Get a Grip

This was the fourth pair of shoes/boots that I made, and had by this point felt like my construction had gotten good enough and the monkey pattern I had put together could be set up to do something really cool and very ideal for my work needs. In my job I find myself having to climb into walls, contorting myself into odd positions, and moving heavy crates and artwork around. I generally need something fairly robust, but also able to let me move well and have plenty of dexterity. Being able to do something just above the ankle with a leather that had a very mild temper would be ideal. I just so happened to have a side of bison that had been sitting around waiting for a use, and having not seen a whole lot of examples of bison with wear (and none of this tannage) it seemed like an ideal makeup.

I started making footwear by using a pretty accurate copy of a 10.5b/d trubalance last as it’s probably the best fitting last I’ve found and is fairly versatile in how I can slightly alter and adapt it to the styles I’m most interested in making.

I ran out of brass clinch nails part way through, and those can be kind of annoying to purchase if you don’t need like a thousand of them…

For the most part these have been worn for work. Meaning they’ve been used to climb in and out of walls, put to use in a fabrication shop, installing artwork, painting galleries, etc. There were a handful of short trips out of town where they got a bit of extra walking I them, and a handful of snow and rain days, but aside from a sudden series of early Spring shit weather days, they saw a fairly mild Dome. Mostly they’ve commuted to the museum, commuted home, and repeated.

One of my goals was to have a leather that would give me a good amount of feel throughout my foot from the get go and allow me to maneuver into tight awkward spaces easily. The bison that had been sitting around had a really supple hand to it and didn’t need any break in. In terms of wear it was very resilient to mild abrasions, but was surprisingly susceptible to having larger chunks taken out of it because of its soft temper. By now it’s had two fairly large sections ripped out of the sides of the heel counters just from catching on a couple of slightly protruding bolts in the deck of a scissor lift. They got wet a couple of times and there was definitely some shifting of tannins. I gave them a light conditioning of VSC after the second month I believe and they darkened slightly, but mostly returned to their original color. I didn’t really like how the waxiness of the VSC changed the more matte surface though, and decided to not condition them again until til a couple weeks ago when there was a significant rain storm followed by a snow storm and I put some Bick4 on them. They darkened significantly after this and really seemed to burnish like crazy, but I think that was more from the amount of water they took on and less of the conditioner.

It’s perfect. The last was slightly modified to give me a little more room in the big toe, but it was also originally set up to be a Goodyear welted last. When I decided to make my monkey boot in a stitchdown construction (because I’d never seen a stitchdown monkey boot) they really opened up nicely and gave me a good roomy fit that was a nice space for putting on heavy socks in the Wonter, but not so loose that I can’t wear these with lighter socks throughout the Spring and Fall. I was also slightly worried about how the toe might collapse as an unstructured trubalance, but with the softness of the bison it really settled in nicely. I’ve set up a half sock liner that incorporates some very light arch support as well. I have fairly low arches, but the last has essentially none, so I’ve found it helpful to build up just a bit inside the boot.

lol. Well I think I’d make some adjustment to the construction if I revisited the design, but overall I’m pretty happy with it. I moved to the monkey style in particular because I was having so much difficulty on my flatbed machine getting neat stitches in a curved seam. For what it is, I think it dramatically improved the overall look of what I was making, but I think there are still plenty of refinements I could make. I would also choose to move to some more appropriately sized hardware and lacing.

Love these soles for something simple and sleek that’s not too dressy. They hold up fairly well. Though they can be a bit slippery when they get dusty.

Definitely felt like I had mostly achieved my goal of a boot that I could easily wear every day for work, and that fit a space in my collection that hadn’t really existed, or that I had seen existing anywhere else.