 G'day, how are you going? Welcome to Brutalosophy and if you're new here, my name is Tech and as I work and live on Wajik Country in Western Australia, I acknowledge the Wajik people of Nungabuja. Today, I'm taking a look at this very laid-back work boot, the Red Wing 3139 Work Chaka. This is the Red Wing Work Chaka Boot. The model number is 3139 which indicates it as the Work Chaka Boot in the Copper Worksmith Leather Makeup. It's 105mm tall or a little over four inches. I don't have a lot of chaka boots so this is a slight variation in my collection which is focused more on six inch or above boots. As a chaka, basically an ankle length boot, it has only three islands and is built around what is quite a slim last for Red Wing boots which are more focused on round and bulky toed work boots like the Iron Ranger or the Blacksmith or the wider Rumi Alasip Mok Toe boots. You can see the slimness of the design from the top and from the side. The toe box is also sleek and has a low volume. The stitching pattern, especially along the quarters and on top of the vamp, add a very attractive interest starting with the famous Red Wing Puritan triple stitch on the quarters and this interesting vamp piece that sets apart from the quarter and making the stylish joint to the tongue. It's set on a slim wage sole so the whole appearance is almost dressy. As I said the boot style is a chaka and the most famous example of a chaka is of course the Clark's Desert Boot. As far as categories go, a desert boot is always a chaka but not all chakas are desert boots. The chaka boot design goes back to the kingly sport of polo in India. In polo a chaka is a playing period of about seven minutes. You have between four to six chakas per game. They weren't actually worn in the game when players wore riding boots or jog per boots. I know the chaka boots were usually worn after the game when the players met up in the club bar to enjoy gin and tonic after the match. Particularly in India chakas were made of softer suede or calf skin and provided sole feet with comfort after the game. The Clark's Desert Boot is a specific type of chaka boot designed by the Clark family after they saw how the Indian and South African officers in the desert war of the 1940s wore these very comfortable boots instead of the British Army's stiff service ammo boots. The desert boot was put on top of a crepe rubber sole for comfort and for stealth and was originally made only off suede for the comfort in the heat and was of a stitch down construction to keep the sand out. A chaka as a wider category class includes desert boots but also includes ankle boots with a low number of eyelets made up of any material and can be on a different type of heeled or flat sole. So that being said chaka boots tend to be on the casual side but there are makers such as Ellen Edmonds, Carmina, Crocodon Jones and Loak who make chakas in dressy smooth leathers that can even be worn with a suit. In this case these can't be worn with a suit. Some might try but certainly they can be worn as business casual. They work with simple dark pants and a business casual top such as a button down with or without any layers. They'll work with any kind of chinos and because of their coppery red color can match colors ranging from earth tones like brown to other neutral colors like black or navy. Since redwing labeled them as work boots obviously they'll also go with jeans and your rugged casual kind of gear. The redwing name work chaka puzzles me a little bit. Now work as it relates to boots can be a contentious subject from the um hey dude you don't work so you can't wear a boot for eternity. The term work heavily signifies manual labor. Most others would retort. I work too buddy. I work at a desk or in a hospital or I drive for a living or whatever. Anyway redwing however being predominantly a work boot as in manual work work boot company when they name this a work chaka I have to assume they mean that you can wear this for manual labor. If so I'm saying it's a pretty restricted kind of manual labor. Being a short boot it's not particularly protective or supportive although the leather is thick and I'll go more into that later but being so sleek lasted it's not exactly comfortable when you're kicking things around at work. I can't see a concrete worker or a steel worker wearing these in place of their technical work boots. I can't see tradies wearing these in in place of their blunt stones for example or their redwing mock toes. According to their website the work chaka line were made for indoor work so what we're talking about office workers or people like finishing carpenters and cabinet makers. So let's take a look at the maker redwing shoes. If you haven't heard of redwing you're either new to the world of boots or you're a newborn child. Redwing loom large in the field of boots and are themselves an enormous company. They are amongst the top 50 largest companies in their home US state of Minnesota. Some estimates of their revenue have them earning nearly 600 million US dollars a year in sales. So a big company. They were founded by Charles Beckman in 1905 and are still based in the town of Redwing Minnesota and that town having a population of under 20,000 I assume it's a bit of a company town. In the late 1980s they bought an old tannery founded in 1872 called SB Foot Tanning. This allowed them full vertical integration in their operations from design to manufacture to retail. Redwing make a huge range of footwear not only as Redwing but also under different brand names like Works and Irish Setter. The Redwing brand is now split between their workwear category and their heritage boots. Some of the products are now made outside the US primarily in Asian countries but their heritage lines are still made in Minnesota in Missouri and Kentucky. Of course their most famous heritage boots are the Iron Ranger and the 6 inch mock toe boot. Now let's move on and look at how these are put together. As usual I'll start from the bottom and I'll work my way up. Under it all is a Redwing proprietary wedge sole they call the Atlas Tread sole. It's a polyurethane plated sole which is a polymer compound really not a rubber. That polyurethane layer is made on top of a blown rubber layer in the wedge so it gives you durability because of the toughness of the polyurethane along with comfort because of the bounciness of that blown rubber. The sole pattern is an interesting one. I've never seen anything like it before. It does provide good grip under most conditions including wet ones but the deep treads do tend to get dirty even if you don't pick up stones and gravel. The sole is attached to the uppers using a 360 degree Goodyear welt construction. The advantage of a Goodyear welt is that it's water resistant and it can be easily re-sold. I've done a video on Goodyear welting if you want to see it. I'll leave a clickable link up there. Basically it's a strip of leather called the welt and it's affixed all the way around the boot. It's sewn on the inside edge to the turned-in uppers of the boot while the outside edge of that welt is then sewn to the midsole. Often it's also sewn through to the outsole but as in most wedge soles that's not what happens here. The welt is sewn to a rubber midsole and then the wedge outsole is glued onto the midsole. Some people freak out when they don't see a stitch under the boot or they freak out if they see a stitch but it's not set inside a channel to protect that stitch. They think the outsole will fall off. Actually the stitch going through the outsole is only a reinforcement. Usually the glues that bootmakers and cobblers use if applied, activated and attached properly is strong enough to hold on any outsole. Inside the boot is a cork filler that fills the cavity caused by the 4mm thick welt going around the outside edge of the boot. The cork filler gives long-term comfort as a foot bed. Embedded in the cork filling is a steel shank to give the arch of the boot some stability. Although I have to say that I'm never really sure why a wedge sole boot with no gap between the heel and the ball of the foot needs extra arch stability. Further on inside the boot is a thick leather insole. This is glued on top of the cork filling and steel shank. You can see it when you look inside the boot. I'm not sure the camera can pick this up. I can't measure the thickness of it but from sight I'd say it's also a very hefty 4mm of veg tan goodness. The thick leather insole is also an aid to long-term comfort as it will mold to the shape of your foot with long enough wear. So moving on up, the uppers are made from SBFoot's oil-tanned leather in a color that they call copperworksmith. That's a good description. The color is very reminiscent of a deep burnish copper with some undertones of purplish gray in certain light which is why I've substituted the usual tazlon laces that come with the boot with these blue-gray laces which I think really bring up that deep copper color. As I've said, Redwing own SBFoot and they've been around for 150 years anyway so you can say that they know how to tan leather. While oil tanning is a centuries-old method of tanning leather in mostly fish oils, today it's really a way of finishing the leather in the tanning process. I'm pretty sure at SBFoot the hides are chrome tanned and then when wet the hides are finished by soaking in a rotating drum full of oils, other tanning agents and the dyes. What's produced, in this case at least, is a 2mm thick leather that's supple and at the same time tough and hardy, especially where reinforced by the canvas lining in the vamp. The leather can feel stiff. Inside the boot, as I've just said, the vamp is lined with canvas but the shaft is unlined. The tongue is lined with the same leather backed up on itself, turned around so that the two rough outsides are stitched together. The tongue is ungusseted but it's short and it's two layers thick so there is no tendency to slip to one side or the other. The heel counter is internal, it's not very thick and I don't know for sure but the flexibility makes me think that it's leather rather than some sort of plastic. On the inside, again I'm not sure the camera will pick it up, it's covered by a suede heel counter cover. The suede's supposed to grip your sock and prevent heel slip. On the outside the stitching is even and clean, there's the famous Puritan triple stitch with a single contrasting stitch. The Puritan stitching machine, which was first patented in 1893, actually stitches all three stitches at the same time and Redwing have their own full-time staff to repair and maintain their machines. The pattern is really attractive with this little gap between the quarter pieces and the vamp piece, quite unusual. There are three simple nickel eyelets and the edges of the facings and the collar are all nicely rolled. It's not too hard to take care of this leather, it's an oil-infused leather so should keep itself reasonably hydrated unless you take it for a swim or through equally harsh conditions. As always the key is to keep it clean. Give it a good brushing with a good horse hair brush after every I'd say three or four wears and if it picks up sand and dirt give it a wipe with a damp cloth to remove the worst of the dirt. If you do use this as a work boot I would clean it every day and I would try and leave it for a day or two before you pick it up again. If it really gets dirty you can saddle soap these boots. I have conditioned this pair once with a little smear of Neitzfoot oil. It didn't darken the leather at all and to my touch has replaced the oily field of the leather without making the surface tacky or oily. You can I think also safely condition it with Venetian shoe cream that's my go-to conditioner for pretty much all of my smooth leather boots or I'm sure you can also use a big four. Check out the description below for some links to where you can get these conditioners and other care stuff. Now to sizing and fit. If you subscribe to my channel and if not why not you should click on subscribe now. If you've been following my other videos you know that I'm true to size on a US Brannock device at 8.5 D width. That equates to a UK or Aussie size 7.5 in a regular or average width. However in my Heritage Star boots I usually wear an 8D because for some reason boot companies make boots larger than they really are. So I wear an 8D in my iron ranges in the roomie number eight last and also an 8D in my 875 mock toes in the even roomier number 23 last. This is Red Wings 210 last. A last is the foot shape mold that the boot maker stretches the leather over to create the shape of the foot. So obviously apart from being foot shaped the last is also shaped in the shape of the design of that particular boot. The 210 last is a slim last as you can see. It's a definite almond shape of the toe and sneaks in quite a lot from the ball of the foot into the toes. This is an 8D as well and I have to say that while it fits it is snug. The length is right I have easily a thumbs width ahead of my toe to the end of the boot. The width at the ball of the foot is fine. The knuckles of my toes don't feel particularly squeezed where I do feel the snugness is in the toes especially my little toes where the last starts to curve into the tip. They don't hurt but I suspect once they really break in they'll be fine. But at the moment I feel like I really need to rub my toes in the evening when I take these off. Do you know the feeling? These are not fully broken in yet so the sole is stiff still the leather is stiff and not yet warmed up by the heat of my feet over time. The insoles still feel stiff. They're vegetarian leather and I've not made any impression on them. I have a lot of boots and chuckers are not my favorites so I don't wear these often enough so they haven't really broken in. They're not my most comfortable boots so I tend not to wear them a lot it's a vicious circle. So guys I'm actually going to sell these. I'm going to put them up on eBay so check up my username there drive 788. I'll put them there in the next few days if I haven't already by the time I upload this video. Otherwise DM me and my Instagram account techo-t-e-i-k-o-h or one word. I'm going to ask I think Aussie $200 for them. I'll find out postage to you wherever you are and I'll let you know if you contact me. So on to cost and value. In the US they sell for US $280. You can buy them in Australia from time to time they're not always available for around 420 to 500 Aussie bucks. You can get iron rangers here for just over 560. The classic 875 mockto for about $550. I wouldn't even begin to compare them with Clark's Desert boots which you can get for under $200. There's just no comparison between the quality of the make or of the materials. A closer comparison might be made with Doc Martens who also have Chuckers that they sell for between $200 and $300. But even then be aware that those are not Goodyear weltered but they rely on DM's heat welting which is not as easily resoldable. So all in all it's probably a bit more expensive than other Chucker boots you can get but honestly a level above in terms of construction, in terms of quality and in terms of the materials. As I've said Chuckers are not my favorites but if I were looking for a tough casual Chucker would I buy these? Yeah I would at that price. So there you have it guys and gals. On the one hand it's a tough well-made boot and with Redwing's brand reputation it's pretty much a winner. On the other hand is it too tough for casual wear? I haven't really been able to break them in with my casual wear. I don't know I've laid it out for you so you be the judge. I hope you like this review if you have you know the drill click on the like button to help me grow my channel and therefore allow me to bring you more reviews. And if you haven't already click on subscribe so you get to be notified when I upload more boot reviews when I upload more deep dives into brands and I make videos about comparisons and long-term wear reports. Until then take care and I'll see you again soon.