Thanks James. Flattered that you read my posts.
gpennel...Back to the bag...can you explain the “hog-bristling”? You’ve piqued my curiosity...
back in the day cordwainers used bristles from the belly of hogs instead of needles. The former because needles, usually needlepoint and embroidery, were hard to get and expensive and the latter because they were walking around on the hoof. Besides, bristles had natural split ends. If you tapered your thread to an extremely delicate and fine point , had a good mixture of hand wax and a lot of patience, you could twist the thread into the crotch of the bristles' split, wind it around the bristle, tuck it through itself and stitch with it.
The trick was never to pull the bristle, but rather to get both bristles at opposite ends of your thread just far enough in the awl hole to be able to pull the thread end and squeeze the bristle. as soon as it was started, a stitch was pulled closed by pulling the body of the thread.
Check out this YouTube to get the idea...
Hate it. I don't do it well, and was taught to stitch with fine harness needles on the tapered thread. It takes me way too long to get the combo right and I will slip the bond with the bristle about half the time. That's a problem when being self taught on a technique and time makes that metaphysical conversion to money. It probably helps if you are also a fly fisherman which I am not..
For some reason I got away with it on this project, but I will go back to needles for the balance of my off-site work. There is an enormous difference when stitching with waxed, tapered thread and finer needles on a finished product...holes are not as cavernous and smaller stitches are tighter.
I'll be at Fort William Henry Thursday Night and all day Friday, but will be doing mostly bottom work on some straight shoes so I won't be sewing unless somebody asks me about it..
