House of Berns Grip

This was the fourth pair of shoes/boots that I made, and had by this point felt like my construction had gotten good enough and the monkey pattern I had put together could be set up to do something really cool and very ideal for my work needs. In my job I find myself having to climb into walls, contorting myself into odd positions, and moving heavy crates and artwork around. I generally need something fairly robust, but also able to let me move well and have plenty of dexterity. Being able to do something just above the ankle with a leather that had a very mild temper would be ideal. I just so happened to have a side of bison that had been sitting around waiting for a use, and having not seen a whole lot of examples of bison with wear (and none of this tannage) it seemed like an ideal makeup.

I started making footwear by using a pretty accurate copy of a 10.5b/d trubalance last as it’s probably the best fitting last I’ve found and is fairly versatile in how I can slightly alter and adapt it to the styles I’m most interested in making.

I ran out of brass clinch nails part way through, and those can be kind of annoying to purchase if you don’t need like a thousand of them…