Comparing models of making models
Last making using documented geometric techniques was high on my list of things to do on my trip to the Netherlands in February and March. Rene van den Berg shared some spiral bound course readers on last making that he used in class during the 1980s. They were written by Hans van de Elzen. He wrote a first edition and a revised edition that refuted and contradicted some things in his first version. I’m still sorting through it.
I have seen these models before and one frustrating aspect of the approaches there is the lack of information on the topology of the bottom pattern or bottom contours, heel flares and line of the cone or instep. So many absolutely essential parts of the last are just not documented there. Like many books for teaching, they were made as an aid. Hans was there in the 80s to fill in the blanks and explain any omissions. Sadly he has passed.
Sanding from block to last
Rene supervised me as I traced my outlines on some cheap pine we cut and glued together. I did this same thing in 2015 when I was taking classes at the Dutch Shoe Academy, but 10 years more experience helped me to see so much more when starting this process again from scratch. It was Mischa Bergschoeff who told me that last making is very much a learn by doing kind of thing. “Get some wood and just start cutting!” This is also a chicken and egg kind of thing. To make a nice last, it’s nice to start with a nice last as an example to follow. But I’ve been in search of methods used to develop that last in the first place.
My initial intent was to go through the motions of reproducing the original, but in the act of making, I made something different. I left extra material on the toe to sand off later, but then many of the actions of shaping and management of the rate of removing the wood led to the shape I have now, which I really like.
Two years ago I scanned the original model and remade it in Rhino using SubD modeling that Erik Hondebrinck introduced me to. This was incredibly time consuming and tedious. I can say from experience that the kind of serendipitous occurrence with the extra wood and the toe shape would never happen in CAD. In addition, it was a lot more fun to shape the wood than to click the mouse. There is also a very “natural” feel to shaping a last in this way. I could see and feel what I wanted. No amount of rotating an image on screen will provide that. Natural needs to be in quotes here because I shaped this with a bandsaw and a shoe finisher. There is really nothing natural about those machines, but there is definitely a connection between the shapes of those machines’ sanding wheels and shoe lasts. There are many other tools you could use like files and spokeshaves, but I only used a shoe finisher – a machine that was not purpose built for last making. See my article on the last making with a paroir for details on a hand tool that was the go-to hand tool for last making and is still in use (though rarely) today.
Lasts are made of lasts
I think it’s fair to say the first nice last did not just come into the world fully formed. It was likely the work of many revisions over many years by many people. You will never know how a last will perform until you make shoes on it and wear them. In the end, I used a last that have already made shoes on and happily worn as the basis for a new model/copy. I set it in the geometric framework that I made to see how it fit – not perfect, but not bad. So I just went with what I had.
Without worrying too much about the actual dimensions, the last I made came out extremely close to the measurements I wanted. Luck perhaps, but there were also many controlling factors in the guidelines for the last provided by the bottom pattern and side silhouette.