Construction-Methods

Handmade leather shoes are produced with great effort, mostly by hand rather than by machine. In most cases only a mechanical sewing machine is used for stitching the upper together - the rest is pure handwork and brings with it qualities that no machine can match. But not all of these qualities are equally important.

Goodyear-welted shoes nowadays stand for quality and durability in the shoe industry. Here you can find out which variants of Goodyear welting are out there and to what extent, in my view, label fraud is being committed.

In cemented construction, the upper part of the shoe is bonded to the lower part, the sole, using adhesive. Although adhesive is also used in other constructions, the difference here with cemented construction is that the adhesive is the only means of holding the two parts of the shoe together—no stitching, no nails, and no other connecting parts.

The Blake construction is a very widespread technique for manufacturing shoes that hold together more reliably than purely cemented shoes. Adhesive is only used as a support in Blake-stitched shoes. Furthermore, there are different variants of this construction method, which I will introduce to you here.

The construction method of shoes describes how the upper part of the shoe is connected to its sole. This connection can be exclusively glued, but it can also be stitched or nailed. Which construction methods are better and which are worse? Here I share my opinion on this.