 G'day. How are you going? Welcome to my bootlossify channel and my name is Tech. I'm on budget country in Western Australia and I recognize the traditional custodians of this land. In this video, I'm going to talk about the Goodyear-Welt construction method that you hear about so much when you learn about boots. Something a little different this time. You're going to test my drawing skills. So let's go through the Goodyear-Welting methodology and as I go through it, I'll show you the different types there are. The first thing that happens is the bootmaker will take out a last, which is this is what this is, an old vintage one that I bought from an antique shop. And to start off with, they'll put an insole and then they'll stretch the uppers down the last and tack them in. So what it will look like in cross-section will be the uppers doing that sort of thing with an insole already placed on the inside, not necessarily sewn to anything at this stage. Now, the Goodyear-Welting method uses a Goodyear-Welt, which is basically a strip of leather that goes all the way around the boot. And that's all partway around the boot, 270 degrees, and I'll talk about the difference between the two, and that welt forms a little bit of a barrier. So what happens is that strip of leather in cross-section will look something like this on the two sides. And what they then do is they'll flange the uppers inwards like that and then put a stitch through the welt and the inside of the uppers, and that's called the Goodyear stitch. Interestingly, it's at this stage where we can deal with at least one of the controversies, which is this insole. Traditionally, that insole has always been leather, but modern boots can make them out of cardboard, reconstituted leather pieces, artificially made lining. On top of that, you might sometimes find a sock liner or a removable insole just for a little bit of comfort, and that's where you might have a little thin piece of foam. So the controversy is that if this is not leather in particular, it won't necessarily mold your feet as your feet compress into it, and it will eventually break down and cause your feet to be uncomfortable. But let's go on with the Goodyear welting. So once that welt is put on, you then have your midsole. But of course, before you put your midsole on, if you spot the thickness of the welt, there is this little cavity here caused by the welt, and that's usually filled in with cork. And therein comes your second controversy, because sometimes nowadays that's actually filled in with artificial foam or poron or something else other than cork. And once again, the discussion is that without the natural materials of cork and leather compressing down there, it just doesn't give you that natural feel, nor does it mold your feet. But if we continued further, we would then have the outsole, and there are two methods of construction. Sometimes the outsole is sewn right through the outside of the welt, sometimes the outside of the welt is sewn just to the midsole, and this is glued, and that's why you don't see the stitching on the outside of some boots. So if you take a look at some different boots now, if we take a look at the Parkhurst Richmond boot, which is a Goodyear welted boot, you can see it's a 360 degree Goodyear welted boot. Because that welt goes all the way around. If you look at it through the layers, you can see the outsole, which is glued and stitched on. You can see the stitches. You can see the midsole just there, and you can see the thickness of the welt. I'll talk about this flange in a minute. So you can see that the welt separates the sole construction from the upper, and indeed that's one of the reasons why this is gold standard. Because you have a stitch going through there, or all the way through there, and another stitch going through just the inside between the welt and the uppers. And any moisture can't get directly through because if they get leached up there, they go up, and it will be a hell of an effort through all that glue to get leached in here. And that's why it's often referred to as water resistant. Now if we look at different welts, this flange here is called a split reverse welt. Sometimes it's confused with a storm welt. Now a split reverse welt is basically that welt. If you think about it, a thin piece of leather like that is split part of the way through. And then it's flanged up, and the uppers are put there, and the goodness stitch goes through there. And that way, that little bit of flanged welt pushes up against the uppers and makes it even more water resilient. Now the difference between a split reverse welt and a storm welt is that in a split reverse welt, you can see that the edge of the leather is actually quite raw because it's split. It's the edge of the leather. A storm welt on the other hand, like on these Taylor stitch bleeds, you can see that it's actually finished. So a storm welt is actually a welt that's been carved with a little ridge, and then the uppers do that. You stitch through there, and you stitch through there. And again, because that's actually carved as opposed to being split, you get a nicely finished edge there. I hope you can see that. And it flanges up, and again, increases water resistance. A normal flat welt, like on these Grant Stone diesel boots, does not have that flange. It's just flat, and it's sewn all the way through. It's similar to these. So that's the difference between the welts. Now I talked about 360° and 270°. The boots I've been showing you so far are all 360° good you wilted because the welt goes all the way around. However, if you take a look at these red wing blacksmiths, the stitching only goes up to just the start of the heel. So it goes 270° or three quarters of the way around. The reason for that, in theory, is that if you did a 360° good you wilted, you would get a little bit of a lip in the heel. And that's not as dressy as where you tuck the uppers in, and there's no lip. And that's the main difference. Theoretically slightly less water resistant because you don't have that welt in between. So the reason for this being called the gold standard of shoe construction, that good you're welting construction, is that it is water resistant. It's more water resistant than most other methods, particularly if you look at, say, a Blake stitch shoe, where you have the uppers tucked in, you have the sole, and the stitching goes directly through the uppers and the sole. And you can see where water could leach in. So it's slightly more water resistant, quite a lot actually. And it's also re-sollable. You can really just take out the outer layer, perhaps do the stitching, take out the rubber layer, leave the midsole, leave the welt, slap on the new outsole. Or if you wanted to re-craft, you could actually take out the midsole and replace that as well. So ultimately re-sollable and re-craftable. There, I hope that was enlightening. I'll be referring to this video in future boot reviews so that I don't have to repeat myself over and over again every time I describe the good you're welting construction method of the boots that I review. Hey, don't forget to click on like below, and if you haven't already, click on subscribe as well. I've got a few new boot reviews coming up, White's MP boots, a couple of Parkhurst boots, a couple of Ellen Edmonds. So stay in touch by subscribing. Until the next time, stay well and see you soon.