 Hello, how are you going? My name is Tech. If you're new here, welcome to Bootlossophy, my channel that reviews boots, dives into bootmakers and generally looks at all things boot related. Today I'm looking at the Timberland Chucker Boot from the Redwood Falls series. Is it a chucker boot or is it really an ankle boot? This is what Timberland calls a chucker boot. I bought this in Singapore which is a country that loves Timberland as a fashion brand and Timberland boots and clothing are the best sellers all year round. I can't actually remember what it was called but it definitely was labelled as a chucker boot and recent research seems to show me that it's part of the Redwood Falls range of outdoorsy short boots. That's one thing about Timberland. It is such a huge international boot company that its range is more like sports shoes like Nike or Adidas where designs change every season and what you bought a couple of years ago just aren't made anymore because they're out of season or out of fashion. Sure they have some perennials like the iconic yellow boot. I've reviewed it here if you want to watch that review and a few others like the original earthkeeper boots. But as for the other boots they make, frustratingly they swim in and out of stock from time to time. They even seem to have different models for different geographic markets. For example I was in London a couple of years ago and I went into a big Timberland store there looking for something that was similar to these boots. No, it didn't exist. Timberland is a big internationally selling company and as such they make their boots in a variety of different countries practically in every continent in the world. As a large international company it makes sense that their customer feedback systems tell them what's popular in whichever market and so their sales and production teams will react accordingly. Looking at the various websites, yes, they have one website for each country. I can't really find a similar pair although I do see similarities with other boots that they have on the Singapore website that are referred to as Redwood Falls boots of one model or another in that range and they come in mock-toe as well as plain-toe versions. And just to complicate things further, Redwood Falls boots on the Australian and US websites are something different altogether. Anyway, it's a moving feast so if anyone recognises this model and actually knows what it's called, put something in the comments below. Put me out of my misery, maybe even put a link to a website. But one thing I'm sure of, Timberland do call this a chucker boot. There are other boots on their various websites that are chucker boots of a similar height with four or five eyelets. To many people though, this is not a chucker boot. To most people, a chucker boot is ankle high, a short ankle high and there's only two or three eyelets and that seems to be the main point of definition, the number of eyelets. There are some myths about the history of the chucker boot but from what I can gather, they originated in India in the late 19th, early 20th century, uniquely amongst polo players who wore them after a game of polo when they changed out of riding boots into something more comfortable to have their gin and tonics or a cup of tea. They became popular in the 1940s when the British officers in the North African campaign saw their Indian army cousins wearing these in the Cairo lounges and thought that they would be great for the desert war because they were a downside more comfortable in the hot sand than standard British army issue thick service boots. They started getting them made in the Cairo bazaars but modified the design by using crepe rubber soles for comfort and the ability to creep silently in night battles. They used suede so they were easy to look after and used a stitch down design from their South African colleagues, voucher and construction boots. Nathan Clark who served in North Africa as a soldier saw his officers wearing these boots and took one home to his family shoemaking company which started to produce them for casual wear in the late 1940s, more so the 1950s after the war and so the Clark's desert boot was born. The design really took off in the 1960s when moths wore them in England and it was picked up in Hollywood by celebrities like Steve McQueen. While all desert boots are chuckers, not all chuckers are desert boots. If you really want to be nerdy, you can quote that chucker boots look like desert boots but traditionally have a thin leather sole and have a more formal structure than desert boots which are usually unstructured and have basically only two pieces of leather, the vamp and both quarters as one piece. At any rate these timberland boots fail as chucker boots primarily because it has slightly agreed that chucker boots are low ending at or under the ankle bone and they have only two or three maximum of three eyelets. These end slightly above the ankle bone and they have four eyelets plus one set of speed books. Apparently according to my Facebook boot enthusiast group friends these are more correctly called an ankle boot. What is an ankle boot? Oh dear god let's not go there. Instead let's take a look at how these boots are constructed. The uppers are full grain leather but looking at it closely it's corrected grain meaning the grain surface has been lightly sanded to remove imperfections to make a perfectly smooth leather that's uniform and easy to handle in large-scale boot manufacture. This is a distress leather. I think it's actually an oiled new buck, oiled and waxed in the tanning. It has that soft nappy feel of new buck but also feels quite waxy to the touch. You can feel the nappiness of the new buck but it is waxed down so that when you run your hands over it the wax moves over the napple of the new buck creating that distressed look. It has a good feel in the hand and it is soft and supple but it's actually quite thin at one and a half mils. That's suede like thickness. I've no idea what tannery or country the leather comes from. Timberlands say that they I quote source the majority of our hides from US cattle that are raised for food and processed according to USDA guidelines. That's not the only source. They're going to say additionally we have banned the sourcing of the hides from certain countries or regions where we have learned of animal husbandry concerns. So some effort put into ethical sourcing anyway. That's a good thing. The leather is waterproof. It was advertised as a waterproof boot when I bought it. The tongue is the same leather and it is gusset right up to the fourth island but it's got a canvas gusset. While the leather and the joint between the uppers and the sole may be waterproof I'm not sure if this canvas gusset is a weak point or not. I haven't had wet feet in the rain though but I haven't waded through a river anyway. The hardware looks like brass. I'm not sure if they are and they're all bent in order to protect the tongue which is a good thing. I'm pretty sure the last thing that's when they stretch the uppers into shape over a last as well as the stitching is mass produced through a production line process. While handmade boots do necessarily mean that a person hand stitches the boot it usually does mean that a human hand guides the boot through the sewing machine and certainly a human being stretches the leather over the last and hammers it into shape. In this case I reckon it's all production line with dozens of boots being mechanically stretched over a line of lasts and there's a computer controlled sewing machine in there somewhere. As a result the stitching is perfect. Perfectly aligned stitches no loose stitching no wheel marks or stuff ups to be seen. That's to be expected when machines make everything exactly the same although obviously things do get screwed up from time to time and so I have to conclude that QC in Timberland is pretty good. The toe is unstructured and despite the backstay the heel is structured with a very thin piece of something probably cardboard because it really feels soft. I say probably cardboard because there's quite a fair amount of synthetic material in this boot. It's fully lined with a cotton fabric lining quite comfortable but I find it can make my feet smell and hot weather unlike leather cotton doesn't really wick sweat away. Now let's move on to the sole. Like the classic Timberland 6 inch newbuck yellow boot the sole is attached using thermally injected polyurethane. The uppers are stuck into a mold and molding TPU is injected into the mold and as it cools it's stuck to the uppers. This means totally not resoldable. Once you wear the sole out the boots are throw away. It's not an expensive boot after all so I think this is perfectly acceptable because the leather is probably not going to last much longer than the sole and if you get three or four or more years every day wear out of it your cost per wear is pretty acceptable in my opinion. The molding of the sole creates a welt-like design purely for aesthetic purposes with some molded stitching involved. The upside is that this is totally waterproof because the direct injection of multi TPU creates a complete seal. The insole is just cardboard with a canvas color and Timberland gives you a padded foam removable footbed for comfort. The molding of the outsole creates a great grippy pattern. I don't know what you call this pattern not quite lungs not a commander pattern like the classic six inch boot. More like a what would you say a criss-cross of rosettes that form a good pattern that grips but also doesn't pick up gravel and dirt. Overall as man made as the materials are the TPU sole and the foam footbed make for a pretty comfortable boot. There's lots of shock absorption. Now let's take a look at sizing. I take a UK 7.5 true to size in an average width that translates in numbers to a US 8.5D. By true to size I mean as measured on the Brannock device. The Brannock device is one of those things that you stand on in a shoe store. The salesperson will slide the sliders around to measure the length of your feet and the width of the ball of your feet. In heritage American boots like the Iron Ranger, the Higgins Mill and Alden Indies I take an 8D. That's the usual thing that they advise you to go down half the size. Timberland run large. These are an 8 wide. I tried an 8 standard in store. Timberland don't have BCDE widths. They just have standard and wide. I tried an 8 standard in the store and it was just a bit too narrow. I tried a 7.5 wide and it was just a bit too short. So like my six inch classic Timbs the best size for me seems to be this 8 wide. It's okay. It is roomy. Pretty roomy. I've taken to using an orthotic insert to fill up the volume and also to give me a little more arch support because this thing does not have a shank. That's a piece of steel or plastic that runs across here supporting this gap. A shack gives the heel foot structure rigidity. Without a shack the pressure of your feet into the boot can cause the unsupported sole structure here to deform. In time over the day this can give you very tired feet. The orthotics with built-in arch support help. Once I've found the fit apart from needing the add-on arch support they're actually very comfortable. That's another advantage of this type of mass produced boots from a good manufacturer. They are designed to wear comfortably right out of the box. They don't have thick rugged leathers in the uppers. They don't have thick heel counters that give you heel slip until they break in. They don't have multiple leather and cork soles that are stiff until they break in. So no breaking required because there's nothing to break in just like your Nike's or Reebok's which you don't break in do you? Mind you such a shoe from a bad manufacturer could be quite uncomfortable. If not out of the box then over time as things start to break down they wouldn't be as well designed around the foot and the way they're actually put together you know large seams badly placed seams that sort of thing could cause aches and pains in various parts of your feet as you wear them. I think overall if you compare these to quality good year-welted or similarly well-constructed boots they probably only rate four or five out of ten because of the materials and the construction method. But for comfort oh gosh I think I'd go as high as saying eight out of ten. Turning to leather care now I don't actually think you need any. It's treated in such a way that I don't think you need to baby it. It's a new buck that's waxy enough to stay reasonably moist. It's presented in a distressed state so it doesn't need polishing. I think if you really did want to condition it something like Smith's leather bar would work. Once when I got drenched and spattered in black-score clay after a trip to the northwest of Oz I did wash it off with water, hosed it basically and then applied a smear of Aaron Williams saddle dresser. Woked up fine. That means what you can wear it with is also easy. It's a casual no worries boot so you can match it to any casual gear jeans not so dressy chinos, t-shirts flannels, jeans and polos that sort of thing. It's very much a timberland aesthetic on a lumberjack and I'm okay. It's that kind of vibe. Now this is where I usually talk about value but I'm a little at a disadvantage because I cannot remember how much I bought it for in Singapore what five or six years ago. I want to say that they were around 250 to 300 Singapore dollars but I'm not sure. Probably more than 250 dollar M. Most timberland boots apart from the classic six incher sell for around that much in Singapore and that's about the same in Australian dollars. It's about one for one and translates to about 180 US dollars. I think though looking at the US website they probably sell for something less in the US at around 130 dollars. So anyway let me talk about that subjective thing called value. Not from a monetary perspective but from a use perspective. From what I've said about the construction of leather maybe you're expecting me to say these are cheap boots and not worth it. Well actually I take all that lower quality production thing on board and I actually like these boots for what they are. I really like the aesthetic, the slightly bulbous toe and the slight toe spring, the chunky sole, the chunky yet slim shape, the distressed leather even the not chakka hype. I like the look of it. They are waterproof. I've worn them in heavy rain and muddy conditions. The sole is very grippy in muddy conditions and worse when you step off the mud onto wet slippery brick paving. They're easy to clean and take care of. I hose them down basically and they are once you sort out the arch support comfortable to wear and walk around in. What's the value as a knock about boot to me? Not bad. Not something I'd reach for every day but when I do I feel comfortable and safe. I'd give it at least a seven or eight out of ten. Okay so that's it. My opinion of the timberland may be chuckets. That's maybe something in the Redwood Falls range of boots. I'd love it if someone could actually tell me what this is called. Maybe someone from Singapore. Anyway I have loads more boot reviews and unboxings to upload so if you like this video I hope you show it by clicking on the like and subscribe buttons below. If you do subscribe YouTube will also tell you when I upload my videos so if you'd like to watch videos about boots well you saw it. 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