about a used industrial post bed machine? Don´t know how your local market is or if you would consider shipping a machine from a dealer.... I even bought all my machines used but have to admit that I restored most of them by my self and I like tinkering. But that saved me a heap of $$$ (or €€€).

[chrisash]

As stated by @Constabulary above the company https://icanmakeshoes.com/online-courses would be a good place to learn the basics at small costs online using just a domestic machine, once you are happy with the basics you can move onto your more ambitious plans and find the right machine for your needs, which will most likely be second hand and a compromise, 

[arashikage]

Start with a used machine. The 810 models are the cheaper ones because they do not have a gear driven wheel. See if there is a sewing machine dealer near you and ask what they have available. Granted i got mine at auction but only paid $375 for a Cowboy 810. There's a facebook group called "Leather Tools for Sale" that has had post beds listed off and on. 

The Singer postbed model i was thinking of is the 51W.   

[Matt S]

@AriShaster are you wanting to make a pair of shoes (for yourself or a friend), or quantities for sale?

If it's the former, Jason Hovater has a very good video class on designing, patterning and making shoes. He works from a lastless system (socks and duct tape), which avoids the difficulty and expense of obtaining a suitable last. His method produces a rather slim sole, which I think is what you're after. (The outsole is cemented to a midsole, which is sewn to the turned in upper.) He mostly looks at hand methods but discusses machine sewing the uppers. In industry this is done on a variety of machines, some quite specialist, but I think that the majority of them can be done one a small cylinder machine with a little planning (as used to be common in the trade) or even a flat-bed if you're willing to do a little hand stitching. Jason hand sews the turn-in upper to the midsole as the appropriate machine (an insole stitcher, often called a Blake or MacKay stitcher) is very expensive, and not much good for much else. You get an awful lot of good information for the price of entry.

If you want to produce shoes for sale (especially in quantity or standard sizing), this is a somewhat complex area of the leatherworking business that will require a large investment in time, learning materials, physical materials, and machinery.

[AriShaster]

4 hours ago, Matt S said:

@AriShaster are you wanting to make a pair of shoes (for yourself or a friend), or quantities for sale?

If it's the former, Jason Hovater has a very good video class on designing, patterning and making shoes. He works from a lastless system (socks and duct tape), which avoids the difficulty and expense of obtaining a suitable last. His method produces a rather slim sole, which I think is what you're after. (The outsole is cemented to a midsole, which is sewn to the turned in upper.) He mostly looks at hand methods but discusses machine sewing the uppers. In industry this is done on a variety of machines, some quite specialist, but I think that the majority of them can be done one a small cylinder machine with a little planning (as used to be common in the trade) or even a flat-bed if you're willing to do a little hand stitching. Jason hand sews the turn-in upper to the midsole as the appropriate machine (an insole stitcher, often called a Blake or MacKay stitcher) is very expensive, and not much good for much else. You get an awful lot of good information for the price of entry.

If you want to produce shoes for sale (especially in quantity or standard sizing), this is a somewhat complex area of the leatherworking business that will require a large investment in time, learning materials, physical materials, and machinery. Im not big into hand sewing, especially with leather given that its difficult enough to puncture it by hand with a needle.

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.

[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.