My fingers are still here.

I made patterns and my fingers lived to type the tale. I used power tools, like a table saw, a drill press, a belt sander, and a palm sander. Other tools used were a hammer, a bear saw, a straight awl, a leather punch, an exacto knife, scissors, and other things I'm sure I'm forgetting.

About 3 weeks ago at WCCS, I noticed Francis of Raised Heels wearing some pretty sweet pattens and booking it to and fro. Then I helped wash dishes and the soles of my turnshoes got wet. That is truly an unfortunate feeling. I shot him a message the next day and asked, "So, do you just trace your foot for pattens and go from there?" Short answer is yes, and he invited me over to make some if I wished.

I don't have power tools so I took him up on the offer. I asked him if I should bring anything or buy anything before hand, and he very generously told me me he had everything.

This is how this process went. I'm a little light on visual documentation, so I'm going to write it down.

I looked at two of his books. Stepping Through Time by Olaf Goubitz and Shoes and Pattens by Frances Grew. Every time I had seen pattens people had made I noticed the leather straps weren't decorated, but in Stepping Through Time so many of the leather straps were. Cool, flashy pattens! I also saw the shapes of many of the different pattens and there are truly many different things going on.

We used oak because he couldn't find the piece of wood he was looking for, I believe it was maple. He told me it wouldn't be too heavy because it was a thinner piece of oak. I wasn't too worried about weight because I wore Doc Martens in the 90s and know what's up.

We went out to the garage and traced my turn shoe onto the wood. The tracing was really finicky because they were a pair I hadn't really worn yet so they were very new and somewhat difficult to trace as you don't want to trace so much around the shoe as slightly under it lest the patten be too large.

Then I used a jigsaw to cut the first patten out. I haven't used a jig saw since high school wood shop, and it was a table jig saw so it was slightly different than holding one and sawing away. Moving the saw versus moving the wood. After a few "beautiful oops" moments, I had the start of a patten.

I then put on my left shoe and stood on the wood to check to make sure it was ok. After this point I used a belt sander to smooth it out, give it a bit more of a waist (that's the term for the narrowest part of the patten), and once everything was as it should be we traced the finished piece, which is a lot easier than tracing a shoe.

At this point I put both my shoes on and Francis marked where my foot bends as I'm stepping because that's where you put the hinge.

We used a table saw to cut along that marked line. Then I mathed. The leather for the hinge was 1.5" wide, which meant 3/4" along either side of the hinge had to be marked on the patten. I marked it, and then I used a bear saw to saw down about the depth of the leather for the hinge. At the point, I chiseled into that cut. Chiseling is a beautiful thing.

I liked the chisel. 

You can sort of see what I'm pretending to do in the photo. This was one of my favorite parts of the process because it's pretty straight forward and the wood really does come up beautifully. Once I did chisel too deep across the whole width of the shoe and we had to use two layers of leather for that part of the hinge. It worked out.

Before the hinge went in I sanded the patten piece using a finer grit sandpaper to smooth out the chiseling.

Then we used math to mark where the nails ought to go for the hinge. I can't say what the math is, exactly. I just wanted to do the thing.

I held the leather onto one side of the patten and used a drill press to drill through the marks. Easy peasy.

Then I nailed. There were times when Francis had to bring down the aerial fury on the nail as a finishing blow because I simply lacked the strength to get it as flush as possible.

This went on for a bit, because there were 8 nails per patten for the hinge.

And then it was time to get to something I was more familiar with, which was cutting out the leather for the straps. Francis already had a pattern so we went from there. He cut out the thick beefy manly leather for the back and I dealt with the lighter leather using a pair of Fiskars. Then I got to decorate them!

The motif is based on two different examples given in Stepping Through Time.

The one on the left was the first one I did. It shows. 

The holes for the nails and lacing have already been punched into these. 

We went back out into the garage and I put my shoes on once again. Francis marked the where the holes ought to go for the nails and I used a drill. There was a bit of a goof though, and we had to take the nails out and redo one side when the right pieces were nailed the the left.

Once that was done there was about another 20 minutes of work to be done. Basically all that had to be done was marking where the nail hole ought to go.

I'm sure there are a million things I'm leaving out, but hey. Pattens!