Valkenburg/Castleford style caliga step by step

[Martin Moser]

As a postscript to this thread:

I finished the first attempt of one of the caligae fuond at Mainz and thought to be early 1st century AD (you can see the original at: [url:34b0pqkp]http://www.ledermuseum.de/DLM/vollbild/seiten/03.htm[/url])

This time I did the back seams more closely to the originals, thin yarn for the outside with 1 stitch/3mm and thick yarn for the inside with 1 stitch/6mm, see pics below. I also used thicker leather as advied by Carol vanDriel-Murray and by my own recent observations of an original, about double the thickness of the leather I used for the caligae described above, i.e. around 4mm. I again attached thin leather strips inside and outside to protect those seams, the ouside one this time with 2mm broad strips of parchment (also an interesting material to work with). I narrowed the back seam strip as much as possible, it is now only 17mm broad, which is within the upper range of the originals.

Lessons learned: the front is a bit too open I think, I will need to move the straps a bit forward in the future. Also the boot could be a little bit higher.

Here are a few pics:

outside seam



inside seam



outside seam protection