Construction Process V

 Preparing the Rubber Sole

As mentioned on my previous post, there has been a mistake in the construction process.  Be aware of that.  The piercing of the lower leather part should have already taken part just after the bonding of the reindeer leather with the sheep lining leather.  Thus using the lower part blueprint with the holes already designed and pierced the lower leather part should have been marked and pierced.

At this point there is no going back and this job will be done after the rubber sole has been glued on the crepe sole.

Preparing the rubber sole involves scratching its surface with 60grade sandpaper.  Not much.  It is already prepared for gluing by having grooves by design.  I use the sandpaper perpendicular to those already designed grooves.

The crepe sole has already been prepared i.e. sanded so there is no need by now to do the same thing.  By the time there are vulnerable stitches on the crepe sole you should not touch any more this surface.  Use only a brush to clean any particles of dust before gluing.

I have mentioned this before, but I use the same cement glue I use for the rest of this project.  There are epoxy glues that should make this bond permanent but I tent to use a glue that will allow me in the future to be able to change the rubber sole if it wares out with use.

Gluing the Rubber Sole

Have ready a rolling pin for pressing on the two soles together.  Apply the glue cement first on the most difficult surface (the crepe sole).  Difficult as far as application of the glue concerns.  On the crepe sole surface you have to be careful and concerned about not applying any glue on the reindeer leather.  Do consider masking the leather out with masking tape.  I have messed up both pairs at this point because I forgot to apply a masking tape.

  Let the glue cement to dry for at least 5min after the last surface application (the rubber sole).  The glue cement should be a thin layer, so do not leave more than 8min to dry.  I suppose it depends on the cement so please do test out with scrap materials before doing anything on the real project parts.

Use the rolling pin and press down quite hard (this is not soft leather but soles) so the two of them come together.

Use a quite heavy weight to set on the bonded parts and leave for at least 2h before going any further.

Trimming the Rubber Sole

Use a pair of scissors for trimming the excess rubber material.  As close to the crepe sole as possible.

At all times keep away the lower leather part from the scissors.  This is not a difficult task to be done.  A pleasing one I would rather say.

Try not to stop while cutting i.e. rising and placing the pair of scissors on other spots since that will create jigs on the rubber sole.  Try to do the job smoothly and continuously.

This will produce a nice result at the end and will look professional.

Piercing the lower leather part

Please note that this step should have taken part earlier as mentioned above.  At this point it will be much more difficult to mark the lower leather part using the blueprint.  Much much more difficult and with ambiguous results.

There is no flat surface to lay on the bonded leathers so to place on it the blueprint and mark it properly now.

I did my best to have a good result but still...

Normally I would use the awl to mark those holes to be done with the rotary piercing tool.  Now I can only use the non permanent pen or otherwise.  Something that would not need much force to mark anyway.

Use the rotary piercing tool and force lightly on the marked points.  That is to see if the circle done is close to that you would expect.  When you are happy press hard to make the hole.  I use 2mm diameter pierces for this project.  This piercing tool goes on steps of 0.5mm diameter up to 4.5mm.

One could use a hole punch to accomplish the same task but for this particular case where I have made a mistake and there is no flat surface to work with this is the best solution.