7 Responses

1. nori says:

   January 25, 2012 at 4:11 am

   The awl you’re using for butted seams is wrong. The awl you should be show­ing is a curved awl … a sad­dle maker’s awl.

   [Ebay URL removed by Admin]

   Reply
   • william says:

     January 26, 2012 at 8:53 pm

     Hi Nori, thanks for your comment.

     Straight awls are appro­pri­ate for this type of work in a medieval/renaissance his­tor­i­cal repro­duc­tion con­text. The awls pic­tured in scenes such as the Life of St Mark pic­ture in the doc­u­ment, and that have shown up in finds from medieval con­texts in places like York are all straight.

     There are draw­ings of the finds from York in the book Leather and Leather­work­ing in Anglo-Scandinavian and Medieval York, which can be down­loaded from the York Archae­ol­ogy Pub­li­ca­tions Archive, linked to in the side­bar of this blog.

     Mod­ern shoemaker’s awls are usu­ally curved to vary­ing degrees depend­ing on the task they’re for but that style of awl, and the sickle shaped awl you linked to, are mod­ern (i.e. post-renaissance) inventions.

     This post on the Crispin Col­lo­quy has a good pic­ture of the type of awl that was pic­tured in your ebay link.

     The sickle shaped awls seem to be a par­tic­u­larly con­ti­nen­tal thing — I think of them as Ger­man, while the awls that are curved just at the tip and are oth­er­wise straighter seem to be an English/American thing. [both com­ments are gross gen­er­al­i­sa­tions of course]

     There are some really good pic­tures of mod­ern shoemaker’s awls on this page on the Crispin Col­lo­quy but they’re all mod­ern ones.

     I some­times use a mod­ern closer’s awl for some work, but a straight awl of an appro­pri­ate size and cross sec­tion works very well in the 2–2.5mm veg tanned leather I use for shoes.

     Thanks.
     –
     William.

     P.S I removed the Ebay link because the go stale after a while, and I pre­fer not to have com­mer­cial links on this blog.

     Reply
2. Deredere Galbraith says:

   February 12, 2012 at 6:40 pm

   Thank you for the excel­lent classes on Cbfair. And since we also haven’t found an army of Elves to help us we are going to try to make our own shoes. You inspired us a lot. Thanks!

   Reply
   • william says:

     February 12, 2012 at 9:54 pm

     Thank you, I’m glad you found them use­ful. I am revis­ing the notes and will put the new ver­sion on here as soon as they’re done, in the mean­time feel free to get in touch with any ques­tions you have.

     Have fun!

     Reply
3. Elden says:

   October 4, 2012 at 3:55 am

   Hi William,
   I came by today to check for any new posts and found that the clos­ing notes seem to be miss­ing. I think I have a copy some­where, but not sure if you knew the link is dead?

   Reply
   • amuckart says:

     October 4, 2012 at 11:35 pm

     Thanks Elden. There was a word­press issue dri­ving me crazy for a while there, but I think I have fixed the link now.

     Cheers.

     Reply
     • Elden says:

       November 1, 2012 at 10:35 am

       Thanks Al. I will return to study­ing it! Hugh and I are work­ing with Adam McKay here in Syd­ney to put some medieval awls together. I have a ‘head knife’ of his to try, it’s just wait­ing for seri­ous sharp­en­ing. Thanks for the awe­some blog.

       Reply

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