Troubled Feet Find Perfect Fit in Cobbler’s Custom Hiking Boots

Some of the photos in Gary Barlow’s files are a cobbler’s nightmare: feet that are gnarled, knobbed, flat, arthritic, mismatched or missing toes.

The owners of these feet don’t come to his tiny shop to help them hobble. They seek him out to help them hike. They want to climb rocky mountain trails and trudge through miles of rugged forest terrain.

They want to do it in blissful comfort, to boot.

Barlow is one of only a few craftsmen around the country who make fine leather boots by hand. He designs each hiking boot precisely to fit the person who will wear it, whether his or her feet are odd or ordinary.

It can be a lucrative trade. Randy Merrell of Vernal, Utah, who is considered a guru among boot makers, says the potential market for custom-made hiking boots is enormous.

Fancy Western-style boots sell for up to $4,000 or more, says Merrell, who has trained 340 people at his boot-making school. The market is smaller for handmade hiking boots, which sell for $400 and up. But the demand is growing.

For Barlow, boot making is a labor of love.

“I’m a hiker. I’m an old die-hard woodsman,” says Barlow, 50, whose rugged, bearded visage and flannel shirt fit the classic image of a lumberjack. “When you’re in the woods, you’re in God’s country. You feel the living spirit that’s there. It renews life for me.”

But it’s hard to find serenity when your feet hurt.

“I was always frustrated by the hiking boots,” Barlow says. “I’d pay $350 for a pair of boots and they’d be clumsy. They were like glorified sneakers.”

People he met on the trails also suffered foot fatigue.

That was 15 years ago. Barlow had been working for 20 years as a roofer, but wanted to be a cobbler. He got a job at a shoe-repair shop to learn the trade, then set up shop on a side street in his hometown of Oneida, a small city 25 miles east of Syracuse.

After several years of fixing shoes, Barlow spent $4,000 to fly to Utah to learn how to make them at Merrell’s school.

His boot business grew by word of mouth until a year ago, when Barlow put an ad in the magazine of the Adirondack Mountain Club. Don Capron, a retiree and avid hiker, bought a pair of Barlow boots and was so impressed he wrote an article for the magazine.

“Pictures of my feet have been used in podiatry and orthopedic foot surgery textbooks as examples of the worst possible feet for outdoor activities,” Capron wrote under a photo of his gnarled feet. He had seven deformed toes amputated.

Standard shoes don’t fit Capron’s feet. But his Barlow boots fit perfectly, allowing him to hike 12 miles painlessly the day he got them.

“His finished boots fit my feet like extensions of my legs,” wrote Capron, who climbed the 111 highest Northeastern peaks in 1995 and, with his new Barlow boots, hiked the Appalachian Trail in 1996.

“Since that article came out, everybody with bad feet’s been calling me,” Barlow says.

The smell of leather, wax and oil pervades the air in Barlow’s modest repair shop. He fixes shoes two days a week and builds boots the rest of the time, averaging two pairs a week.

Beneath a wall covered with awls, punches and other hand tools, he sits at a wooden workbench and carefully guides leather through a sewing machine. There are shelves lined with Vibram lug soles and blue foot-shape lasts, and bins full of rolled leather.

He makes three boot styles: a light, flexible hiking boot; a stiffer backpacking boot and a “mountain stomping boot” for weeklong treks with a 70-pound pack.

When he makes a pair of boots, Barlow begins with a fitting appointment with the customer. That takes three to five hours, starting with a discussion of the sort of hiking the customer does and ending when Barlow has completed a plastic model of the boots.

He takes a half-dozen Polaroid photos of the client’s bare feet. He makes imprints in ink that reveal the contours of the sole and uses a tape measure in at least five places on the foot.

From the data he gathers, Barlow re-creates each foot by building onto a standard last. He has 150 pairs of the foot models, ranging from a tiny 5A to a basketball pro’s 16EEEE.

From the last, Barlow makes a plastic fitting boot, and then makes a paper pattern. He cuts the upper in one piece from latigo leather, a waxy, durable leather also used in saddle making. For the lining, he prefers elk, which is soft and cushy but hard to find and twice as expensive as cowhide.

“I don’t believe in fabric boots,” Barlow says.

Barlow hand-stitches the upper to a stiff leather insole and sews the rest on a machine. He uses closed-cell foam padding and makes a cushioned foot bed with layers of orthopedic cork, sponge rubber and leather.

The finished upper is mulled in water and allowed to dry on the last so it molds to the shape of the foot.

Barlow instructs the customer to care for the leather by keeping it clean and rubbing it with Sno-Seal. The only part of the boot that will wear out and need replacing is the sole if the upper is cared for, he says.

“I don’t think $400 for my boot is high,” Barlow says, considering the $200 cost of the materials and the many hours that go into fitting, design and construction.

Merrell says some boot makers make a good living, charging $45 an hour for their services like mechanics and other tradespeople. But many undercharge, he says.

Barlow wants to earn enough to sustain himself and his wife and move his shop north to the Adirondacks. But that’s not his only motivation.

“I want to do something for people,” Barlow says. “It feels good to know I can build something for somebody that enhances their enjoyment of our natural surroundings.”