 G'day. Welcome to Bootlossophy. If we haven't met before, my name is Tech. Before we start, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands that I live and work on, the widget people. Now, you're wondering why I'm in an echoey little room here. This is my laundry room. That's because I'm about to do something with these iron ranger boots. So for those of you who have been following my channel for a while, you'll probably know that I own a pair of really well-conditioned iron ranger boots from Red Wing, if you don't go check out this video. But since then, I bought a second pair of iron rangers, both of them in Amber Harness, the old pair in this new pair. So with the newer pair, which is actually a pre-owned pair from eBay as well, which has a much better Amber Harness finish, I wondered what to do with the older pair that had been so well-conditioned. They actually look dark brown. Now, these are extremely dirty because I have used them as proper work boots. Even in Australia, where work boots like these are not really seen as work boots. They're seen as, you know, hipster-ish heritage boots. But I did use this as work boots, and again, you can check that video out. And as you can see, they're covered in all sorts of dust and cement dust. The sole is pretty much covered. It's scuffed and so on, but it's still that very dark color. This is the other pair. And I've decided that what I'm going to do is to clean these up, and then because I have a pair of Amber Harness where the leather is not as so, you know, soft and well-conditioned and oil-infused. I'm going to dye these black so that I've got a pair of black iron ranges. So let's start with washing them. So first things first, let's take off the laces so that I can actually get into the tongue area and really clean up these boots properly. I'm going to replace the laces with black laces. I'm not going to bother cleaning them up, but if you did want to clean your laces, what I normally do is put them into a little old jam jar full of dish washing fluid, shake them up a bit and then dry them out. Laces off. Next thing I'm going to do is basically just knock any loose dirt and dust off. There's not really much here. And then the next step is to get a hard bristle brush and really just start brushing away and getting some of the loose cement dust and grit and dirt off. Making sure you go right around the boot into the welt area, toe box, and then not forgetting behind the lace holes and the tongue gusset area. I'm going to come back to this boot in a minute, but let's do the other one. So once again, make sure the welt line is nice and brushed, all parts of the boot. I'm going to come back to this boot and just with an old toothbrush, make sure the welt line really is clean of dirt and dust and anything that might really harden into the leather. Same with this boot too much. Then I'm going to also clean the soles and make sure there's no dust and grit down there. That's going to come back up on the leathers. Then I'm going to start saddle soaping. So I'm using an Australian made natural leather soap made by Artisan Sun in a here in Australia. It's made of natural elements including little beeswax and so on. A hard gel and what I'll do spray a bit of water on it, a bit of water into the lids so that I can replenish the water supply as it were, get a doorber brush and really just create a bit of a foam, get some suds up, a bit more water. Once I've got sufficient sudsiness, sudsiness is a word, I'll start cleaning the boots. Now what I do is I suds up sections of the boot at a time so I know where I've been. So I'll start with the toe box and the vamp area and what I like to do is actually then dry off the soap, not allowing it to dry out onto the leather itself. I wouldn't worry about the edges. I'm going to come through with a wet toothbrush and clean those out. So I know that panel's done with more saddle soap and I'll do the tongue. Give it a good scrub to get all that dirt out and then wipe it off. What I'm trying not to do is actually soak the leather which can weaken it if you over-soak more saddle soap and then I'll do the quarters in the back counts area, the heel counter area. You'll notice that what I'm also doing is cleaning the heels and the edges. Come back to that boot in a minute. Let's start this one. A little bit more water I think. Unlike the seats to be reasonably damp. Again, toe box and vamp area making sure the welt and the edging is also scrubbed nicely. The tongue, I'm not sure if you can see on camera, but the suds actually turn a little brown as I'm scrubbing, which is really the dirt lifting off, which is a good thing. More suds. You can see it is a little bit dirty. And now the quarters and the heel stay area. The heel counter cover area. Not forgetting the heels and the edges. Once again, let's clean that off. Now some people will rinse this off and I don't because I really don't want like the leather getting wet. And you notice soap and things still on the edges, but that's fine. We're going to come around and clean that up. So let me just wash the brush and I'm going to allow my brush to get reasonably damp and just give it a good brushing over to remove any last bits of dirt, any last bits of suds without getting it totally wet and then dry it with my rag. This is a microfiber cloth with a wet toothbrush. Just get the suds off the edges and along the different panels behind the speed hooks. Final wipe off. Again, I'll just dampen the brush and you see the dab brush acts as kind of a rinsing off action without actually getting the boot all drenched. I will use the tap, though, right at the end to just rinse off the sole. Wet toothbrush. Just to clean out the welt area. It's important to do that, particularly as I'm going to dye it as well so that there isn't any remnants of suds and lather on the edges to maybe not absorb the dye. And finally, just a little drip and I'm just going to wash off the sole. There you go. Reasonably nicely washed up now. It is damp, no doubt about it, so I'm going to let it dry for 24 hours before I do the next step, which is the actual dyeing. So it's been over a week now and these have thoroughly dried from the washing. I've just ran out of time being very busy at work, so I haven't been able to get back round to these. For over a week now. What I did do off-camera so that I didn't bore the crap out of you, is I did mask the edging and the welt to make sure that the black dye that I'm going to put on these doesn't get into the welt. So the dye I'm using is a Terago Penetrating dye, which I got from my cobbler. It came with this ridiculous brush rather than the round applicator that you often see, like, you know, this is going to take me six hours. So I got a simple paintbrush. It may be except for the edging I might use this one. So the first thing I'm going to do is pour a little bit of this Penetrating dye, I suppose I should shake it. That's what you do with liquids. And then I'll pour a little of this Penetrating dye into this container. Now, this is a new background that I'm filming in because I didn't want to do this indoors or more to the point. My wife didn't want me to do this indoors. So let's just get this out of the way safely. So what I'm going to do is just basically start to apply the dye on to the boot and I'll start with the hard to reach places first. So I'll start dyeing the inside gusseted area of the tongue. Oh, by the way, after I'd washed and these had dried, I wiped them down with a mixture of 50% rubbing alcohol and 50% water diluted. Just to get rid of the last bits of oils and waxes and any kind of oily covering that might still have been on the leather. So I'm just liberally brushing it on, really, making sure I get as much coverage over the brown, what was once amber harness leather with this Penetrating dye. Now, I'm hoping I don't have to do two coats of this dye because I don't want it to be that well covered in black. Because I wouldn't mind if it does if a little bit of the brown does start to show through a little afterwards. The contrast white stitching on the sides, I think I'm never going to be able to preserve that. So I'm going to just cover it over with the dye anyway. And I think that's fine. But there will be some stained white stitching on the welt, which will be hopefully masked by this masking tape. I'm finding the dye extremely liquid, which I guess it has to be in order to penetrate the leather. I asked the cobbler, there are two types of dyes, apparently. This one will be absorbed into the leather, which is what I wanted. And the other one tends to sit on the surface. Don't worry about the staining of the the hardware, because I'll wipe them off in time. They shouldn't, the dye shouldn't stick to the chrome anyway. Yes, what I'm finding is that this dye really does soak into the leather. And I'm not sure if you can see it on camera, particularly in this bright sunlight that we're having a sort of late summer as we go into autumn. I don't know if you can see in this light that in fact, it's it's slightly blotchy as it gets absorbed. I'm hoping that it absorbs evenly. So I'm beginning to see that as it soaks in, it's see it is soaking in quite evenly. So my original concerns perhaps won't be met. It's going to make sure I get it correctly around this around the hardware. And I just noticed some brown bits on the tongue that I completely missed because I didn't want to paint the palm of my hands. And because the tongue is crinkly, it's actually quite hard anyway. Yes, so if I'm careful, I think I can avoid the necessity of a second coat. Just making sure I cover all the brown that remains and that I can see. Right, I'm just going to touch the edges of the collar. Just there. And I don't mind if this isn't fully covered in here, of course. Now, it's taking on the appearance of the washed amber harness. In other words, not particularly shiny, but that's fine. I'm going to condition these after they've been dyed. Put a little bit extra dye into this container. And let's start again with the inside of the tongue. You notice I'm wearing rubber gloves. Not my habit to do so. Again, these are instructions from my wife. I think I probably have to agree it's a reasonable caution. It's making sure I get in all the nooks and crannies in the edges of it, of each piece of leather. Did I get that? Yes, I did. If you're not careful, it can drip. And I'm hoping that doesn't mean it leaves streaks. It didn't appear to me at the boot where I, as you saw, I splashed maybe a little over liberally. Yes, as I was saying, once the leather dries, and I guess I should read the instructions to see how long that takes. Who reads instructions? Once the leather dries, I'm going to condition it because it then doesn't matter being a black pair of boots that it's over conditioned. And I'm not sure what I'll condition it. Maybe maybe just Venetian shoe cream. Because I think I'd like a sort of slightly less matte appearance than what it's looking at now. And a little wax in the Venetian shoe cream would be quite nice, I think. Oh, and another occupational health and safety measure, according to my wife, is I am actually wearing an apron. I believe she was concerned about staining my T-shirt, which I did the other day when I was repairing the shoes. Repairing the concrete cracks in our porch and my white T-shirt was well and truly ruined by cement stains as they splashed around. So again, just been careful to get amongst the stitches in the corners there. Yes, so as I was saying, I don't really want to put a second coat on because I'm hoping that with wear, some of this dark brown and maybe even the original amber harness leather will start to show through kind of like a T-core effect. T-core. That wonderful thing with black chrome XL that everybody hopes for, which apparently is quite fashionable these days to have your black aniline dye sort of rub through onto the original brown of the leather. Okay, I think that's just about done. I'll do this bit now. Iron ranges might be mid-priced boots, but doing something like this where you're actually diving into the stitching and the leather and so on, you get to tell really how well made they are. Right. There you go. Okay, I think I'm happy with that. We'll let it dry properly, let the dye dry properly. It is streaking and I'm not sure if you can see it, but I'm hoping that as it dries, there'll be less streaks and then once I varnish it, once I condition it with some wax and maybe a little polish, that should be fine. Okay, so we'll let it dry. I'm back and this is becoming the longest video I've ever made. I don't mean the length of the video, but the amount of time it's taken me to do this from start to finish from actually cleaning out the boots right through to dyeing them and then getting to this stage. It's taken weeks, partly because I've been busy and so I've had gaps in between, but oh my gosh, let's finish this off. So here are my new from eBay boots, new to me boots, the 8111s iron ranges. I think earlier in the video I might have said 8011, which of course is wrong because that's the copper rough and tough. This is the amber harness and I really like this sort of iconic boot and as those of you who've watched my earlier videos will know that I got an earlier pair that was seriously over conditioned. So when I saw these come up on eBay for actually 100 Australian dollars less and I got the other one, I had to get it, which left me with a decision of what to do with the older pair. And as you saw, I cleaned it up and dyed it and here we are. There it is in black. Ignore that little patch. It's actually a reflection of the light directly above me. So I've dyed it in black and I've given it a one silver with Venetian shoe cream and then a little cream polish just to give it a little bit of a sheen. It's not shiny by any means. I guess I could put some wax polish on it, but I'm quite happy with the way this is. So as you can see, I now have two pairs of iron ranges. They're both 8111s, but here is the original amber harness color and here is my dyed in black pair. So, you know, I hope you stayed with me to the end. I hope you enjoyed it because it's taken me a hell of a long time to do this. Look, keep in touch. You do that by subscribing and if you like this video, click on like and take care of yourselves. Come on back to this channel to look for more boot reviews and until next time, look after yourselves.