Hand Sewing an edge to edge seam 

G'day River, I keep an eye on my email notifications and check in from time to time. I'm having to finish up shoemaking, hence the lack of videos. Glad I've been of some help :)

G'day Alasdair, I seem to remember coming across the information in a book on archaeological shoe finds, and the timeline was that they developed the method around the 1400's, give or take, IIRC :)

G'day Pop, I make my awls out of different thicknesses of music wire, which I buy from model aeroplane shops. A yard of 1/8" wire only costs a few dollars. I cut a number of pieces, about the length required, and put them in the wood stove firebox towards the end of the evening, and leave them until the following morning to well anneal. If you don't anneal the wire, it will damage a regular file. I take a piece, put it in a drill or lathe, and file a short pointed end, the Tang (this will go in the handle), followed by flipping it end for end and filing the rest into a long, blunt pointed, taper, then sanding through 400, 800, 1200 and 2000 grit 'wet n dry' abrasive paper, getting it to a high polish, all while spinning in the lathe/drill. Then I use the side of the head of a small hammer (round stock steel would probably work) as the form to curve the end of the awl to, and, with a pencil torch burning just above the curve of the hammer head (as the wire will lose it's heat very fast), I put a slight downward bend just ahead of the Tang, then flip it 'round and curve over the tip of the business end, giving a slightly heavier blow on the end to spread the tip of the awl, which will make it easier to push the awl through the leather as the hole won't bind up as fast on the tapered shank. The idea is to make the up sweep of the tip be such that the cutting edge is, more or less, in line with the Tang. It's a bit hard to illustrate with text keys, but I'll try: Starting at the bottom, the two symbols below are a curved awl standing up on the end of the Tang. Then you have the down curve of the main part of the awl, which then sweeps up to finish with the cutting edge, terminating more or less in line with the Tang. (

@@duncanmcharg Wow. Any chance you could make a video of how you make your awls? I know you haven't posted in a while... but here's hoping? Your work is amazing and your videos are great! Thank you for posting all you have so others can learn from your experience.

G'day Reece, Short answer, Yes. The thread's thickness is based on the work it's going to do, and the forces acting upon it. The heavier the leather, the more it's going to resist movement, thus the thread keeping it together needs to be stronger. Heavier uppers might be sewn with a 3 -5 ply thread. When making the 'inseaming' thread, that holds the welt, upper and insole together, and is the foundation upon which the whole shoe relies, the thread is 16 ply ! The 'welt' thread, that holds the welt and sole together (and stacked leather heel , if you're making a sewn through heel), is around 12 - 14 ply. Unfortunately these days, the hard part is getting decent linen thread with long fibres. The stuff that I used is around 40+years old with approx. 12" fibres. The more modern threads I'd looked at quite some years ago have fibres of only a couple of inches (next to useless). Hopefully things might have changed in the intervening time; may take quite a hunt though. All the Best Duncan

@@duncanmcharg thanks so much for the information Duncan. Yes increasingly things are worse quality, hopefully that changes.

G'day Cindy, Sorry I haven't been in touch sooner; this channel is basically in mothballs as I'm on extended Sabbatical from shoemaking. I haven't made moccasins, but here's a site that might be helpful, and they have links for further study towards the bottom of their page. www.crazycrow.com/site/craft-focus-moccasins/ All the Best.

G'day Robert, I managed to get my bristles from a couple of shoemakers overseas, from their surplus. *But* these guys might be able to help you. www.mainlymedieval.com/product_info.php?products_id=3970 They're here in Australia, but should be able to post out to wherever you are or, maybe, give you contacts closer to home. Most shoemakers just make use of the heaviest bristles as they only tend to hand sew the 'inseam' ( the seam that holds the upper and welt to the underside of the insole) and the welt. When you hand sew every thing, then all the bristles are useful and you just pick out the ones most suitable to the seam you are currently doing. Thanks for your comments; I hadn't done a butt seam for some months at that point, and because the current version of iMovie for iPod got rid of the ability to overdub in post production, I had to think about what to say, and talk, and peer over the iPod, all while trying to sew a fine seam :) So I can see irregularities in the seam I really wish weren't there. Thankfully, I've since been able to downgrade iMovie to the earlier v.2.2.2 which is the best, fully featured, version, so I can, again, just concentrate on the work at hand and add the narration afterwards. Cheers Duncan