01 Principles of Measuring a Foot for a Bespoke Orthopedic Last
Channel: Orthopedic Shoe Making
Date: 2019-05-01

Making a bespoke orthopedic last is much more complicated than just a straight bespoke because we have to record all the things that are going wrong with the foot, how we are going to correct that, as well as how to make a nice elegant shoe that fits that foot.

In this first video of the series, Bill Bird discusses the principles of measuring a foot.

• How to produce a Last Draft which is a tracing of the foot and the measuring of certain bone structures as well as length measures. 

• How to palpate the foot to find out where the boney structures are, where the joints bend, where the soft and firm tissues are, and how flexible the foot is, (unlike using a scanner which just measures the surfaces of the foot).

• How trace with the degree of pressure that you will want the shoe to put onto the foot. 

• How to use a tape measure to measure the specific bone structures.