Cowboy boots - Page 22

Originally Posted by Swan Song 

Wow, love the hummingbird motif.
Can you explain the bootmaker jargan to a novice? I assume you are talking about the stitching.

And,
That's an elegant and beautiful Willie Lusk-esque flame stitch-pattern on two of those boot tops. Intentional? or coincidence? If you have seen my posts, I really like Evelyn Green's stitching for Willie Lusk back in the day.

Originally Posted by OCULUS 

Like those elephants with maroon tops; very handsome. What color would you call the elephant? Also like the wispy stitch pattern; very elegant.

Originally Posted by Greg613 

Are there any resources to help identify the maker of a particular boot? I have a pair that the only markings are a series of 8 numbers in the shaft. I know with shoes a lot of times you can tell by the nail pattern.

Originally Posted by DWFII 

Well, I think so--I've been taking on students for over 25 years. And I have written three books on making boots and am the webmaster of The Crispin Colloquy.
What jargon/words do you have in mind?
Thank you! I won't say it was intentional because I have intentionally tried never to copy another man's patterns. But there really is nothing new under the sun (the Greek key motif, for instance) and I probably saw something similar on an old boot somewhere along the line and it just sat inside my brain percolating and morphing until one day I sat down and designed the pattern you see. We call it "Prairie Fire."
I am one of the few makers in the US who makes the old style two piece "Full Wellington" boot out of real boot leather...not some soft old garment leather. In fact, one of my books is devoted to the style. So I have seen and handled lots of old boots and I make some styles that have the look and feel of boots that were common in the last quarter of the 19th century. the boots just above the Hummingbirds are pretty historically correct. they are full pegged and have the old coffin toe and the military heel as was common in that time period.
The humminbirds are a three piece style--with a backseam like the old Napoleon/Hussar style boots. This kind of Pee-wee was wildly popular in the nineteen-thirties and forties, however. Lucchese made a whole series of them in honor of the 48 states. They had a representation of state capitals buildings inlaid in them.
PS...for those who don't know...click on the photos and see them considerably larger.
--

Originally Posted by Swan Song 

Intentional only in the sense that the client said, "hey, I really like the stitch pattern here in this book, can you do something like it ?"..... kind of your take on the style. You captured the essence of the pattern. Very nice.
The jargan I referenced were the words above the boot with the hummingbird. I gathered only enough to know you were talking about how you did the stitching, but not enough to understand what to look for or the difficulty involved.

I clicked on the pictures and it seems about the same, sometimes slightly smaller. Not just your pictures but others around the forum and even on my own pictures. Could be I need to adjust a setting somewhere.

Originally Posted by DWFII 

Well you know what a braid is don't you? Instead of a top bead around the top edge of the boot I cut stands of thin leather and braided it into that edge. Each strand had to be beveled on the flesh/unseen side in order to lay smoothly on the strand it is crossing...so you don't see a raw edge. Braiding is an old and venerable and even Traditional (in the cowboy boot world) technique that you don't see much because it is so time and skill intensive. I've never seen anyone do braidwork on the top edge of a boot that was as fine and refined as the example on the humming bird boots. I have seen braidwork that was just as good...even better...just not on boots.
Here's a photo of a black four part round braid. On the hummingbird boots the strand was half this width and it was a six part braid...meaning at any one point you could count six part around the circumference. "Passes" refers to how many times a particular strand crosses another particular strand, IIRC.

It has to do with how big the photo is when it is uploaded. As I mentioned I took the photo of the Hummingbird boot before I had a good digital camera. The final photo was too small pixel-wise to display much larger than what you see. Later photos are actually large enough that they would fill the entire scree on your computer if the forum software allowed.

Originally Posted by jmonroestyle 

Here are a few more...
El Vaquero

Paul Bond

J. B. Hill