YOU WALK WRONG !

 See this article by the NY magazine. It has some good information about feet and walking.

http://nymag.com/health/features/46213/

Resoling is done !

Finally resoled mi zapatos. 
I decided to glue the soles on and not worry too much about how they look. They are just my old walking shoes and do not need to look too fine.
I am just glad that I had them back in walking condition within 24 hours.
It seems that a cobbler may have taken longer than that and charged me about 40 dollars.
It just took me a about 1 hour of my time to take off the old soles, clean the bottoms, cut out new soles, and glue them on.
 
I will post some pictures of them, but be warned they are not pretty.

Handmade Shoes In Their Natural Habitat

Here are some of our sandals and shoes in their natural habitat near the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

These are fun comfortable footwear that we made of some orange leather that we bought at Tandy Leather Company.  At first I did not like the orange leather and thought it looked to Halloween, but it grew on me!  They do look unique. 

 These old soles need replacing. 

A simple putty knife

Vise Grips

Start pulling the old sole off.

One off and one more to go!

Both old soles are removed.

Now I have to clean the surface and prepare it for gluing on another sole.

Wearing out.

I recently noticed that my first good shoes were wearing out in the soles.

 The heel area is really worn and has worn into the softer inner sole.

 The front area under my big toe and ball of the foot is worn but not into  the softer sole.

I will need to resole them. Fortunately I have the materials, tools, and the skills to resole them. This will be the second time that I have resoled them. It will be great to have my old comfortable walking shoes to wear again. I would hate to have to throw away these shoes just because they need a new sole.

No heels on these shoes!

All of our sandals and shoes have flat soles, that is they have no heel.  They also have no mechanical arch support. I wanted shoes that are flat on the inside and would be similar to walking barefoot but my foot is still protected with a sole and leather.

I like walking barefoot, no heels and no inner arch support.
Research has shown and podiatrist agree that walking around barefoot is the best exercise for your toes and feet.

You strengthen the muscles and ligaments in your feet, legs, and your back.

Manufactured shoes put in some kind of "arch support" either a springy piece of metal that pushes up against the underside
of the arch OR some kind of synthetic rubber that pushes against the underside of the arch. I speculate that they started and still
put these in because it makes a manufactured shoe fit better, that is there is some flexibility in the fit so that the shoe does not
flop forward.  This does not seem to be a properly fitted shoe and does nothing other than insulate the arch area and hinder air
movement.

Since our shoes have no arch support the arch area can breathe and helps pump air in and out of the shoe. It may be another reason
that these shoes do take on too much perspiration and dry out faster than manufactured shoes.  They also do not smell bad.

Our shoes do not flop forward because they are fitted to our particular feet. They fit snugly in the upper arch area and keep the foot from moving forward and jamming the toes into the toe box.

The toe area is not reinforced with a plastic or leather toe cap and so the toe area takes on a rumpled look.

I plan on experimenting with a leather toe cap for creating a smoother
toe area but right now I am not really trying to recreate a lasted dress
shoe.

These hand crafted shoes are very comfortable and and I would assume very healthy for the feet. They are unlined and so breathe better than
store bought shoes with their foam rubber and other synthetic linings and insulation.
Linings and insulation tend to make a foot warmer and do not let the
perspiration out as quickly as an unlined leather shoe.


These unlined shoes dry quickly and keep their shape after getting wet and drying.
I found out how great these shoes are after I got soaked in an afternoon
rain shower here in Denver, Colorado.
When I got home I poured water out of my shoes and then set them out to dry.
The next morning they were ready to wear and were not distorted in any way.

The leather in these shoes is somewhat thin but is very durable.
I made these shoes in June of 2012 and wore out the sole but resoled it and they are still going. It is nice to have some old comfortable shoes
that I can keep resoling and wearing. They just fit my feet better and better.

Margaret has made many sandals and shoes and has people ask her about them at the Denver Art Museum and other places.

Here are a few of her newer projects.

 The upper ones are sandals that fit her feet perfectly. She wears these
on walks and for casual outings.

The lower ones are a pair of slip on shoes that she wears for events that require a little more formality than sandals.

Once upon a time there were people in every community that could make you shoes that fit just your feet. These people knew the craft of fitting shoes to a persons feet not a persons feet to the shoes they made.
Eventually some clever person came up with a way to model the foot and make shoes of certain sizes and types and could make many shoes this way.
Unfortunately, this meant that many shoes would be made so as to get close to "fitting" a persons foot. Not all shoes would get sold, and not all shoes fit very well.
This wasteful process continues on today, where an industrialized shoe process churns out millions of shoes, not all of them get sold or used, some sit on shelves, the ones that get bought may not fit as well as a fitted shoe, and get stored in the closet for a long time, others that do get worn and wear out  in less than a year and can not get repaired. These old shoes will just get thrown away.

I wanted to stop shopping for shoes that did not fit very well or wore out in one summer.
I wanted to have shoes that fit my feet and were comfortable and that I could repair or resole.

I  tried making sandals out of a tire and did not get this to work very well so I started looking for books about making footwear.
I found some digital sources and a shoe making dvd which all were very thorough but seemed to make a very seemingly simple process into a complicated and expensive process.

My wife and I have extracted what we thought were good ideas from many of these resources and have created a simple method for making sandals and shoes.

We have made some unique looking sandals and shoes that could use some more finesse but they are sturdy and comfortable footwear.

I will post some pictures of our hand crafted footwear for your amusement.