2011-05-04

Thing's I've learned about making wooden foot wear.


So you might ask, "Baron, did you make wooden foot wear? That sounds rather foolish." and you would be half right. You see, Japanese platform sandals, or geta, are in fact awesome. They are the only form of open foot wear I can accept. And they worked for hundreds upon hundreds of years in Japan. Ideally they look like this:



But of course, I'm not a skilled craftsmen and I used what I had laying around. Hence this:


Yes, that is pine 2X4. Yes, those are tire inner tubes and nails.
Things I learned:
1. Use light weight material. Pine is not light weight. At all. It isn't strong, it isn't light weight, it doesn't even have a nice texture. Don't use 2X4's.
2. Place your toe holes very carefully. I put the left foot hole to close to the edge and my big toe is forced off the sandal.

Honestly that's it. Except for this:
3. Bicycle tire inner tube make excellent straps for sandals. Really.

More photos:

4 comments:

Unknown said...

PS. For formal geta production, go here: http://www.egeorgeonline.com/getapage/plans2.htm

Ms.ze said...

is that from japan?

Unknown said...

Is the design of the sandal from Japan? as far as I (and wikipedia) am aware, yes. The pair I built: less so.

Lisa said...

That doesn't look very comfortable.