This boot concept was a collaboration of thoughts between Parker Reid and I over Feit shoes. After much practice with the classical Goodyear Welt method, I became curious in more simplistic ways to make footwear. Inspired by Feit’s minimal flat pattern approach to leatherwork, and the more recent adhesive style construction, I was curious in developing a personal boot that could take advantage of cheap in-house 3D printing for sole fabrication to minimize effort required.
Adhesives and tapes are used for fast assembly. No sewing machine is required with this design! The rear seam utilizes a lost-art method of leather joining together by interference fit only. The result is a flexible and compliant seam that minimizes achilles abrasion.
Flat pattern cutting and lasting takes about an hour total per shoe with this aproach. 3D printing the sole requires some joinery innovation due to small 3d printer platforms available.
The material is supplied from Fenner Drives under the name “Ninja-Flex”. It is a robust TPU rubber that is in the 85A shore hardness. Depending on how the 3D printer is constructed, printing these sections can be a real choir. The 3D printing of the soles can easily become the new choke point in this method of manufacturing. But the trade-off of extremely easy and cheap in-house “tooling” is worth the effort. These are the most anxiety free boots I have produced yet.
