I have become interested in making shoes, from scratch and/or standard components. I would appreciate any advice or guidance from Dopers who know their stuff at an advanced hobby or professional level.
It’s a peculiarly hard craft to find good information on, or at least good starting points. Amazon has any number of books (including a compilation CD of what appear to be classic books). But deeper digging seems to indicate it’s one of those very minor, lost trades - there are shoe repair guys, and orthopedic shoe makers, but shoe making as a small craft seems to have vanished into a small niche. (For obvious reasons - it’s hard, complex and of little use in a Zappos.com world.)
What makes it more harder is that I’m interested in making women’s dress shoes, and most material I can find is for simple things like flat sandals, or basic things like plain boots. I understand those objectives and techniques probably lead to the finer, more delicate work of, say, a woman’s pump or high heel, but I’d like to get to the latter without spending any more time than necessary on (unneeded) basic styles.
I am an excellent, experienced craftsman in many areas, so none of the apparent elements of the trade scare me - leatherwork and sewing, pattern making and adjustment, wood and plastic shaping and building, finishing etc.
So how do I get to the point where I can take a detailed drawing of a plain but elegant slipper high-heel and turn out a pair?
ETA: There is a reason I am choosing this road, which I’ll get to if needed. Basically, what I want to make is not available from any commercial supplier anywhere in the world. Really. (And no, I’m not looking for drag-queen size-16s. Found those easily in my searching, which still didn’t lead to my objective.)
Talk to Broomstick, who worked for a shoe and leather goods repair store for a while. That, of course, is not the same thing as making shoes from scratch. But I’ll doubt you’ll find anyone on the board with more specific knowledge. (Or you might contact the actor Daniel Day-Lewis; supposedly he took a year or more off from acting a while back to apprentice with a shoemaker in Italy.)
Also, this is the website of a woman in the Amherst, Massachusetts area who offers workshops in shoemaking. (Not women’s dress shoes, but it’s a start.)
You say women’s dress shoes. I’m assuming high heels of some sort. Don’t at least some of those also require metal framing or supports? Apparently so. So that’s another skill to add.
If I were doing it, I’d have two chains of actions going. In one chain I would practice the skills needed by working on other projects. You list “leatherwork and sewing, pattern making and adjustment, wood and plastic shaping and building, finishing etc.” I’m sure you can find many ways to practice those - - perhaps making Christmas shoe ornaments.
The other chain would be more archaeological. Find shoes that are something like what you want to make and take them apart carefully to see how they are constructed. Take pictures at each step. Make sketches. Make measurements. Watch which things are attached to which and how they are attached.
Then try to put it back together, not necessarily permanently. You can use a weak glue or gum or sticky patch. That way you can put it back together more than once. This will give you an idea of the sequence of construction.
If you’re going to use a high heel, and you don’t have the structural analysis needed to ensure safety, be sure to overbuild. And the safety aspects might introduce a third chain. Not sure what all would need to be included in that. Testing the first shoe to destruction might not be a bad idea. Although it might be possible to purchase standard frames, inserts, or heels, thus avoiding having to design the structural part from scratch.
I second the suggestion about getting shoes (used, cheap, etc.) of the sort you’re interested in making, or something related, and taking them apart to see how they’re constructed. Any used goods shop will have women’s high heels of all sorts available for purchase, and if you really want to go cheap as them if they have recently had any donations too trashed to sell you can take off their hands (disposal of unusable donations is a problem for second hand shops).
You can also, as also mentioned, buy some standard “parts” of shoes that you will probably find extremely useful either as models, or as parts of your shoe product. I Sachs Sons Inc. in Chicago is the one I’m most familiar with from my stint as a cobbler. They sell wholesale to shoe repair stores but also are more than happy to deal with the general public. There are other such companies still in existence but this is the one I’ve had the most dealings with. I should warn you that, like most of the shoe business, there’s a bit of eccentricity involved with the place.
I also once found some old shoe repair manuals/texts/etc on Project Gutenberg so you might try there.
Funnily enough, I was looking to learning how to make shoes some time ago and enquired of a shoemaker who was giving lessons in how to make women’s shoes if the lessons were applicable to men’s shoes and she responded that they were not and that men’s shoes were far more difficult to make.
The John C Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, N.C. has an excellent program in beginner shoe making. It’s a great place to learn many crafts that used to be necessary for day to day living. It’s also a great place to meet like minded people and just hang out.