 G'day, welcome to Brutalosophy and a very wet southern part of Western Australia. This is the Pemberton region of the great southern in Western Australia and it's known for wineries and a hardwood forest logging country. Before I start, I want to acknowledge the Bibelman Wadandi people who are the traditional custodians of the lands around here from the greater Nungar Nation. Now in this video, I'm going to compare two iconic service boots, the Weiberg Stichdown service boot and the White's MP service boot. So the premise of this video is a comparison, it's not really a battle, it's a comparison between these two iconic service boots. On my left is the Weiberg Stichdown service boot from Canadian boot making company Weiberg. On my right is the White's MP service boot, this version is called the Sherman. Both are iconic in the sense that they go after the, you know, quite clearly sort of World War II vibe in terms of service boots at the military war. And I'll talk a little bit about that soon. They come from intergenerational companies, White for example started in the 1880s I believe, during the U.S. Civil War and eventually moved from sort of the Eastern States and the U.S. across to the Pacific Northwest and their history across the years has been to make logging boots and other kinds of forestry work boots as well as firefighter boots for those who were parachute into wildfires in the Pacific Northwest and other areas. Weiberg have a similar history. I don't think they're quite as old, they're I think in the fourth generation of ownership and they also come from a history of making work boots and firefighter boots from the 20s and 30s and so on. How have they evolved and how do they compare as service boots and boot makers? Let's take a look at that by looking at each boot in turn. So I'll start with the Weiberg service boot. Now you can say this is the granddaddy of the recent service boot trends, the Americana heritage service boot trend that started in the 2000s and then really caught on in the 2010s when people like Thursday Boots came on with the Captain boot and then quickly followed by Grant Stone and their service boots, Parkhurst and their Allen and Richmond service boots. Even people like Allen Edmonds rebirthed their Higgin Mill service boots. Wolverine thousand mile boots got rebirthed in this trend that was started by the service boot Americana frenzy. And I think you can quite rightly give that credit to Brett Weiberg who in the late 2000s, I think around 2008, he saw the way the Japanese market was going with Red Wing heritage boots and he revived an old Weiberg design from the 1940s when they made Canadian Army boots and he created this Weiberg stitch down service boot. So much so that stitch down service boot has been trademarked by Weiberg. And you can see that this is a fairly iconic service boot, 6 inch or slightly less than 6 inch in height. It has a toe cap although they also come in plain toe models, reasonably generous quarters, a vamp piece and a single piece backstay, very Boondocker style, very World War II style. Block heel, fairly substantial midsole and a really nice grippy outsole. Although they do come in different outsole versions from Weiberg. Now as I said, Weiberg started as a work boot company and when Brett Weiberg revived this design, they obviously decided to turn toward more casual boots and you can look at this construction and just admire all sorts of things from this construction. Firstly, the clicking which is the choice of leather selection in all Weiberg boots is just incredible. You don't see a bad piece of leather anyway. You don't see any kind of grain losing itself other than the normal sort of creasing you see in wear. From the clicking through to the stitching is just refined. I mean the actual precision of that stitching on the quarters, on the backstay, on the toe box is just precise, elegant and absolutely even. The double stitch down on the 270 degrees stitch down, and I'll talk about stitch down in a minute because they're both stitched down boots. It's just so precise. The double stitching, one of which goes through the flared out uppers in the midsole and the other that goes through all the way into the outsole. They just sit alongside each other in perfect parallel lines. The stitch per inch density is perfect. Weiberg have obviously decided to make a tough service boot, capable of being worn in the military in the trenches, but with a really refined way of doing it. So if you take a look at this somewhat less refined, but extremely tough service boot from whites called their MP Sherman. Yeah, you do see that they're not put together as carefully as the Weiberg, but they're put together tough. This is a work boot maker who said, hey, let's make a service boot, but we'll just make it like a normal work boot. We're not going to be too precise about our stitching. Then, you know, it's not perfectly even. In some of my other whites MPs, the stitch per inch density, is something like four per inch, really big wide hand sewn stitching, though. And this is also a stitch down. I said I'd talk about stitch down. Unlike Goodyear welting where the uppers are turned in and the inside of the uppers are sewn to the insole and then the outside through the welt is sewn to the sole construction through the welt, stitch down construction flares the uppers out and then stitches them directly to the midsole. So in both cases, in this case, you get a double stitch down directly to the midsole. In this case, you get a single stitch down rolled welt. And I'll tell you about the rolled welt. I think whites are the only people who do this. The rolled welt is where they flare the uppers out in a normal stitch down, but what they then do is they get another piece of the same leather as the uppers, in this case, Horween's Chromic Cell. They stitch that to the uppers and then roll it out and then stitch that down. And that's why you get this bubble gummy kind of well, storm-welty kind of look around there. And that's why when you look at the sides, you actually see two layers of uppers leather and then the midsole. Super tough construction, as I've said, a little less elegant, but the ideal service boot. I mean, I think if you looked at that, you'd say, oh, OK, I can see where Thursday captains come from. You can say, all right, I'm pretty sure that's where the genesis of the Parkhurst Richmond boot comes from. And if you look at any other service boot with a captor, you'd go, OK, I think that's where that came from. Quite obviously, a military-style boot made by a good, tough workboot maker. In terms of comfort and sizing, Viberg uses the UK sizing model. So go and have a look at my Viberg review to check out what sizing is in the Viberg boot compared to your US sizing, because they do use UK size numbers. In terms of sizing for the Sherman, this is the MP last, which is a modified Barry last. And it is a slightly strange last. It's actually longer than the size says it is, but it has a sort of cigar-shaped kind of last, so extremely comfortable. But when you first put it on, you think, I have long feet. But it's not that you buy them too long. You have the right requisite sort of thumbs width along the front. In terms of comfort, the arch support on these are amazing. They have a leather shank. The entire sort of arch area is built up with layers of leather to sort of build it up into your arch. It's tucked in here, so you kind of cantilever this bit of leather, which pulls your arch up to give you fantastic support. The Viberg, as solidly built, is perhaps not as comfortable under the arch. It doesn't have that push-up of layers of leather pushing you up, although it does have this sort of similar cantilever type of approach to it. The leather is used, in this case, is Horween's natural chrome excel. When it first comes, it's a very light honey brown and it's now obviously become quite a dark brown through just the oils in my hands, through one conditioning with vanishing shoe cream, and through, would you believe it, or not, sun tanning? Because if you walk around in the sun, these actually get darker. This is from CF Stead in England. Charles F. Stead produced this Kulata leather. It is a bovine leather, not horse. Kulata is the piece of the animal where it comes from, not the animal itself, and it's from the hind quarters. Very tough leather compared to this soft, sort of moldable leather. It's quite a tough, very sturdy feeling leather when you put it on. In terms of comfort, I'm not sure I can separate the two. I would perhaps maybe pull out the MP boots being slightly ahead because of that arch support factor. So in summary, not so much a battle of the service boots, but a comparison of these two iconic models. Two of my favorite boots, I think. This is obviously my grail boot, if you follow my videos you know. And this is really, if it's not a grail boot, it's something that you desire once you start collecting boots. So that's it. I hope you like this slightly quirky video. And if you do, click on like, it'll really help me out. And if you're not subscribed, don't forget to click on the subscribe button because YouTube will then bring more of these videos across to you about boot comparisons, boot reviews, and so on. And I have a lot more to come. So click on subscribe and take care and I'll see you in my next video.