Valkenburg/Castleford style caliga step by step

[Martin Moser]

ok, I got around to start the second caliga of the pair. However, before starting at all, I used Jared Fleury's method to make a pattern of my own according to the one published in Stepping through time. See

http://www.florentius.com/calcei-pattern.htm
(a brilliant page!)

on how to make such a pattern. Here is mine:



This helps a lot to get an impression of what measurements you need and what your foot looks like flattened out. As you can see there are areas where the spread out pattern overlaps due to the curvings of the foot, so these will need to be adjusted for the cutting pattern. What is needed is some compromise between the published original and your foot's pattern, the result of which you can see in the initial post (red lines represent the first drawing). I then went ahead and made the first shoe and with the experiences gained from that readjusted the pattern:



I now know pretty much what strap length I need where and how long I need the cutouts to fit my foot. When not 100% sure always cut everything longer/wider than expected (or cutouts smaller, respectively), as it is a lot easier to cut something off than on ;-) )

When satisfied I cut out the finalized pattern



and transferred it to leather. 2 important things here: as you normally cut and therefore draw from the grain side, do not use a ball pen or such, a pencil works ok and does not leave any traces you might regret later. After transferring the pattern bear in mind that all the lines and everything is now slightly wider/longer and therefore accordingly always cut on the inside of those lines. Otherwise you will end up with broader straps than originaly intended.

So much for now, I'm heading back to do the rest of cutting out my pattern. More on that soon.