HSM76

This is the elastic from the chin strap:

Bei very careful not to let it get hot while drilling out the rivets, the ABS melts very easily.

As chopper wrote, you should be good :-) Gesendet von meinem ONEPLUS A6013 mit Tapatalk

What detail on the back armour do you mean exactly? The raised ridge going up from the tank? Gesendet von meinem ONEPLUS A6013 mit Tapatalk

This is a cut out which was in (at least some of) the screen worn armour. There it has no return edge, but in case of stability a return edge would be not that bad. It is approvable with the V-cut out. I have one in my armour and made it to lancer.

The second boot is in the making. Cap is stretched over the boot, levelers glued in place in front of the lacing: The shaft is cut to size and right now the upper edge is turned in and clamped in place so hemming will be easier: As it is with magnets you can only have "not enough"! There is no "too much"!

Got to some more work today, the left boot is nearly done: Okay not in these pics. I sewed the cap to the shaft and the dogbone to the whole construction. It was a pain to do this, as visible in some of the seems. But it is rather stable in itself. After that I glued the cap to the part of the shoe in front of the lacing and behind that, up to behind the shaft seem only at the bottom. The cover strip was attached and this is the (almost finished) boot. I have to do some more glueing at the top of the shaft.

Thank you Dennis, the beveled lower end will (hopefully) just help with the lining. It will press through the outer leather and leave a visible line. I could not go all to the end of the shaft with the lining as it would have been to thick and protruded over the sole. So I had to make sure that in the lower area there was only one layer of leather. You can see the effect I mean with the tab, it is visible through the outer leather (in this case intended, as with the screen used boots)

Another update: I roughly cut the leather I use for lining the shaft: It has already the leftout for the part, where the hook velcro will sit on the inside, I didn't want to see through 5+ mm of leather and the velcro. The refinement of the shape was done after I sewed in the velcro and made the first test fit. Velcro sewed on to the white leather: The tab on top is sewn in between velcro and leather. I beveled the lower edge of the lining leather for a smoother transition to the boot. Done with very sharp blades: a leather knife, an Xacto and after that smoothed out with sand paper. Unfortunately I don't have a pic of the final liner alone but you can see it after it is glued in: As mentioned before, the glueing was done with contact glue. Because it will be round in the boot, you need to start attaching in the middle and work your way to the sides while rolling it into a tube. Get the two layers only lightly together so you can correct any creases in the outside leather. If everything is fine on the outside you can start applying pressure the the leather I used a small rubber roller for that. If you press to hard initially, you will not be able to correct the two parts! The rolled glueing will result in overlaps on the sides you have to remove after it is all in place, again a very sharp blade and careful work is key. This is the shaft closed up: Right now it has to fully cure, after that I will get to sewing cap, shaft and dogbone together. I hope it will work as planned... I am a bit nervous about this.

Got to work on the left boot today. Pinned the cap down and fitted the dogbone. I marked the parts where the shaft will be sewn to the cap. up in an angle and to the back. I start to like the blue and white of the boot :'-D To smooth down the transition to the raised parts of the laces I glued on some pieces of leather: The leather is beveled on the edges to have a smoother transition from cap to the back. We will see how it works out, when the cap has dried. One thing I did last week, I forgot to mention is, folding down the top edge of the shaft. I watered the leather there for a moment and clamped it in place with a lot of clamps between a steel ruler and popsicle sticks.

That's what I do since roughly 8 months but the serrias you got were the first I saw and no Esprit gloves until now.

Yep, jealousy is the word indeed. I never saw real Esprit gloves but I keep searching!

The boots look really great! Keep up the good work.

Thank you Dennis. I will keep you all with me until the boots are some. I hit a little snag today. I cut the leather for lining the shafts and after that I wanted to start determining where the stitches for the connection of cap and shaft have to be. At that point I realized the caps were not long enough. This meant I had to cut new ones and prep them. So this is pretty much what I could do today. It is never good if you get a new insight after the parts are cut out. So no new pictures today.

A few more progress pictures of the left boot. I did not get to as much working on the boots in the last weeks as I hoped. I had to loosen the cap in the back as the drying leather pulled it self so much into the boot that you could see the whole fixture of the laces in every detail: I cut the cap to fit and I cut the leather for the shaft into final shape to have the correct closure in the back: The nice thing about the wet formed leather is, that the cap holds the form even if you take it of the boot. The next things I plan to do are: - Sewing the top of the shaft - sewing the side stitches on the shaft (after fiddeling with the leather parts I strongly presume the the cap and shaft where sewn together) - backing the shaft with leather to give it more rigidity. At the moment the leather is rather stiff, but this will give way with wearing. The velcro will be sewn in after the backing is in place. The gluing will be done with real contact glue. I use Kövulfix. It is a contact glue used for leather. As normal with these types of glue, you put it on both sides of the area you want to connect and wait until the solvent has evaporated. After that the glue is no longer sticky to the touch but the two layers will stick to each other. You then need to press the parts together. Important here is that the length of the pressure is not important but the force of the pressure. The higher the pressure, the stronger the connection, even if it is just for a short time.

I am looking using velcro on the top of the cumberbund an on the inside of the chest. I sewed the loop to the pouches and glued the hook into the chest. I just have a pic of the 'bund but none right now of the chest, but you get the jist. Gesendet von meinem ONEPLUS A6013 mit Tapatalk

Tried to put the first cap on the boot. Hit the first snag right there. It did not want as I wanted it to be. So I had to soak it again in water to make it pliable and a bit more stretchy. After that I could pin it down in the front. I had to remove the pins in the back because while drying, the leather was, as expected, shrinking a bit again. This lead to the laces and the fixture of the laces to be outlined very well. I will see how it will be when it is all really dried. Here is a picture of the cap. I think there it looks quite good:

I was first really exited, when I saw them only to discover that a US12 is way to big for me 😞

Were those the size 12 on eBay?

First boots side cuts in the sole is done:

Both boots are marked for cutting. And the first cuts are done. This will be tedious work...

The Step is drawn in, in case of the Kingshow it is just a bit bigger :-) Maybe I cut the whole sole in places. But first I have to do the notches, then we will see. Gesendet von meinem ONEPLUS A6013 mit Tapatalk

Yep, Just wait for my results, maybe I miscalculated at some point and will do a crash landing, you never know. Gesendet von meinem ONEPLUS A6013 mit Tapatalk

And it goes on, I drew the sole cutting schematics on the first boot: I tried to adapt the cutouts to the soles of the Kingshow boot and create them as near to the Sierra as possible. I am not sure right now if I can make the upper cutouts as full rectangle, or if I have to make a slanting cut from the top of the sole.

Okay, it took a day longer than I thought, but now I could get to writing ab bit. First of all, the TD is done. Old stock cable (luckily dirty, so no weathering necessary), home made clips, RS box and CfO endcaps. The RS tube will stay as a failsafe. Now to the leather: I ordered the leather from eBay, it is upholstery leather, thick leather in pure white. The structure of the leather is stamped into the leather. This is the reason it is possible to get it out to a certain degree. Keep in mind that in any case leather is hide and therefore you have a certain structure. Now for getting out the stamping. In short you stretch out the leather. I soaked the leather in water until it was completely wet. I put it on a surface where it could move a bit, so every part of the hide will be able to go with the flow. I used the long side of agate polishing tools to smooth the leather out: This is a rather tedious process. You have to smooth it out, it worked best from the middle to the sides. All in all this can take a while. You might need to rinse and repeat (pun intended) If you have reached an acceptable smoothness (keep in mind you will have some structure left in any case, this will be the original structure of the hide) you can dry it with an iron. Set it to a temperature below wool. Be careful not to heat the leather up to much. This will help a bit more with smoothing out the surface, but the main point is to help the leather dry more quickly. A few passes on both sides. Let it cool for a some and repeat it. Leather needs to dry quickly or it will become hard and brittle. When it is dry you will see that you have not only smoothed it out but also stretched it out to a certain degree. Here is one of the dogbones with the stencil I used for cutting: