Comment 60192

By Undustrial (registered) - website | Posted February 23, 2011 at 11:59:02

Ahh leatherwork - my other love. I tried my hand at cobbling a while ago, but didn't do the math quite right on the seam allowances, so ended up with a pair of leather socks (fit like glove - but no room for anything underneath). Decided against putting souls on them and shelved them until warmer weather comes.

Do we need an apocalypse to learn these things? No. The shoemaking apocalypse has already come and gone. Don't believe me? Go to Payless. Shoes are increasingly made of incredibly flimsy material (I've found cardboard cutting 'em up), so that it will hold together with glue and bottom-rate sweatshop sewing machine work, rather than the kind of intense machinery and hand work described above. They fall apart in months and cannot be repaired.

The economics of leather make it very difficult to commercially produce high-quality products. So much so that your best bet is usually yourself, a friend or a craft fair. That's why traditional leatherworking - country and western, First Nations etc - is often some of the only decent stuff you can still buy. They do it all themselves - hunting, tanning, sewing, etc - and the results are stunning.

If you're interested, I really can't recommend Tundra Leather enough.

"Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century." — Lewis Mumford

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