How to care for boots?

Boots, a favourite subject of mine

Rightyho. How to get them looking good, and last for ages. The answer is dubbin (or Lederfett - its basically the same stuff, just dyed, and been used since the middle ages to proof and dress leather articles). You need tons of it. Both the uppers and the sole. I put at least five applications of dubbin on mine before I first used them, allowing at least a day for each application to soak in. Apply it with a toothbrush and *really* work it into the leather. Of course, you need to make sure that the boots are dry before you start applying it. Just don't ever try to dry them out next to a radiator as the leather will shrink and crack. Just stuff them with newspaper and leave them somewhere warm for a few days (changing the newspaper if it becomes damp)

Now, if you're starting with a new pair of boots, and want to darken them down before applying dubbin, then just give them a well worked-in layer of dark tan polish. If using Lederfett, you don't have to bother dyeing them with the polish as Lederfett is naturally dark.

Take care of your boots by cleaning and applying dubbin regularly. You will see that over time, the rough-side out leather becomes nicely smooth, as you see on original boots. You will lose hobnails over time, but dont try and fit new ones without a proper shoe last. Take them to a *decent* cobbler.

HTH. I'll try and post some pics of my boots later today.

Cheers, Jay.

As promised, some pics:

does the dubbin advice apply to leather webbing as well....

I use a saddlers dressing on leather belt order. KoChoLine. Looks like EP grease, smells like EP grease. Works wonders, also great for renovating old and dried out leather. Work a load of it into the leather, leave it for 24 hrs then get rid of the excess.

where can it be got...

Any decent riding shop (Google is your friend!) Just be aware that its a *very* messy job, as this stuff is best applied with your fingers. Oh, another thing, it *will* stain any fabric it comes into contact with, so be careful where you work with it, and make damn sure that the excess is removed (numerous wipes over with rags will get rid of any that hasn't soaked in)

I used this stuff to restore an original set of tournister straps that had dried out years ago. Just rubbed a load into them every other day for a month, and now they are near as dammit as good as new.

http://www.leprevo.co.uk ?

I bought my Ko-Cho-Line from an ebAy equestrian supplier - should be well under a fiver a tin.

e.g. http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/KO-CHO-LINE-Leath ... p1638.m118

Also check your local Yellow Pages - there's bound to be local supplier to you.

This stuff is quite good, pedcar leather dressing, I use it mainly for waterproofing my work boots but I applied it to a pair of US roughout boots & it worked well, also used it on slings n stuff,

http://www.antiqueleatherdressing.co.uk ... ssic.shtml

Steve.D

My poor old boots!

Does anybody know how expensive it is to get hobnails fitted? Does one just replace the missing ones, or are you supposed to get the whole lot done? Given that a new pair is only £75, is it actually worth it?

just replace the missing ones - or like Jay said - get a cobbler to do it - saves you buying some cobbler equipment making sure it's done right

Finally found a decent cobbler (thanks for the recommendation, Tug) - 38 years in the business. He declared the leather on the soles of my low boots was "gone"! - which is why the nails keep coming out. He also said don't use dubbin on the soles!! It only exacerbates the problem of losing nails. I didn't manage to get out of him what I should treat the soles with, since that is where all the water soaks through. Personally, I think the soles might have been made of too soft a leather in the first place. My jackboots appear to have much harder leather on the soles.

Anyway, replacing the soles (handstitching them), and all the hobnails is about a third of the price of a new pair, so that's what I'm going for. Watch out for the next episode in this thrilling drama...

Hmm... did he say not to use dubbin on any boot soles or not to use dubbin on your particular boot soles? I can see that if a sole leather is too soft/thin that any treatment which makes it more supple is going to cause problems holding hobnails, but untreated sole leather plus water is going to be a disaster. Press him on the subject when you collect them - these old timers need to start giving up their trade secrets.

Yes, leather soles shouldn't need dubbin to waterproof them. All the leather soled shoes people have been wearing for centuries don't let water soak through after all!

It will be good to test your newly soled boots out without waterproofing of any kind - my guess is that quality leather will do the trick.

The problem with the leather soles is that when wet it expands (ie the leather absorbs the water) at which point you can loose hobs the question as to leather being waterproof is not as daft as it sounds... whilst it is on a cow well you'd have to ask them, but like skin its waterproof. However the tanning and drying processes of obtaining/treating the hide for manufactural use, reduces its natural properties to the heffers as null and void, get sodden it will soak right up inside the boot.

Drying them out is the other problem once wet if not treated, as then you'll end up with cracked soles and will have wasted £xxx amount on a pair of boots that need resoling.

Can't see dubbin helping anyways, infact I dunno where that idea came from, but I do use neatsfoot oil on boots I have more as a preservation against the drying out problem than hobs but it also works on that (as in it stops the abosorbancy of the leather with water, and thus stops it expanding )

PS leather on shoes as well as clothing has pretty much always been treated with something be it animal fat to modern methods

Heh, buy a swanky pair of leather brogues (say) and you wouldn't treat the soles and just use polish on the uppers. And you would never get them soaking up water or cracking to buggery when drying out (carefully). Good quality leather and stiching will see to that. Saldly, repro boots aren't made to military specs and could well be summed up as rubbish but OK to wear six times a year! It therefore follows that everything you can do to waterproof them is a good plan. Neatsfoot sure swells the sole leather (you can see it making the surface rough and lumpy) so I can see how it would grip the nails but once done I just seal with dubbin to stop water ingress.

BTW Helga, I thought the plan was to swell the leather to grip the nails = good. If neatsfoot swells the leather (which it does) then that's good but neatsfoot isn't a barrier to water such as wax based products such as dubbin.

I have a pair of army BCH boots that I use for my FallschirmJaeger impression. I've worn them straight out of the box with absolutely no treatment or polish of any kind. They got soaked a few weeks back so I stuffed them with newspaper and let them air dry in the kitchen for a few days. After the first day, a number of marks (like burst blisters) began to appear on the toe leather of both boots. As the boots dried out these marks multiplied. I picked off the loose bits of leather and applied a healthy dose of leather balm and then some clear dubbin, which made the boots look marginally less awful. The day after that the toe leather looked as if it had been shredded with a cheese grater. I was about to take issue with the guy in the shop who sold me the leather balm when my cat sauntered in and demonstrated the previously unseen How-Boots-Can-Make-A-Good-Scratching-Post maneuver. Obviously I have since had the animal destroyed.