The Dorestadt Shoes - Assembling the Tools

It's been a long time since I had time to write here, but I've finally been able to squeeze in some time for blogging. I'm going to try and finish up this series on the shoes I made last year (!) so that anyone dropping by the blog will have some idea of how to do the same thing, should they ever want.

Once the initial research for the shoes was done, I waded in to Step 2: furnishing myself with the specialized tools and the materials I needed to make the shoes. Overall, this kind of shoemaking doesn't require that many specialized tools or materials. These are the main ones:

1. A sharp knife
2. An awl
3. Bristles for sewing (or needles)
4. A closing block
5. A stirrup
6. A matched pair of Lasts
7. Linen thread
8. Coad (a sticky wax)
9. Leather (vegetable tanned)

For a sharp knife, I just use a replaceable-bladed utility knife. It's not ideal or historically accurate, but it's inexpensive and easy to control. I have a very nice diamond awl, but for reasons I'll explain later, I got myself another awl with a narrower, rounded blade. I got the awl as sharp as possible on my stones and strop, and later, ground it to a flat, slightly rounded tip and resharpened it.

The bristles I used are wild hog bristles that I got from Francis Classe, the fine authour of the wonderful Raised Heels blog (http://aands.org/raisedheels/index.php). Boar bristles were likely used by leatherworkers of all stripes instead of needles, though it's unclear when they were first used. 

Lystyne Lordys Verament, a late 15^th century shoe-maker's will set to verse, mentions them alongside other shoemaking tools, so we know that by the late medieval period they were being used. It seems likely, given the stitches used on shoes throughout the medieval period (and into the modern period), that some kind of flexible thread guide was used, and boar bristles are ideally suited. If you don't want to spend the money or time trying to get boar bristles, I've been told that 25-30 lb fishing line makes a good replacement.

The awl and a few boar bristles for sewing.

A closing block is a rounded bit of wood that assists in making the closing seam, the seam(s) on the upper part of the shoe. I made mine out of a bit of 2x4 that I rounded off at the edges. I'll get into the exact technique in a later post, but basically the leather is held against the closing block on your thigh by the stirrup while stitching is done with the awl and bristles. The stirrup is just a long leather belt that loops under your foot and around your thigh and secures the leather while you're working. When I made mine, I just used an old belt blank that was too marked up to sell, added a cheap buckle and made a long slit in the middle. The slit is so that the stirrup can be tightened on either side of the area you're working on to give a more secure fit.

Here you can see the awl, the boar bristles, and the stirrup hard at work.

Lasts are hard forms shaped sort of like a human foot - it's most accurate to say they are shaped like the inside of a shoe. Modern lasts are very different from Medieval lasts - in modern shoes, the lasts provide the shape for the shoe, while in the Medieval era the lasts were used mostly for a sewing support while doing the lasting seam. I'll be doing an entire post on lasts after this one, as they are pretty important to how I decided to make these shoes.

For linen thread, I used two different thicknesses - one was 3-cord linen thread for the closing seams and other fine work, and the other was 7 cord linen thread for the lasting seam (the seam that holds the sole to the upper).

I used a kind of coad called 'blond wax' for...pretty much everything I make, actually. It's a mix of roughly two parts pine gum rosin and one part beeswax. There are a million recipes for this kind of wax, many of which use tar, tallow and other substances, but this was the easiest for me to make. Alistair Muckart (AKA William de Wyke) has a wonderful post on his blog for how to make it - he does a better job explaining than I could. Find it here: http://wherearetheelves.net/making-code/

 Finally, the leather. I used 5/6 oz leather for the uppers (2 -2.5 mm thick) and 8/9 oz leather for the sole (about 3-3.5 mm thick). You could probably use 4/5 oz leather for the upper if you wanted, but the fine stitching on the closing seam of the shoes might be weak in that kind of leather (you'll see what I mean when we get to construction.) I used 2/3 oz calfskin leather for the edge binding.

When I make another pair of these, I'll use thicker leather for the sole (more like 10/11 -12/13 oz), both for increased protection when walking and for an easier time of doing the sole seam.

The tools gathered and in use!

Coming up next - making the lasts!

Making a Leather Flacket

Behold, the humble leather flacket.

I've made about a dozen of these things now, of various shapes and colours, and I thought it was time I made a post about my process.

But first, a brief note on terminology! YAY!

Depending on who you ask, this kind of bottle can be called: a bottle, a bottell, a costrel, or a flacket.  All these terms, except the flacket, I have heard applied to vessels that look more like a keg with a flattish bottom - like this vessel in the Museum of London. I've also heard costrel used as a general term for a drinking vessel of any sort.

In Black Jacks and Leather Bottels, Oliver Baker describes a leather flacket like this:

It is of an elongated pear shape,and there is a fairly. thick projecting seam right round it. In this seam are rounded projections, two on each side, which form loops by means of which it was carried. The seam is not thickened but simply consists of the edges of the two sides brought together...

That seems like a good description of what I'm making, although the shape varies from pear or pumpkinseed shaped to round.

So, how does one make a flacket?

There are two schools of thought: one favours casing and molding the leather over a wooden form, trimming the excess, and sewing it together. The other favours stitching the two pieces of leather together first, soaking (casing) the leather, and then packing it full of something, like sand or barley.

Honestly, the first method is probably the most historically accurate, and achieves a consistent shape as well as providing a base for tooling the leather. Most preserved examples of flackets are assymetrical, being flat on the back and rounded on the front - that's almost impossible to achieve with the sand-pounding method. Medieval leather workers were certainly used to using wooden forms in other disciplines, such as shoemaking.

However, my skill with woodworking is lacking  (though I hope to improve) and I use the stuffing method. If you want to see an example of the wooden form method, the Leather Working Reverend has an excellent post here.

The process starts with the pattern. I don't use a historical pattern per se, I just drew a few shapes that I liked and thought would work. The best part about this pattern is that you only need one piece. When scribing the pattern on to the leather, I flip the pattern horizontally to account for any minor errors in symmetry. Once cut out, you end up with two (hopefully) identical pieces of flask shaped leather.

The two pieces of the flacket, along with the bristol board pattern piece on the right

After that's done, I gouge my stitching lines and mark the spacing for the sewing. Note that this wouldn't have been done in Medieval times. The earliest use of a pricking wheel for leather working is the 19th century, I think.

 I use two rows of stitches along the outside of the bottle. This way, if one row of stitches fails, the other will hold it together. It also makes for a slightly better seal.

Now we get to the most time consuming part of the whole process - the stitching. I'm lucky with these bottles that I can use a stitching clamp to hold them in place while I sew - otherwise I would need to glue the edges and hold it between my knees, which is more difficult with thick leather like this.

As usual, this is the "saddle stitch", where a hole is made with an awl and two needles are passed through it. The needles are each at one end of the thread, so it amounts to kind of a double running stitch that is very strong. I use linen thread waxed with coad, a mixture of beeswax and pine rosin that keeps the thread from rotting and helps lock the stitches inside the leather.

Stitching part way done

Stitching completed!

After this is done, I burnish the edges using a horn or bone folder. I used to use a horn one that I bought, but I discovered that a bone folder I had made at an SCA event worked far better and quicker. Perhaps the commercially-made folder is too finely polished to provide enough friction?

Now we get to the forming. I soak the bottle for about an hour to make sure the leather is really pliable. Then I do some initial opening up by blowing some air into the bottle. This basically gets it open enough that I can fit a funnel in the mouth and start pouring in barley. I use barley because that was what was used in the original how-to I followed - most people apparently use sand.

  When the bottle is full of barley, I pack it down with a wooden dowel, then pour more barley. I keep doing this until the leather is stretched as tight as possible, and packing no longer stretches the leather.  Not only does this give the bottle the most volume, I've found that fully stretched leather holds its form better than leather with more stretch in it.

Now we have to let it dry. This is important! If you put even slightly damp leather into hot wax, the leather will crumple or burst, wasting all the work you've done (and on a side note, possibly spraying hot wax everywhere. It takes awhile to dry, sometimes as much as two days, because of all the barley inside. This is where the wooden form method is nicer too - it would dry in much less time.

The stretched and packed bottle, drying.

While the bottle is drying, I usually get on with the woodworking side of things - namely, carving the stopper and cutting the toggle. Both of these I cut from oak branches. The toggle is pretty simple - I cut a button about 1/4 to 1/2 an inch thick off of the branch, then drill 4 holes in it. Then it's sanded and finished. Leather lace attaches the toggle to the finished bottle and forms a loop for the belt. The loop goes around the belt and hooks on the toggle. It's secure and quick to undo - my wife thought it up after looking at some Finnish belt-trappings and seeing something similar.

The stopper I carve while still part of the branch. This is pretty simple too - 95% of the work is done with a sharp knife. The stopper is a little crude - nothing at all like the turned stuff you see woodworkers produce - but they work, are a hard-wearing wood, and give the whole thing a kind of rustic flavour.

The finished button and stopper. Note the shoulder on the stopper, tricky to do on oak with just a knife!

Now we're getting to the final steps - waxing and lining the flacket. First the flacket is immersed in beeswax that's been melted in a double boiler. The double boiler part is key! If the wax gets too hot, it will boil the leather and it will crumple. The double boiler prevents the wax from getting above 100 degrees celsius. I'm always careful around melted wax and pitch - remember to wear long gloves and long sleeves.

Immersing the flacket in hot wax

I immerse the flacket in the wax until I stop seeing bubbles rising to the surface of the wax, indicating the leather is fully saturated. This can take anywhere from 5-10 minutes, I think, though I've never timed it.

Once removed from the wax, I wipe off the excess wax from the outside with a wad of paper towels. you have to do this while it is still hot or the wax will solidify and you'll have to immerse it again to melt the wax. Then I let it cool. The leather slowly darkens from a light to a dark brown as it cools, resulting in a dark chocolate brown. The colour is the result of the dark beeswax I use, I think.

The waxed flacket

The final step is to line the bottle with a pitch and beeswax mixture - this is similar to the coad mixture I use to wax my threads, and the same as the lining for the leather mugs I make. I melt the pitch and beeswax together (a 1:1 ratio), then pour it carefully into the bottle and roll it around, making sure the pitch gets into the seams where a leak is most likely. The pitch and wax lining is food safe and more resistant to impact, heat, acidity and alcohol content than just beeswax alone, though hot drinks, pop and orange juice are still no-nos!

Then, once it has cooled and set, I test the bottle for leaks. I fill it full of water and leave it on the counter for an hour or two, standing up between a couple of mason jars. If there's no leaks, it's good to go! The toggle and stopper are added and the flacket is complete.

"Ve meet again, Herr Flacket."

So, the inevitable question is, how historically accurate is this thing?

Well, there's documentary evidence of leather bottles and flasks as far back as the 10th century, though I don't believe there are extant examples from before the 15th century. Those bottles show some signs of being made on wooden forms, given their consistent shape and asymmetry. So the barley-stuffing method is iffy, but plausible. The leather is vegetable tanned, and while modern veg-tan leather is very different from historical stuff, it's used in the same way and achieves the same result. Unless I was pit-tanning the stuff myself, I'm unlikely to find better.

The thread and stitching are pretty period accurate - linen thread was used commonly on everything from shoes to bottles. The wax on the thread is similar, but not exactly the same (medieval recipes use black pitch instead of clear yellow rosin, apparently), but once again it serves the same function.

Bottles and flackets in period probably weren't hardened at all, as they show signs of patching and repair, and many were cut up to be used as patches for shoes when their life ended. My hardened bottles can't be patched or sewn - nothing short of a heavy blade wielded with considerable force is going to pierce them. I wax them to give them extra durability and water resistance, and I think the trade off is worth it.

 The lining is pitch and beeswax. There's no evidence of beeswax being used in period for lining vessels, but the modern pitch (the rosin) is too brittle at room temperature for my liking. Period pitches were apparently a little more flexible. Once again, a good compromise.

The shape isn't perfect but it resembles several flackets that existed in period, including some from the Mary Rose, so I'll chalk it up to artistic license.

So it won't pass a close inspection by a Laurel or a history professor, but it mostly looks the part and has a lot of elements that are accurate. It's perfect for SCA or Ren-faire type events, or just as a unique water carrier for a long hike.

If you're interested in purchasing one of these, I have several shapes and sizes available in my Etsy Shop.

Thanks for reading!

My Suppliers

When I first started doing leatherwork a couple years ago, I had only one supplier (Tandy Leather Factory) and one goal: amass my materials and tools as cheaply as possible. My reasoning was this: if I got tired of doing leatherwork, it would be less of a loss with cheap tools. And with cheaper materials, my learner's mistakes would be less costly.

I still think this is a good decision for starting out - leather is expensive, and so are good tools. That being said, it became almost immediately clear to me that if I was going to be at all serious about my work, I would have to get serious about my supplies and where they came from. Some cheap tools (like stitch markers, groovers and things) work perfectly well, while others (awls, punches, etc.) end up being more work than they're worth.

Disregarding economic reasons, there are various ethical concerns involved. Where was the leather tanned, and what did it take to get it to me? what impact did it have on the local environment and people? Do I want to support businesses that exploit the their workers and damage the environment through negligence? What does it say about me if I purchase supplies from such companies? How can I demand change from governments and corporations if I refuse to change my own purchasing habits?

When I buy something, I like to know where and how it is made. Now that I've started a business doing this stuff, I think it's important that people know what goes into the items I make. I evaluate my suppliers (and supplies) based on a lot of things - quality of the product, it's relative environmental impacts, the distance it has to travel to get to me, and the conditions workers deal with. I've had varying degrees of success (as you'll see below) but I think it's worth the effort.

Supplier #1 - Longview Leather (Longview, Alberta)

Don Vincent, the proprietor of Longview Leather, knows his business. Right now, he's the only Canadian supplier I know of for Hermann Oak Leather (see below).  He's also got a good selection of quality hardware, like belt buckles, swivels, etc. Recently, he's begun stocking more tools and a much larger variety of leathers.

But where Longview Leather shines is customer service. Don has called me to double check orders, to give me the option of waiting for better quality leather to come in, and has even given me store credit when shipments are a little late. He's sent me samples of leather he had got in limited quanities he thought I might like. He's never taken more than a day to answer my emails. If it sounds like I'm gushing, well, that's just the way it is. I never have a problem buying from Longview, and the stuff I've gotten is top rate.

Supplier #2 - Hermann Oak Leather (St. Louis, Missouri)

This one's not really a direct supplier - I only purchase their products through Longview Leather - but they're key to my process. Hermann Oak leather is a high quality vegetable tanned leather made St. Louis, Missouri, from North American steer hides. There's simply no comparing it with cheaper imports. It's firm, has little stretch, stamps well, takes oil and dyes well, and holds up well to hard use. As an added bonus, for my SCA/historical stuff, it's the closest match to leather tanned in ancient times and the middle ages. 95% of my items are made using this leather.

Being sited in the U.S., they have stricter environmental standards than tanneries in the developing world (There's a reason Hermann Oak is one of the last tanneries operating in North America - most have fled to less-regulated countries). And, because Hermann Oak  is vegetable tanned, there are fewer toxic byproducts produced. It's not perfect, but leather tanning has always been, and likely always will be, something of a dirty practice. For more information, see their Environmental Statement or Tannery Tour video.

Supplier #3 - Douglas Tools/ Sheridan Leather

Bob Douglas makes tools I regularly drool over. He now sells his tools directly through Sheridan Leather (themselves a quality operation). I would buy more from Sheridan Leather, but shipping and duties become prohibitive for regular supplies. The one tool I've bought from Douglas Tools there is the awl and awl blade. The awl handle is made from cocobolo and has a smooth, comfortable finish. It takes a little getting used to if you like a contoured handle. The blades, though, are worth their weight in gold. These are handmade and come sharpened and polished. They go through leather  easily and hold an edge. After probably hundreds of hours hand stitching with these blades, I've only ever stropped them to keep the edge up. They are expensive ($27.00 for a blade) but the time saved on re-sharpening, and the ease of stitching, make them a worthwhile investment.

Supplier #4 - Isle Away Apiaries (Manitoulin Island)

This is the most local supplier I have - they're right here on Manitoulin Island. They produce high-quality honey and beeswax from their 65 hives. Their honey is delicious, and their wax is great - and I must say, among the cheapest I've found. I mostly use the wax for making leather finishes or for hardening drinking vessels. Nancy Kains, my contact there, is super friendly and knows her stuff - they run courses on bee-keeping as well as their own operation. I'm not sure if it qualifies as 'organic' or pesticide free, but given what I know of the immediate area, there doesn't appear to be much intensive agriculture nearby. I'm confident that it's as close to organic as honey and beeswax can get without certification.

 If you're ever on the Island, buy some Isle Away honey - you won't regret it.

Supplier #5 Campbell-Randall
I don't purchase much from Campbell-Randall, but they're a critical supplier of mine. As far as I've found, they're one of the only retail suppliers in North America for large rolls of unwaxed linen thread. I mostly use their Barbour linen thread. The thread is consistent and looks great on the leather. Much better, in my opinion, than the synthetic threads I once used. I don't really know how it compares to other linen threads. Customer service at Campbell was very good - they answered my questions promptly and helped me track my order when it got held up at the border.

The linen itself is made from flax and is a natural fibre. When I can get it, I use the Barbour linen thread that is made in the United States. I haven't been able to discover where the flax is grown - according to FAOSTAT, flax fibre is mostly grown in China, Russia and Europe. Canada's flax industry focuses on the export of the seeds from the flax, so it's not likely grown here.

Supplier #6 Tandy Leather Factory

Ah, Tandy. The Wal-Mart of leather suppliers..

Tandy's low end tools are a boon to beginners. You can get into hobby leather working without spending a huge amount of money. To be honest, I've purchased most of my tools there. They have an online store, they have good shipping options, and the staff has always been helpful and friendly, though they don't reach the gold standard of Longview Leather.

The down side: If you want tools made of good steel that will hold an edge, or ones that are adequately pre-sharpened, look somewhere else. Most tools are made overseas, and there's no way to check up on the manufacturing or environmental processes - though I did get a marble slab on sale there that has a large "Made in USA" stamped right on the underside.

I have no idea where their different grades of vegetable-tanned leather come from. Most leather is tanned overseas, in China or India, where working conditions are often questionable at best, and environmental regulations are lax or simply not enforced, but I have no way of knowing where it is sourced from. The quality of Tandy's leather varies considerably, and when you're not able to go to the store and pick and choose what you want, you get whatever they decide to give you. Even though the leather is cheaper by the square foot, it often results in less useable leather over all, making a hide like Hermann Oak a better investment. When you buy Tandy leather on sale, it seems you get lower quality hides as well - clearing out leather that has already been picked over for the best.

When I buy from Tandy Leather, I do so because I can't really find what I need anywhere else. I do get my rivets and lace from there, as for the most part  all suppliers carry the same stuff. I have to stress that I have no problem with the service I've received from their staff, but overall the quality is lacking and I have concerns about the sourcing of most of their products.

Final Thoughts

From the list above, it's easy to see that I am far from being a 100% sustainable business. But with some time, effort, and money, I'm able to ensure that most of my consumables (leather, thread, wax etc.) are made from natural materials. Where I can, I buy high-quality tools from skilled craftspeople. I try to avoid purchasing tools and supplies of unknown source and impact, and I reward companies that meet my criteria with continued business. Aside from all these ethical concerns, I think that this kind of thoughtful sourcing has resulted in higher quality raw materials for my crafting, and in the end, higher quality finished products.

It's not always easy, or cheap. And it's a constant struggle to improve on my sustainability. But I sleep better at night knowing that my customers receive items made with both quality and conscience.

Thanks for reading.
Jake Diebolt