When I received an e-vite the other day, I realized it was high time to finish the saddle I promised him. I’m not done with frame development so I got out my only other vertical spring Brooks frame and set it up for him. I never reply to e-vites, but sometimes go anyway. When I showed up unexpectedly at his party carrying a little red gift bag, the first words out of his mouth were “Is that my saddle?” Ok, so he clearly hadn’t forgotten. So much for the surprise.

It was a great party, with music by Trashcan Joe. Featured in the band was none other than shoemaker Bill Crary’s brother Mike Danner! And he was not the only shoemaker there beside me. It was like a shoemaker extravaganza.

Marty’s seat will go on his Lucky Bike, which is also red. Happy birthday Marty!

In this video we present how to make a pad for an Xtracycle. It’s basically a fabric slip or box cushion, wtih elastic straps to hold it to the Xtracycle Snap-Deck. I got the idea from a pad I tested from Clever Cycles. The first run of those had some room for improvement in the padding. I believe the maker of those pads may incorporate my suggestion for some more robust padding.

Whether you want to buy one or make your own, you may be interested to see how we made ours. There are a lot of design possibilities here. Let us know what you think.

Materials: Fabric and or leather for top, bottom and sidewall. Elastic, closed cell foam, contact cement and (optional) zipper. You can recycle jackets for good outdoor fabric and camping pads for closed cell foam.

Tools: Single edge razor blade or box knife, rotary cutters or scissors. Sewing machine.

This assumes some basic sewing skills and if you want to put in a zipper, it does not contain all the info really needed to face the zipper to match the material. We left that as an excercise for the viewer!

The movie!
[See post to watch QuickTime movie]

Click on the picture to start the download of the movie. It’s 15MB and about 10 minutes. The video can be slow to load with no visible progress until it’s done, but hang in there. I don’t have the friendliest player interface, but it’s late on Friday and I just wanted to get it out there so people could make some pads on the weekend if they had time.

I think this will be one of the hottest movies of the summer! We’ll get a copy of this on Matt’s Mountain Soles site ASAP.

Make an Xtracycle Pad by
Jeff Mandel and Matt Menely is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

I decided to make my own pad and after some research chose closed cell foam for the padding. I found a great piece of outdoor fabric with a floral pattern at the Mill End fabric store and some elastic from my friend Matt Menely at Mountain Soles. After I finished my pad, I had plenty of foam left over for Matt. We thought it would be fun to make a video showing how you can make your own.

I spent quite some time editing it down. It is still slightly longer than Lord of the Rings, so I’m still working on it. Stay tuned and we’ll have it posted for you. There are probably some better designs out there, but this one will work.

Joel later emailed me some pictures of bike shoes from his catalogs. The pictures he sent included shoes from 1890, 1900, 1920, 1930, 1940 and 1960. The design I chose to reproduce is from 1960.

These shoes have been reinforced just under the ball of the foot to keep the sole from flexing too much while pedaling. It was designed to be used with clip and strap pedals. You could use them on any pedals you want, though the cage pedals will chew into the leather sole. Flat pedals would be fine, or no pedals at all. I think they will make fine summer dance shoes.

The spring steel shank on this shoe is right through the crease line. The crease line is the line on a diagonal from the big toe ball mount to the little toe ball mount. When you walk forward, the shoe bends on that line. The shank is noticeable when walking, but not too weird. These are totally walkable compared to a hard plastic touring or racing shoe.

The upper is vegetable tanned pig skin. There is no upper liner, but the foot bed liner is veg tan cow. The sole is nubuk finished red Italian soling leather. I’m going to take them for a spin on the bike this week and cut a slot for the rear cage of the pedal.

I also learned from Joel that touring shoes were sometimes made with a wooden sole. I’m going to give that a try sometime soon.

This pair was a birthday present for my step-father (his birthday was last June, but I’ve been busy). Having spent much of his professional career hob-knobbing in Allen Edmunds shoes raising funds for colleges of arts and sciences, he now mostly spends time raising beds for planting tomatoes and salad greens. I succumbed to pressure for a more casual shoe, and one that would be more resistant to the moisture of a walk on the wet lawn than my preferred vegetable tanned leather dress shoes.

I used water repellent permeated veg-retan pig suede leather from the Wolverine tannery. The liner and insole are vegetable tanned cow. The sole is a Skywalk cup sole made in Italy.

Let me say a word about cup soles. Cup soles are a bit of an all or nothing proposition. You get the shoe ready, get the sole ready and you have one chance to stick the whole thing together. If you put the cup sole on skewed, the shoe won’t sit right, or walk right and you’re back on the bench making another pair of shoes. Putting this together is not my specialty and I could not have done this with out the great skill and patience of Matt Menely of Mountain Soles.

I went looking for a cup sole when it was clear to me these needed something more rugged than leather dress soles. It was a great excuse to get to know Matt, who I’ve been meaning to meet for some time. He was a pleasure to work with and shares generously his specialized knowledge of rock climbing and hiking boot repair. He’s also just around the corner from my shop. I am very fortunate to have such a great resource so nearby. Check him out!

Mostly I’ve been working on the leather and finishing. Some of my favorite shoes from Italy were finished by hand. I’ve been developing a finishing style for the saddles. Here’s saddle prototype number 3.

This saddle was handed off to a local guy for testing a few months ago. You might see it around Portland if he ever puts in on one of his bikes, which he had not the last time I checked in with him. I’ll give you a hint, he was in a story on bikeportland.org in December.

The leather work is just about done. Before long it will be time to refine the frame.

Thank you Jonathan Maus for the story on bikeportland.org. Your story brought in quite a few people to see the seat prototypes, and at least one person who just came to talk shoes.

I’d like to send out a special thanks for Ariel for the lovely handmade mugs she brought as a studio warming gift.

Now it’s time to get to work!

Date: January 19, 2008
Time: Noon to 4pm
Address: The ActivSpace Building
833 SE Main St. #201
Portland, OR 97214

The building is kept well locked. To enter, select ExIT Shoes from the directory next to the elevator on the ground level. That will ring my workshop and I will send the elevator to let you in. I’m on the second floor.

I will be displaying some shoe prototypes, leather, lasts, tools and other shoe related stuff. My bike seat prototypes will also be on display. Please come with your shoe questions or just to say hello.

The space is small, so expect a crowd even if only a few people show up.

I look forward to seeing you there!

These were made from the Otto Bock lasts that I used for Pair Number 15. That toe shape should be familiar. I am a big fan of double stitching, which gives a really fine finish to welted construction. The first set of stitching goes directly into the insole through the welt and upper. Then the next set attaches the midsole to the welt, but the stitches loop through the first set.

The waist on this last is fairly wide. With limited offerings by local suppliers, it was hard to find a unit sole that would fit. I ended up with this Vibram monster tread which I like for this application. The upper is blue nubuk lined with vegetable tanned goat leather.