The Goodyear Welting machine was made and designed in the late 19th Century in America. It started to
be introduced into the UK around the turn of the 20th Century. At that time, all of the makers in
Northampton would have been hand welting so there was quite an uproar really in the factory industry
of operatives thinking that they would then be out of a job. But they trained and they learnt how to
use the machinery and a balance of hand welting and machine welting helped the whole industry,
in the UK and in Northamptonshire specifically. produced a much higher volume of footwear.
The Goodyear Welting machine in Tricker's is based on our ground floor.
It's a really highly skilled craft to stitch welts on a machine
and the machine you can hear it as you walk past it shudders along the shoe so wherever
you are in the factory quite often you can hear Ray downstairs stitching the welts into the shoe.
My name is Raymond Burn, I'm the main welt sewer here. I started in the shoe trade
1979 beleive it or not, I don't look that old but I am. An old boy called
Ron was one of the managers who taught me and he used to stand behind me and when I used to
get it wrong he used to give me a slap round the ear, you were allowed to do that back then.
The welt is a strip of leather that holds the whole construction together.
In the repair process it is the welt that actually allows us to repair that shoe, stripping it back
and replacing the sole, if it wasnt for the welt then the whole shoe would be at the end
of its life once the sole had worn out, that really is the beauty of a Goodyear Welted shoe.
So we have two machines set up with different welts
and next to him (Raymond) will be a big rack of all the different welts that Tricker's offer
because we do have quite a large collection now. Once the upper has been lasted over
the wooden form it is nailed into the insole and the welt is then stitched.
The thread is waxed with a hot wax, it goes through the machine with tension on it ,
the needle goes through takes the thread through, goes through the upper, through the insole
and throught the welt.
You cant be scared of the machine, if something happens it happens. The needles are red hot,
and they're going 2000 revs per minute so if it breaks
it does hurt, it does hurt, yeah. I have sworn a few times.
With a pair of Tricker's shoes we offer a variety of welts, we have a natural welt,
a tan welt, a brown and a black and they tend to be our core collection of welts that we offer.
Not only that but we offer different styles, so you can have a flat welt that we tend to use in
more of our dress shoes. We offer a barbour welt which is almost a hybrid between a flat
and a storm welt and we offer a storm welt, also known as a split-reverse welt, and that's what we
fashion ourselves on for our country boots and our country shoes so it's a heavier
look welt and all of these small components really do make up the overall look of your shoe.
When I'm talking to customers on a one-to-one basis I try and emphasize
that just something as small as the welt really can alter a lot of elements.
Tricker's have an in-house repair department and we receive over 100 pairs a month to
replace the soles, and also replace different components of the uppers if they've worn away.
We really champion ourselves on having this department.
Not only is it the sole we can change but the welt as well. So if you've had a brown welt before
you could go for a natural look, it's a real design process just repairing a shoe in itself.
It's almost like recycling an old pair of shoes that you've worn in really well,
and you've got the comfort but then once they've been resoled they look brand new again but you
don't have to break them in and it's like getting an old friend to come back and you can put them
on and they're comfortable and they look great and it's just a completely new look of the shoe.