Medieval shoes sewn in turnshoe method

Tools for making shoes: awl, pliers, nails and hammer

Let's take a closer look on the most important part of a Pilgrims gear - the shoes. I made them by using the turnshoe method. That means to sew them from the side which will later be inside and then turn them inside out. Therefore uppers and sole are nailed onto a piece of wood called last. The sewing is done in saddle stitch manner, meaning to use two ends of the string at once. The strings are made from flax soaked in bees wax and fir resin. They are tapered towards the end and have boar hair at the tips, so they can easily be pushed through the holes made with an awl.

Sewing uppers and sole together in saddle stitch manner. Holes are pierced through the layers of leather by an awl, then threads are lead through by boar hair glued to the tips instead of using needles.

Piercing holes through the leather of the second sole for attaching it onto the shoe. Samething is done on the first sole.

A second layer of sole is sewed onto the shoe.

At first the string is loosly lead through all the holes and then gets tightened afterwards.

Pair of shoes in medieval turnshoe method with leather soles.

All the seams disappear inside the shoe. They have to be hammered carefully to make them flat and avoid blisters.

Let's take a look on what happend to these shoes while walking mainly on asphalt and gravel:

It turned out, that most harm was caused by gravel, while the shoes where wet and therefore soft. The right shoe took less damage, because I hurt this foot and put less weight on it. Around 250km seems to be the distance, when soles should be replaced. Then the shoes would be pretty much like new. I am convinced, that shoes in medieval times didn't wear out that fast as mine did. First the ground was rather softer than nowadays. Second they could probaly take better leather than me. Unfortunately I couldn't choose from which body part I took the leather for the soles and it was rather from the belly than the neck. Third this was just the fourth pair I did, whereas medieval shoemakers were professional craftsmen, who sophisticated their skills by making hundreds of shoes.

Besides that I can tell, that walking on modern streets with that kind of shoes might likely harm your feet. It turned out in MRI-observation by my doc, that the repeating shock of hitting the street brought my right foot into a first state of fatigue fracture. That was the reason why it was swollen all the time. When you walk on hard ground without damping in your shoes, your feet have to cushion all the weight. I'm convinced that feet are made for this and are capable of doing so. So I took one year of training in advance to walk whithout damping inside the shoes. As it seems this wasn't enough. Now I have to avoid walking for a few weeks.