 Hi there. G'day and welcome. My name is Tech and this is my channel Boot Lossophy, in which I talk about all things boot-related. Today I'm bringing you this, the Red Wing Iron Ranger. But full disclosure, this was a pre-owned pair of boots and they came well conditioned. So today it's not so much a review as an overview of what these second hand boots are like. It's a bit unfair for me to talk about Comfort and QC, because these are second hand and they were quite over conditioned when I got them, but more of that later. So what I'll do here is, I'll go over the history, then the aesthetic and style, and I'll touch on the construction method, and then I'll talk about how over conditioned they were and what I did to try to fix that. And finally, I'll talk a bit about whether it's worth it to buy boots from eBay. If you really want to review the Red Wing Iron Rangers, it's such a popular and classic boot that there are a lot of good reviews out there. I'll refer you to Stridewise, if I can put a link up here, which to me has done the best review of Iron Rangers. But ironically, his are also conditioning correctly. You should also take a look at my friend Charles Vashots on his channel, Gentleman's Journey. I hope I pronounced your last name right. Chuck only recently got his Iron Ranger, so I'll link his review up here as well. And finally, if you really want to get into Red Wings, there's a channel called CJ Cook, where CJ reviews I think just about every Red Wing boot going. And he did a review of an 8111 Iron Ranger a few years ago, and I'll put a link up there as well. So let's start. This is the 8111 Iron Ranger made by Red Wing Shoes, which was founded in 1905 and based in Red Wing, Minnesota, in the USA. No prizes for guessing how the company was named. The Iron Ranger boot itself was launched in 1922, originally designed for iron ore miners working in Minnesota's Masabi Mountains, or the Iron Range. The modern-day Iron Ranger is not that different from the originals at all. The first model was this classic 8111 model in brown, and today they have a wide range of leather makeups ranging from a rough-out tan to black and charcoal to a version in a copper-colored rough-and-tough leather. Red Wing itself is a big company. They rank in the top 50 largest private companies in Minnesota, with revenue estimates of around $570 million a year, and they have about 1,600 employees. In 1987, Red Wing became a really vertically integrated company when they bought SB Foot Tanning, a tannery that had been around since 1872. They now tan their own hides, design boots in-house, own the factories that make the boots, own retail stores in America that sell their product, and have agents and retailers all over the world. The only thing they don't do in that vertical integration seems to be to raise their own cattle. They make an enormous range of work boots and lifestyle boots under different brand names, including Works with an X, Irish Setter and VASC, as well as Red Wing. Their products are organized into work and heritage styles, and I don't really care where their boots are made as long as they're well made. But for those of you who do care, while some of their work boots are made outside the US, mainly in Asian countries, their heritage boots like the Iron Ranger are made in America. This particular 8111 Model Iron Ranger is in a leather that they call Amber Harness. The model numbers depict the different types of leather make-ups. If you close your eyes and describe a boot, chances are this is what you come up with. While these are American, you can Google images of, say, footwear of 1910s coal miners in the UK, and I reckon you'll find some very similar bulbous cap-toe boots. This really is the iconic boot style. It has a 16 shaft measured from the heel to the top of the shaft, with a nice curve down from the heel side, helping to ensure the front doesn't dig into your ankles when you're kneeling. It has five simple panels, a single piece backstay, two quarters, tongue and vamp, and the toe cap. It has big, bright nickel eyelets and speed hooks, four large eyelets and three speed hooks, and a semi-gusseted tongue, gusset up to the fourth eyelet before the speed hooks start. The last shape is very wide and bulbous at the front. From the top, you can see the generosity of the shape of the toes, the vamp, even the heel. From the side, the toe box, especially enhanced by that toe cap, is chunky and rounded. I keep saying bulbous because it is. Some people call them clown shoes because of the bulbous toe cap and the quite aggressive toe spring. And if you look at it, there is some similarity with Ronald McDonald shoes, but in fact it's a very proportionate shape. And the aesthetics, they do have a certain rough elegance about the lines. The back is very straight up and down. Some boots have a distinct heel cut, curving like Kim Kardashian's behind. But this one is just straight up and down. The simple basic style in a mid-brown leather makes this boot very versatile. You can wear it with any casual clothing, from jeans to any kind of blue denim style or wash, to brown, grey, green or black coloured jeans. Basically, any earth tones will go with this. It pairs just great with t-shirts, Henleys and polo shirts, with work clothing like chalk coats, canvas shirts, flannels and rugged casual styles. You can also wear them a little more stylishly into a kind of clean casual because they were designed to be used by miners to go out after work just polishing them up and go out to the pub. Not business casual though. Not with a smart pair of war pants, a business shirt and blazer. That's probably a button up shirt too far. Oh by the way, a quick note about sizing and fit. I measure US 8.5 in D width on a branded device. I consider that my true size on the basis that it's an objective measure and not some true to size against a sneaker size of some sort of foot drawing. These are a US 8D as are most of my American heritage style boots. I went down a half. They fit okay. They are roomy at the front but not sloppy and I quite like that. The heel is also roomy and doesn't hug my heel as some of the more modern fits like Parker's and Grant Stone. I'm not in love with that. It's not sloppy but I do prefer a snug fit at the heel. Okay briefly looking at the construction. The iron range is our Goodyear welter. This is a 270 degree Goodyear welter. A Goodyear welter is a strip of leather or other material that goes around the edge of the boot. In this case about three quarters of the way around hence 270 degrees. The inside of the uppers is curved in and then sewn to the inside half of the welt. And the soles are sewn to the outside edge of the welt so you can see the stitching here. The back of the boot at the heel that's glued and nailed to the footbed. The idea is that the line down the ankles to the bottom of the heel is more sleek and doesn't have that ledge of the welt as 360 degree welted boots will have. As you can see the outsole in these are the older cork nitrile sole. In 2018 Redwing changed this type of sole to a Vibram mini lug sole to offer more grip. This old cork nitrile sole is made up of a composite rubber mixed with small chips of natural cork. The composition provides grip, abrasion resistance, oil resistance and durability. But it's said that the smooth sole was more slippery than a lug sole so they changed to the Vibram. I don't think it's particularly slippery because the rubber composition is quite grippy and the advantages are that it's shock absorbing, quite low profile as you can see and it won't pick up dirt to drag into the house. Mind you I don't live in a place where there's snow and ice so my expectations are limited. The leather is SBFoot's oil tanned amber harness. After the hide is tanned and dyed it's finished in the bath of oils and waxes that permeates the fibres. The process protects the leather, makes it loads more water resistant as well as very supple. It feels softer to the touch and will have a pull up effect kind of like this. Redwing stitches the boots using a Puritan stitching machine with three needles at the same time. The Puritan stitch is a kind of stitch where each thread is double looped with one thread looped under the other. The Redwing Puritan stitching machine also draws the thread through a vat of wax so that the threads are waxed as they pass through the leather. The centre thread of the triple stitch is usually contrasting white. These have been through a lot of product which brings me to the over conditioning. As I said I bought these pre-loved from eBay. In fact they were hardly used. Most of the wear that you see on the heels and the sole were put there by me in the last year. I bought this quite a lot. Most of the stitching in the sole had not worn when I first got them. The stitches aren't channeled so they wear quite easily. You see they were bought by their original owners new but not as ordinary work or legistar boots. They were used by the original owners as a demonstration model. He's an Australian family business that make boot oils and conditioners. This is Artisan Sun. I'll put a link to their website in the description below. In fact if you go to their website and look at their portfolio photo wall you will see photos of this exact boot. Artisan Sun sell online and they go to country fairs and rogue shows in South Australia and Victoria showing off their products. In order to show people how their oils and conditioners work on heritage leather they whip out a pair of boots. This is one of them and proceed to oil and condition them. So when I got these they weren't heavily used but they were seriously well conditioned. The leather was extremely dark and not at all with any amber undertones. The leather was incredibly soft. I guess a testament to what conditioning your boots can do. Which in one way was a blessing because I hear that breaking in a new pair of iron rangers can be brutal because the leather is so tough. On the other hand the temper was ridiculously soft. See how I can just squash the shaft down. Now the leather is not weakened by it. I can still feel that it's tough and thick. But the over conditioning did change the texture and the color and it wasn't pleasant to the touch. It felt like the sticky bit of the back of a post-it note. It grabbed at your hands and the hair of a horse hair brush would stick to it. So I had to clean it up. First I tried to degrease them by using degreasing dish detergent. Just normal dish detergent that you use to clean a greasy pan. I rinsed them and then I used saddle soap to give them a deep clean. In fact I saddle soap them three times allowing them to dry each time. I didn't take any videos of the cleanup process but take my word for it the changes were gradual and not dramatic. The way I use saddle soap is to froth the saddle soap up in the tin and then brush it vigorously on the leather and then wipe it off with a rag or a paper towel. After the saddle soap they felt a lot less tacky and still look quite dark. So after watching a lot of cobbler videos my next step was to use acetone. My wife's nail polish remover. You need to be careful with this because it can cut into the structure of the leather but I basically use it to clean off any remaining waxes and polishes on the surface. On drying this had the most dramatic effect because it did lessen and eventually remove the dark brown color. I used an acetone rub three times. On the last acetone wipe before I dried it off I immediately used saddle soap again to wash the acetone off and rehydrate the leather. When that dried it finally felt like leather rather than like a sheet of oil or wax and the color had become a deep reddish brown. Finally I applied some mink oil to rehydrate but that did darken the leather back up again. In retrospect I probably should have used big four as that final conditioning. As you can see it has a deep brown color not as reddish undertone as the original amber harness but looking like it at least rather than like some German bar of dark chocolate. As I wanted more and more over the last year or so the leather has dried up more and it is really starting to look like what amber harness should look like after wear some conditioning and patina. It's still very soft but I think I'm quite glad of that. Now it's all that effort worth it. I have bought several pairs of boots from eBay. Sitting here in Australia if you can find a newish pair of pre-loved boots at the right price you could save well over 100 to 200 Aussie dollars or more as well as some 40 or 50 dollars in shipping. Now there are a number of things you need to check. The most important thing is that I check the soles and the heels. You want to check the wear because not only could it mean that you have to re-heal the boot at least it may be an indication that the insole is badly worn. Go through the photos minutely to review any nicks and cuts and if they're not clear ask for more photographs. I have a dozen or so things I check. If you really want to know my tips let me know in the comments below and I'll make a video about what to look for when I'm buying from eBay. My formula is pretty successful. I've bought let me see about 14 or 15 pairs now out of my collection of 55 so far. So 14 or so 15 pairs of boots from eBay and I can honestly say that most were new or almost new. They just didn't fit the previous owners and the others had some minor wear. I did buy a pair of red winged backman's that I had to replace the heel top lift on. I'll review that and this pair of very over conditioned iron rangers. Those are really the only two pairs I had to do anything with. I've bought most of my boots at over $100 saving from new that's my kind of measure. I won't buy anything where the savings is less than $100. In some cases I've got the best value on near new boots. I bought these for $300 when they sell here for $528. So not overused but over conditioned and I saved over $200. I don't think that's too bad a deal. Not the best of my buys but not too bad. I know my mate Skyler who's on Instagram is at Skyboot Guy. He's the eBay king and finds the most amazing bargains on eBay including some really hard to find boots. Go check his account out. So the answer to the question is buying from eBay worth it? Yes. If you apply some care and do your due diligence on the boot model and the booting question. If you have it folks my overview of these pair of pre-loved and over conditioned red wing iron ranges. I do like them. Who knows in future I may buy a brand new pair of iron ranges. When my psychology says it's okay to spend over $500 on boots. If I do I'll bring you a proper review. In the meantime I hope you enjoyed this video and if you did please click on the like button below and if you haven't already click on subscribe so that you'll be notified when I upload all the boot reviews and unboxings and brand discussions that I plan to do. Until then take care and I'll see you soon.