How Is A Pair of Handmade Leather Shoes Made

How is a pair of handmade leather shoes made?

 

In fact, handmade shoes have a history of a hundred years. However, since the Industrial Revolution, machine manufacturing has gradually replaced handmade shoes with its high efficiency and large-scale characteristics. However, the craftsmanship value of handmade shoes is indeed irreplaceable by machines. Today, a pair of pure handmade leather shoes has become synonymous with luxury. For European royal nobles, wealthy businessmen, and celebrities, customizing a pair of pure handmade leather shoes has become a symbol of status and wealth.

 

The production of handmade leather shoes is extremely complicated. The truly strict handmade leather shoes have at least more than 190 processes and at most more than 300 processes. Most handmade workshops can only maintain a few pairs of production per day, making handmade leather shoes even more difficult to find.

 

Due to space reasons, only some processes are shown below:

 

1. Design

A good design directly determines half of the success. In the final analysis, when people see a pair of shoes for the first time, they are nothing more than its style and beauty.

 

2. Material selection

The fabric of a pair of shoes will directly present the quality of the shoes to the customers. In the process of material selection, not only should the appropriate fabric be selected, but also the fabric should be checked for obvious or inconspicuous flaws. All cowhide from the same part is used, and during the material selection process, the cowhide is stretched out manually to check if there are any hidden injuries, because such injuries are usually hidden in the grain of the cowhide, which cannot be detected by the machine, but will affect the texture of the shoes after they are formed.

 

3. Cutting

The selected leather is cut and cut according to the style of the shoes. When making a pair of shoes, good brands will choose leather from the same part, so that the texture and gloss of the shoes can be consistent.

 

4. Shoe carving and stitching

This step requires pattern processing and upper stitching. Unlike machine punching, handmade shoes need to accurately pin the position of the shoe mouth and the edge of the shoe, and also need to use the pre-punched paper film to draw lines and punch holes on the upper to ensure that the stitching position of the shoe will not deviate, so that the needle holes made by hand will be more accurate and beautiful than the holes punched by the machine.

 

5. Forming with lasts

Putting on lasts to shape the upper requires years of experience from craftsmen. The force used and the direction in which the leather surface of a part should be pulled will affect the shaping effect of the shoes. Then nailing and fixing, each nail, seemingly random, is based on years of experience. In this process, being hit by tools has become a common occurrence. Nails that have healed and then bruised, and increasingly thick calluses are all the pursuit of quality by all handmade shoe practitioners.

 

6. High-temperature shaping

The formed shoes are sent to a professional shoe baking box and fixed at 120 degrees for 50 minutes. Only with such a temperature and time configuration can the shaping effect and durability of a pair of shoes reach an excellent state.

 

7. Outsole drawing and pinning

In this step, you need to first draw the high line of the shoe body along the sole, and then pin the edge according to this line to remove the excess part.

 

8. Sole bonding

After the initial bonding of the shoe body and the sole by hand, the shoes need to be put into the air compressor at high pressure for 5-6 seconds to make the shoes more stable and durable.

 

9. Check and polish

Before a pair of shoes is finished, polishing is extremely important. A pair of shoes with good polishing can instantly raise the style to a higher level.

 

In fact, only the simplest shoemaking process is shown here, including last making, midsole filling, threading, molding, drying, etc., which takes several days. Therefore, the production period of many handmade shoes often ranges from 10 to 20 days.

In today's machine manufacturing environment, there are still people who are willing to insist on handmade shoes. This is not only a craft, but also a craftsman spirit. Shoes are works of art in the hands of craftsmen.

 

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