Making and Setting Blind Eyelets 

G'day @Lee-in Park, Yes, you do need a lining to set the eyelets in, and the 'nail' is a thin bolt that holds the two parts of my eyelet setting tool. They're shaped like two halves of a doughnut mould (if there was such a thing :) ) and the bolt goes through the hole in the middle. The bolt, with the bottom half of the mould, is put inside the shoe and through the brass eyelet blank, and then the top half of the mould is slipped over the bolt from the outside and slides down onto the other end of the eyelet blank. The pop rivet gun then forces the two halves of the mould together, by pulling on the bolt, rolling the top and bottom edges of the brass over, fixing it in place. Hope this is clear. Cheers Duncan

Kvestions, kvestions, kvestions :) 1. The countersink tool does a nice job of chamfering the inside edge, removing the sharp edge and helping it start rolling around the forming shape of the eyelet setter. 2. A pipe cutter has 2 parallel rollers on the lower jaw, and a rolling, circular, blade in the top jaw. You tighten the rollers up and spin the tool around the pipe creating an indented line around it. Once the cutter rolls easily, tighten the cutter again and repeat until the pipe snaps off. 3. Sorry about not showing the eyelet setter better. I made it to fit the piping I use, and I was not at all impressed with the finish of commercial eyelets that I tried many years ago (which are very thin steel sheet, and cut into and stain veg. leather, as well as splitting at the back giving a sharp shoelace eating finish), for which I used a commercial setter. Mine is sturdily made and highly polished, and the pop rivet gun has a lot of leverage. 4. I used a latex based glue between the layers just around the area of the eyelets. This remains flexible and is very strong. Looking at the film again, I think the last scene is actually from *before* I did the gluing :) The uppers are in one piece with a single seam down the heel, and there will be a deep brown fade brought up around from the bottom edge of the upper once I've fitted them to the lasts, so I thought the brass eyelets would detract from the form and look, but they do protect the uppers from the strain of the laces so this was a way to get the best of both worlds.

So you're saying that the commercial eyelets weren't made from pipe, but from sheet? I'm confused. Or is it that the commercial eyelets -- which, from what I recall of ones I've used in the past, have more of a bent-over profile and a thin edge, that edge, made of steel, tends to cut into the leather, while your eyelets, having a thicker edge and a gentler curve, and made of softer metal, are not harsh on the leather?

I'm not sure how commercial eyelets are made, tube or sheet, but they are very thin and the edge does curve down a lot, biting into the leather. On a pair I was making for myself years ago, using commercial eyelets for the first time, a few of them cut right through the kangaroo hide and stained the leather black. And they had a lot of bulk which I could feel digging into the top of my foot. And they don't take much effort to set into place. And, of course, the splitting that often takes place on the underside... I never used them again. My set-up more rolls the metal out sideways, and only downwards a little bit, therefore not biting into the leather and lying practically flush with the surface. The brass tube is 0.4mm thick and the edges are a lot blunter than on the commercial equivalents. Whereas brass *is* softer than steel, the fact that the brass tube is 2 or 3 times thicker means that they need a lot more power to set. :)

(nods)

G'day Jake, Using my very small lathe, I drilled a hole down the middle of a rod of steel, then carefully cut a groove at the halfway mark, wide enough to put a small round diamond burr in (attached to a high speed tool), but not reaching the hole I’d drilled, and, with both the lathe and the burr spinning merrily away, put the burr first against one side of the groove and then the other until I’d turned the groove into a nice curved ‘donut’ mould. Using abrasives, I polished the surface of the ‘donut’, while it was spinning on the lathe, as any marks on the surface of the Setter will get embossed into the surface of the eyelet. I then cut the steel rod into two, separating the two halves of the 'do-nut' mould and smoothed off the edges. The two halves of the tool slip over a small diameter high tensile, Allen head, bolt, that has a long smooth shank. For the eyelets I use solid brass tubing that fits snugly around the outside of the lip of the central hole. Hope this explains it well enough :) Cheers