 G'day, how are you going? If you haven't been here before, my name is Tech. If you're a regular end subscriber, welcome back to Brutalosophy. As always, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands that I live and work on, the Wajib people of Nungabuja. And today, I'm actually staying in Australia because I'm taking a look at the Blunstone 650 Chelsea boots. This is Blunstone's Model 650 Chelsea Lightwork Boot. As you can see, it's a Chelsea boot design, but not the sleep-dressy designer, say an R.M. Williams craftsman. It falls in that blunt-nosed, chunky-soled, work-boot side of Chelsea boots. That Chelsea boot design goes back to Queen Victoria. She asked her bootmaker to design a boot without laces, because her laces and hooks kept getting caught in her stirrups when she was riding. So her bootmaker, Joseph Sparks Hall, designed a boot that also incorporated the new invention of vulcanized rubber into the strips at the sides, so that she could pull on these lace-less boots and they stayed snug. This was reputedly in 1837, when Queen Victoria herself had only just been crowned at 18 years old. So you can see a trendy teenager asking to buck the mold. Joseph referred to them as J. Sparks Hall's patent elastic ankle boots, which is clearly a mouthful, and so they quickly became known as paddock boots. Not only did Queen Victoria like them for riding, she found them so comfortable that she started to wear them daily as walking boots as well. Sparks Hall in his book, The Book of Feet, A History of Boots and Shoes, said that, quote, she walks in them daily and thus gives the strongest proof of the value she attaches to the invention, unquote. In 1961, a London shoemaker to the stage, Anelo and David, created a variant with pointy toes and a Cuban heel, especially for the Beatles, to go with their Beatles suits, and they became known as Beatle Boots. Throughout the swinging 60s, particularly with their association with trendy people in the King's Road in Chelsea, they became more generically known as Chelsea Boots. Their association with outdoor activities never got lost, though, and particularly in Australia, Chelsea Boots were associated with riding and mustering, where R. M. Williams started, and also as work boots. In fact, the Wikipedia listing for Australian work boots says that the Aussie work boot is an elastic-sided boot, typically constructed with leather uppers bound together with elastic sides and pull tabs front and back. And as work boots, blunnies are definitely casual boots. So what do you wear them with? The water is a little muddy because while traders here still wear blunnies as the quick pull-on work boots before they climb on a scaffold or pour cement or harvest grapes. They have become a bit of a fashion statement. In recent years, blunnies have also become a trendy fashion boot overseas, particularly in Canada, the UK and the US. In fact, any reference to blunnies in those countries are more likely about fashion and casual wear, and not much about working in them. So outfits are entirely casual. Jeans of all types, work pants in Australia, khaki work shorts, with t-shirts, singlets and workwear shirts. I wear them for work around the yard at home as well as for an afternoon at the pub. So I usually wear them with looser jeans or work pants and t-shirts, or if I'm in the sun, long-sleeve work shirts. Or I team them with nicer clean pants and a button-down shirt to go to the pub. And if I'm feeling really trendy, maybe jeans and t-shirts and a jacket to wander into a winery. Okay, so where do blunnestones come from? The Blunstone family arrived in Tasmania, Australia in the 1850s, and John Blunstone started Blunstone and Sons in 1870, first importing footwear from England before making his own designs, supposedly all-purpose footwear for the factories, cobbled streets, and surrounding farms of Hobart. The business grew after they won prizes for their designs in the 1894 Hobart International Exhibition, and then during World War I became one of the contracted companies to manufacture boots for Aussie soldiers. In the 1930s depression though, the Blunstone family sold out to the Cuthbertson family, who still own the company today. The original 500 series Chelsea work boot was created in the 1960s, and the company continued expanding, making a wide range of Chelsea and lace-up designs, and by the 1990s there were factories not only in Tassie, but also across a ditch in the land of the long white cloud New Zealand. In the 2000s, and here comes controversy, the efficiencies of capital were too much to ignore, and they transferred manufacture of most of their product to factories in six countries around the world, in Vietnam, India, China, Thailand and Mexico. The six countries Australia, yes, they still manufacture a line of boots in Australia. They make gum boots in Hobart. In making the strategic decision, they say that they chose their partners carefully, including famous names like Lafarge, Canary and Leon Mexico, suppliers to Thursday. Apparently they ordered their partner factories treatment of their people and the environment, and have their own ethics and QC inspectors situated at the factories. Look, I'm economically trained and I can see the efficiencies of globalism. In fact, globalism is a capitalist, free trade economic principle, and it's actually protectionism that's a socialist based economic concept. Keeping everything in house is how communist countries keep their citizens fully employed and under control. One thing though, if companies save and make extra profits, there are two things they can do. First, they can decide to take the money and run. Those companies I do condemn. The second route is to take the extra profits and to invest to make a better product. To some extent, Blunstone seems to have done this. For example, the thermoplastic polyurethane of TPU's soul was well known for a chemical reaction called hydrolysis. All TPU is susceptible to hydrolysis where basically the chemical compound in the TPU reacts with water in the tiny pockets within the TPU. If not worn all the time and to some extent squeezing out the water molecules, the TPU will degrade and actually fall apart. Blunstone has spent a lot on R&D and improved their TPU composition adding more polyether, which is hydrolysis resistant. Their current TPU souls in the 600s and 650s are much more resistant to hydrolysis and degradation than the old 500s. This is one example of what companies should do when making savings and is in fact the real economic theory of globalism. Just not many practice it. This 650 model is a new replacement for the original 550 style. The original 550 was the same boot as the original 500, except that it was lined. The 650 is the same, this is the lined version of the new 600. While you can still get the 500 and 550 styles, the 600 and 650 will gradually replace them worldwide. The 500, 600 and the 550, 650 are slimmer models than their more popular 585 style and distressed brown. These are made in a softer walnut coloured leather. The source of the leather is unknown. I think they actually have several sources, including LeFarck as I said earlier. But it's a nice supple leather, which they simply call a premium walnut leather. It doesn't feel oily, it actually feels quite dry, and because of that I suspect it's chrome tanned, it's not oil tanned at all. If you look closely it looks like full grain leather because you can clearly see real pores and skin grain. It's not a particularly heavy leather. It's about 2mm thick, maybe 2.5 to 3mm with the lining. But despite that, it does feel strong and durable. I have worn this on sandy desert bush country, where it's been savaged by some tough dry brush. And I worn it while working in the yard and while it is scratched, it's withstood the light work involved. There are five pieces of leather, the vamp, the two quarters, the back strip and on the instep of V-shape insert, which gets around the difficulties of shaping the leather around the instep of a lace-less boot. The toe is unstructured, but the heel has a light heel counter inserted between the uppers and the lining, and then it's stitched in place. The stitching is a lighter contrasting brown, I think quite attractive, standing out against a darker walnut. The stitching is pretty good, I'm almost certain it's computer-controlled stitching, so you'd expect that. The elastic gore is actually quite good. I quite abuse these boots when I pull them on and kick them off, and they haven't got slack. The stitching onto the leather seems pretty strong. There are two pull tabs at the top, front and back, and they're embroidered with the blunt stone logo and the words Tasmania Australia. People complain this is misleading, but to be fair, and splitting hairs, it doesn't say maidenest in Tasmania. Here's something that is a little misleading though. On the website, and repeated by retailer websites, they say it's leather-lined. In fact, on one retailer website I saw, it said they were fully leather-lined for added durability, comfort and breathability, unquote. Well, not true. The shaft is leather-lined, nice soft leather. But putting your hand inside the vat, you can feel that it's lined with a cloth material, something fleecy. Inside the boot is a comfy foam footbed, and they give you two sets of polyurethane removable insoles, one flat one, and one slightly moulded to give you a little arch support. The idea is that you can fine-tune the fit and arch support by putting one or both of these removable insoles into the boot. The blunt is not technically a re-solvable boot. Apparently it can be done, but the environment aside, many might question if it's worth spending probably just as much as for a new boot if you want to re-solve these. The reason it's not easily re-solvable is because it's a moulded shoe that's heat-formed onto the boot. The boot is lasted on a machine mould and then put into a heat mould and the TPU is injected into the mould to form around the bottom of the boot. When cooled, it's a lot more hardy than cemented outsoles and is totally waterproof in my experience. The goring even will expel water for a while, so if you don't stand too long in water, you can stand up to the top of the boot and the water stays out. I find the lugs in the outsoles very practical. They're very comfortable, quite squishy, and they're widely spaced enough that they don't pick up rocks and gravel like a Vibram 100 Commander sole. So our Aussie tradies building residential housing can walk outside on sand and then go inside without tracking in a lot of crud inside the house. As for leather care, not a lot of it is required, well at least as a work boot. If you wear them as a fashion item and you want them to look reasonably smart, you'll have to keep them cleaned and oiled. You can saddle-soak them if they get muddy and dirty, the leather is tough and durable enough to scrub them with a nylon brush if you want. Let them dry overnight and then condition them. I reckon you can condition them with pretty much anything you want from big four to even heavier open offs because these won't darken by much. However, my recommendation is a leather balm and two that I've used that I really like is RM Williams' Saddle and Leather Conditioner or an Aussie product called Oakwood Leather Conditioner. It's cheaper, smells like eucalyptus, is easy to apply, absorbs well and won't give this type of leather a waxy, shiny finish. It will also waterproof the boot without leaving a film. Even better, it's made of natural products, tea tree oil, eucalyptus oil, beeswax, emu or even lanolin. Wipe it on with a soft rag or use your fingers, let them dry for half an hour or more, then buff them with a rag and if necessary brush them out as well. I'll leave a link to the Oakwood Conditioner in the description below. When it comes to sizing, Blunstone being an Australian company uses the UK Sizing System. That's one size numbered down from US Sizing Numbers. Sizing is a convention, isn't it? What you call an eight, I might decide to call a seven, but it still measures the same. What complicates matters is when bootmakers don't follow true to size measurements. They make a boot that is one size in measurement, but then they give them a different sizing number, which is why there's so much debate and angst in boot forums about sizing, where you might measure say an eight and a half, but the bootmaker calls that measurement an eight. Bugger me why they can't just stick to the script. Anyway, my true to measure on a Brannock device, size is UK seven and a half. That's equivalent to a US eight and a half. In most US boots that I have across the widest range of makers, I take an eight. The usual half size down recommended. That's UK seven. In Blunstones, I find I do the same and come down a half size down from Brannock. So these are UK seven instead of my true seven and a half. Blunnies don't have different widths. Their half sizes are in fact the same length measurement, but a width wider. So I really would not buy Blunnies unless you can try them on. If you have really average feet, then you can chance it probably, go a half down from your Brannock size, but otherwise get fitted. Ultimately, that two insole option that I talked about earlier, it can help with a little micro adjustment to make it fit. If you do get the fit right as I have with these, they are extremely comfortable. The instep lasting and the grip around the ankle with the tight gore is really secure with no hot spots. The wide toe box is great for comfortable toes. The TPU outsole with a firmer layer at the bottom and the removable insole give it a perfect squish and shock absorption. I can stand and walk in these all day. Some people think redbacks and other Aussie work bootmaker are more comfy. Hmm, wait until my review of redbacks coming up next and I'll have a bit of a look at that. There was no break in required. The softer sole and the supple leather as well as the good Chelsea fit meant that there was no heel slip and every part of flexing and moving, not to mention the overall lightness was great out of the box. I would mark comfort highly if you get the fit right. Taking a look at whether these Blundstone 650s are worth it. Let's first take a look at the price. I bought these from a store called Trades, literally a store for tradies to buy clothing, safety gear and footwear. They cost me Aussie $130 and they were not on sale. I see that their official website lists them for a recommended retail price of $175. But literally every retailer sells them from $130 to $160 on average. Now to me, that's a fairly cheap full grain leather boot. It's not good year-welded and it's not re-sollable but it has pretty good leather uppers. It's certainly durable. Watching my builder mates and clients abuse theirs. It's comfortable straight out of the box so you can wear them immediately over long hours. They are light and easy to get on and throw off. They're hardly handmade but that's why it's at the cheaper end. But the QC on all this presumably computer control process, it looks pretty good to me. How long will they last? I took a straw poll of my mates who have them. Those who wear them as a casual boot say they've lasted five to six years at least. Those who work in construction say they wear out after two or three years mainly from damage to the uppers. Those who work in pastoralism on a vineyard or on cattle yards say that they last three to four years. Not bad really. So overall are they worth it? At the Aussie price, yeah. I can't find 650s and 600 on US sites but they show 500s and 550s at around 200 US dollars up to 220. In the US, Ariat, non-safety Chelsea work boots are less than that and you can get a good year-welded Chelsea boot from Thursday at about the same price as the US blundstone price. In the UK, discount websites list them for around 150 pounds. You can see how product pricing works, can't you? Where blunnies are an almost throwaway tradies work boot, they're priced reasonably. Once they become on trend and desired by the many, prices adjust accordingly. I think if I lived in the UK or the US, unless I'm looking for exactly this very iconic Aussie shape as a casual, in-fashion boot, I'd probably question the cost-to-value ratio. So there you have it. These 650 blundstones are light, comfortable and durable. They're waterproof and protective. At least in Australia, they're priced right for the market. The TPU sole has been improved for the effects of hydrolysis and they seem to be reliable now. On the other hand, they're not easily resolvable and again in Australia, will probably cost you more to resell than the original cost itself. Now if you like this review, don't forget to help me out by clicking on the like button below. And if you're not subscribed yet, why not? Don't forget to click on the sub button as well. I have quite a few new boot reviews in 2023 and I'm also gonna make more brand comparisons and best of videos. So if you're interested in those, subscribe and stay tuned. Until then, take care and I'll see you soon.