Regardless if they’re pretty or not.
I once had a customer who was new to heritage boots. Actually on second thought, this is most of the Outstation customer base. Nonetheless, this particular customer asked me if I could make the edge of his boots ‘not stick out so much from the side’.
Translated into technical terms, he wanted the flanged out upper (the welt equivalent on a stitchdown constructed boot), trimmed closer in.
For ease of reference, I’ll refer to the above as the ‘welt’ for the rest of this piece. It’s far less of a mouthful than ‘flanged out upper of the boot’.
Anyway. The above request is common from this type of customer, who are either used to cemented or blake stitched soles. Both of these construction types don’t really have a significant welt that protrude noticeably.
A wide welt means more resoles.
I could leave it as that and finish the journal entry. It’s that simple.
Remember, with the typical first time Outstation customer, they a) don’t usually resole their boots (or know that it’s possible!) and b) don’t know what a welt is.
Before going deeper, let’s first backtrack on why I prefer a wider welt. It starts with design philosophy.
I design boots for maximum lifespan. I want them to outlive their owner.
What a shitty business model.
It’s terrible business to design for the highest level of recraftability. Buy once, recraft forever. Good for the customer, bad for me.
But if I was a customer, I would want this.
Every time there’s a recraft done on a boot, the old sole is ripped off and a new sole cemented on. It’s then trimmed and then sanded back. Due to this, it’s inevitable that the existing welt and midsole will also be sanded.
So logically, a thinner welt means lesser resoles are possible for the boot, because the welt can only be sanded back so many times until it hits the stitching.
Quack quack quack.
For boots that have extra wide welts, this is what I seem to see them as. A duck.
Because the welt sticks out like a duck’s beak, particularly at the toe.
Nonetheless, that fine line between aesthetics and recraftability is something that the average Outstation customer has rarely encountered before.
In their general purchase history they’ve likely never considered that their boots having been designed to maximise the number of times they can be recrafted.
Remember, they’re used to buy, wear and throw out footwear.
Every millimeter counts. It really does.
The thread that I use on the welt is 1mm waxed polyester. I use a flat thread, as the cross section is smaller than a round thread.
This choice of material allows me to trim the welt closer on initial build, reducing the duck beak effect of the welt. Because the thicker the thread, the thicker the welt usually is in order to match the rugged aesthetic.
And the thinner the thread, the less space it takes up on the welt.
I also avoid using a double row stitchdown construction.
Firstly, Outstation boots are heritage casual, so they just don’t need this extra durability, secondly, the outsole is cemented to the midsole, so any stitching in the welt only keeps the midsole attached to the upper, and thirdly, a double row stitch would need a wider welt, leading to a less pleasing aesthetic.
Education is a large part of the customer journey.
For the particular customer in this story, eventually he comprehended why I couldn’t sand the welt down too much. It took some explaining, examples and a diagram for him to understand how boots are built.
The poor guy. It was definitely clear that he wasn’t used to knowing how his products were made.
What was interesting was that after the explanation, he still preferred a thinner welt, even at the expense of recraftability.
If I was more unethical, I would have gone ahead with what he wanted. Because it would have meant that the first time he needed a resole, he would have to buy new boots instead.
The indoctrination of form over function.
This is something that all the education in the world can’t solve. It really just comes down to personal philosophy.
Where I value longevity and durability higher than aesthetics, others may not.
So after some negotiation with the customer, we arrived at a middle ground. I sanded the welt back to a level that both he and I were satisfied with.
I had enough room for another 2-3 resoles, and he was happy that the welt wasn’t so visible when looking down at his boots.
The heel area also needs some thought.
Yes. The heel area also has a welt.
Well, technically speaking, it’s either the midsole (in the case of a stitchdown boot), or a rand (for a welted boot). Or of course, it could actually be a 360 degree welted boot. Not so common thesedays.
Anyway.
If customers want the heel to be trimmed closer to the upper, it’s the same problem as trimming the welt too close around the forefoot area.
For Outstation boots, although there isn’t any stitching around the heel area, there’s still a physical limitation where the midsole meets the heel cup. At a certain point, the midsole shouldn’t be sanded back anymore, or the heel becomes too small, impacting stability.
Practically speaking, it would likely be close to impossible at that point to put the boot onto the belt sander without tearing into the upper.
The best boots for recraftability have wide welts and/or midsoles.
This becomes a tradeoff. Aesthetics (assuming you don’t like the wide welt look) versus recraftability.
That being said, a boot can still look very sleek with a wide welt. It comes down to the design of the rest of the boot.
This is my favourite aspect of building boots for the Custom shop. Mixing a very rugged bottoming construction with something sleek on the upper. I like the juxtaposition between the two styles.
It’s how the wide welt look can be dialed back, by creating focus on the rest of the boot. To that point though, it still needs to come together as a single form and not look out of place.
And that’s the hard part.
Business at the front, party at the back.
When I’m building a boot that needs to balance out a rugged bottoming style, I’ll often use a dressier last, a more intricate upper design, or a leather more likely paired with a dress boot.
This is then combined with the wider welt, be it stitchdown, Norwegian, split reverse or storm. The outsole stitching here also become a focus point.
By using a round thread instead of a flat one, with a stitch density of 3-4mm, the welt then becomes a canvas for the stitching.
Add two more colours of thread for a chainstitch, or intertwine thin leather strips between the main stitch to draw focus. It all offsets any ruggedness of a wide, empty welt.
Moving onto the block. Shaping it into a Cuban or logger style allows for a wide welt to extend past the heel curve of the boot, whilst still having the heel scallop back under the heel base.
It tricks the eye into believing that the construction is more sleek than it actually is.
With all that said though, these type of details simply can’t go into a mass-production boot, let alone the standard lineup of boots that Outstation offers. The handcraft time required is simply immense.
At the end, it’s a use case question.
The three lines of boots, Everyday, Frontier and Ambassador, are all stitchdown constructed. Yet each have a very different use case, which leads to slight changes in how they’re built and bottomed.
Naturally, the welts of each will differ slightly.
The Everyday line has a medium trimmed welt. The Frontier line, a wider welt, and the Ambassador line has the narrowest welt. It’s self-explanatory.
Boots from the Everyday line aren’t formal, but also aren’t going to be so heavily used that they’ll need many recrafts during their lifetime.
Frontier line boots are meant to be worn hard, evident by their design and outsole. So, in this case, a wider welt is useful for maximum recraftability and practicality.
The Ambassador line is likely the boot that gets resoled the least, because as dress boots, they’re mostly in the office. Some customers who buy this type of boot even wear sneakers to and from work, only wearing their boots in the carpeted office.
A welt is more than a welt.
It signifies a philosophy on recraftability.
I thought about welts very carefully during the design processes. Because I had to make sure that my boots align with the overall Outstation philosophy.
A boot cheap enough to be digestible for a non-boot nerd customer, yet constructed well enough for a boot nerd to still appreciate it.
For me, the most interesting part is thinking ahead from a user perspective. In five or ten years time, what condition will the boot be in? How will it look like? Where is the wear going to occur?
And most importantly, how do I make it as long lasting as possible, with as little friction for the customer when they need a recraft?
Being a bootmaker, these are some of the best thought sessions I have.
