 G'day, how are you going? Welcome to my channel Bootlossophy and my name is Ted. Today I'll be reviewing these beauties, the Grant Stone Diesel Boots in a makeup from Betterlassie Carlo Tannery in Italy, that Grant Stone call the Settle Tan Vige. So this little beauty is the Grant Stone Diesel Boot Settle Tan Vige. I've had these for about seven months and while I have worn them regularly, because of my huge rotation of over 50 boots at this stage, I haven't worn them particularly hard. But as you can see they have been worn in and I think enough now that I can give you a fair review of these boots and how they wear in everyday use. As you can see the style falls into what can be classed as a service or dress boot of the plain toe variety. It has classic simple elegant lines. The profile is sleek and the sleekness creates a little optical illusion aided by the flange of the storm or split reverse wealth, more of that later, which makes it look like a very flat shoe. But there is plenty of room for your instep and toes in there. Viewed from the top it has a very anatomical shape rounding the ball of your feet into rounded toes. Despite the rounded toe box they don't look blocky like Redwing's Iron Ranges or their blacksmith plain toe boot. The veg tan leather from Italy which I'll go into more detail later on comes out of the box quite orange but as you can see it darkens with wear into a warm honey and when you look down is framed by the lighter natural color of the veg tan wealth. All in all it looks like a very stylish boot. Let's talk a bit about the company that makes these boots. Grant Stone started in 2016 and was founded by Wyatt Gilmore and Josh Lane. They are a direct customer company in that they sell only through their website thus keeping prices down. Although at time of filming I believe they're now available through the two or three standard and strange physical stores across various US cities. The Gilmore family has a long connection with quality footwear starting I believe with Wyatt's grandfather who worked for Alden for decades. For many years Wyatt's father worked with a family in China who owned a factory in Xiamen and Wyatt himself worked in that factory learning his business for eight years before the idea of starting Grant Stone started to crystallize. Yes the factory is in China. Grant Stone boots are made in China. Let's get this quality thing out of the way. People may have many objections to items made in China and poor quality is definitely one of them. If you want to hear my rant about all the reasons why people should not necessarily object to made in China you can check out my review of the Grant Stone diesel boot in coffee suede that you can catch up on over here. But let me just deal with the if it's made in China it's poor quality objection. Let's just deal with that one. Quality is not about geography. I'm a management consultant I know. Quality is about processing procedure and about specifications. If you specify poor materials and a specific cost you will get a bad product. If you specify good materials and a higher target of manufacturing cost and you impose QC processes and continuous inspections you will get an ace product. So let's just say Grant Stone made their boots wherever with some very clear quality based specs and processes and they make a stunning variety of boots and shoes. Six different styles of boots and seven different styles of shoes. They apply different makeup severe different styles so that for example the diesel boot design comes in 12 different makeups a variation of leathers and soles and that's not counting the limited releases that they run from time to time including exotic leathers like Maduro shell kangaroo and ostrich. I'm going to put a link in the description below to an interview why it took part in on the stitch down website. I recommend you read it to see the vision and mission that shines through this company and the work in design and innovation that these guys undertake as well as some very revealing facts about how they handle customer service and QC. The link is in the description box below. Okay now let's take a look at how this diesel boot is put together. I'll start from the top down. As I said earlier the uppers are vegetarian full grain leather from Italian tannery vettelasi color in a color that Grant Stone calls saddle tan. Let's unpack that a little. There are primarily three ways of tanning leather vegetable tanning tanning using minerals primarily chromium salts and oil tanning. You either use vegetable tannins or chromium salts or fats and oils to preserve the leather when you tan it. Sometimes the leather goes through two more processes and that's referred to as combination tanning. Obviously veg tanning is a more natural way and is arguably kinder to the environment. Veg tanning takes longer could be up to several months in fact and tends to produce tougher more rugged leather often used in making things like saddles for example. In this case vettelasi put their hides into a huge barrel called a botali and cycles the hides for 30 to 35 days. The leather that comes out is tough and smells like saddles. It's a gorgeous smell and if we had a smell of vision television even after seven months where you'd be able to appreciate this earthy natural leather like smell. In this particular saddle tan color it's a very light colored so it develops light and dark hues as you wear it and as rain and weather gets on it. You can see in the vab that it rolls as well as breaks with wear. I mentioned it came out of the box quite orange and has now got to be warm honey but you can see the patina. This is a patina machine and I look forward to keeping on in the development of this patina. It's fully lined even the tongue which is semi-gusseted up to the second eyelid. This helps to avoid that slipping tongue syndrome that you get in some un-gusseted tongue boots when the tongue slipped to one side you wear. The lining is full four grain American cow leather and together with the vettelasi leather combines to a thickness of nearly four mils that's pretty thick and when you put the boot on you know it's sturdy. It has the typical grandstone brass hardware of four large eyelets and three speed hooks. In my view the perfect combination to help you put these on and off. Grandstone gives you two pairs of laces a flat cotton pair of these leather laces. One thing grandstone laces are long like very long. I'm not a huge fan of wrapping the laces around the shaft before I knot them but unless you cut the laces this is what you have to do here. I haven't cut the laces yet maybe I will one day. Coming down the boot there's basically only the van and the tongue, the two quarters and the two-piece backstay. Very simple panels so very elegant. The stitching is very even and secure. Triple stitching on the quarters, double stitching on the backstays, the stitch density per inch is even. The toebox is structured I believe using real leather as stiffeners. That's almost unheard of these days with the increasing use of leather board or thermal plastics or elastic stiffeners. The heel counter inside is also real leather sandwiched between the lining and the uppers and capped by this two-piece backstay. If we start to move into the sole construction this boot uses a veg tan leather insole and under that is a cork filling and a steel shack. A shack is a piece of material usually steel as in this case that's inserted between here and here as a stiffener and arch support so that when your feet compress into the sole it supports your arch and doesn't sink into this gap and it also stops you from getting tired arches of your standing all day. The midsole and outsole are also a veg tan leather attached to the uppers using Goodyear Well construction. A welt is a strip of leather that's sewn on the inside of the turning uppers and the outside edge of the welt is then Goodyear stitch through the midsole and outsole. You can see the outsole stitch from above the welt and here under the sole. A Goodyear welt constructed boot provides the ability to re-sole the boot where you can simply undo the stitches here and replace the outsole without damaging the welt or the uppers. It's also more water resistant than other methods because the welt forms a barrier between the outside and the inside. In this case it's even more water resistant because of this. Either a storm milk or split reverse quilt I can't tell the difference but basically part of the welt is flanged up against the outside of the uppers and that creates an extra barrier and check this out. A welt being a strip of leather has a beginning and an end. Usually the joint is placed here on the inside of the boot against your arch in order to hide it. Often you'll be able to see the joint and sometimes the ends even overlap. In this case you can play the spot the welt joint game because Grant Stone do it so well that it's near impossible to pick where the welt joins. As I kind of alluded to at the beginning quality control is excellent. The factory goes through its QC processes as dictated by Grant Stone so they know the level of performance required and then back in Grant Stone's Michigan store each shipment is looked over again and just before each individual pair is sent out there's a final inspection and a brush and polish. If we keep moving down now in construction we see the heel is a full leather stacked heel with this rubber insert for a bit of grip and shock absorption which brings us to comfort, fit and sizing. Some people are wary of leather sold shoes. Of course they can be very slippery especially when new and before it scuffs and creates its own friction surface as you see here and once they scuff they start to look a little ugly maybe. They also show wear more dramatically. Some people put toe taps on the tips here I'm fine with that. The toe tap protect the wear on the toes. I like leather soles. I feel that they feel better. There seems a level of natural shock absorption. I'm careful when I walk in potentially slippery places like wet cement surfaces or well polished shopping center floors. I've worn leather soles since I was a kid and as long as you're aware of them I've found them quite safe. One thing with these though they are a series of leather, cork and more leather pretty thick and they took a while to break in. Nothing too dramatic or painful just awkward. That by the way was all the breaking required. These diesel boots were a great fit and comfy out of the box. The Leo Lass with the wide toe box is anatomically perfect for my feet. The heel and middle of my feet feel hugged and snug while I have space to wiggle my toes up front. The tough thick uppers did need a bit of flexing like the sole but a couple of days did it. All that leather and cork does provide a reasonable level of shock absorption and arch support. These are not soft sneakers though. You know you're wearing a boot your feet are gripped but each step feels comfortable. There's no jarring and the arch support stops your feet from getting tired at the end of the day. The veg tan leather squeaks a little like you imagine a saddle would as you sit on a saddle. I don't find it a problem. I find it like the gorgeous smell just the characteristic of the saddle tan veg tan leather. It's real leather. As for sizing like almost all my American boots I ordered a half size down from true to size. Assuming that true to size is as measured on the brand device that you stand on in true stores. I'm a US 8 and a half in a D width in US sizing and I bought these 8 D which is perfect. If you're in any doubt at all I contact Grant Stone by phone if you're in the US or at least by email and chances are you might even speak to the wire of Josh but whoever it is you'll find him extremely knowledgeable and informative and helpful about the sizing. Okay so it's a tough boot. When and where would you wear it and what would you wear it with? Well firstly it is a tough boot so technically apart from the slippery leather sole I guess you could wear it as a work boot in a shop like say a hardware store where you're moving and kicking boxes or a carpentry shop or something like that. I wouldn't though mainly because it's such a beautiful leather. It's a casual boot as far as I would go. It's smart casual and maybe a stretch to business casual. So my use case scenarios include going to my office, going shopping, going to friends for dinner or a barbecue, drinks and meals at the pub, even nice date night dinners. So I wear them with smarter jeans, brown or gray or black, any kind of chinos on top of a polo shirt, button downs, button ups, flannels, sports coats, blazers, bomber jackets, leather jackets. Funny I don't see myself wearing them with blue jeans and t-shirt. They're casual but not in that way in my mind. Because of the leather I think they're dressy casual. At the end of the video I'm going to put a few more stills and b-rolls of what I wear them with so watch this video to the end. Now let's take a look at how you look after these boots. Instruction number one brush, brush, brush with a good horsehair brush. A horsehair brush has really fine soft bristles that removes dirt and dust, moves the waxes and oils around and the heat of the brushing actually brings up a luster in the leather. Brush after everywhere, I don't but you should do what I say not what I do but at least brush them once a week. Don't let dirt and dust build up. Definitely put shoe trees in them after everywhere. Shoe trees help them to retain the shape and stop curling up into an ugly toe spring and shoe trees can help to reduce the rolls and creases if you don't want them. If dirty start with a damp cloth and wipe the dirt off. If you really have to use a mild leather cleaner like leather honey and if you really really have to they've got a real muck and grease layer a mild saddle soap but read the instructions. You don't want to be stripping the leather of the natural oils and waxes. It's a smooth leather so when you feel the need to apply conditioner my go-to for smooth leathers is Venetian Shoe Cream in neutral. This will not only condition and moisturize the leather but it will also buff it through a nice sheen. I'll put a link to some of these products in the description box below. Once the Venetian Shoe Cream dries to a haze, 10 minutes, brush to a nice sheen and you can also use a polishing cloth to buff it small. If the leather feels really dry apply more Venetian Shoe Cream before you brush and leave it for a couple of hours before you brush if not overnight. With this leather I would avoid boot oils and mink oils. I think that would really darken the leather and turn it into a brown shoe. Now that you've got it nice and clean and buffed let's look at the value. I bought these boots for US 360 dollars at the time it was a little over 500 Aussie dollars. For Australia that is not cheap when you consider the number of fashion brands producing boots at 200 dollars or less. But those are fashion brands. They are constructed in a wear, wear out, throw away manner. Cement construction soles are cheap, well corrected, that's sanded to you, well corrected leathers that are black or brown, artificially burnished and noro character. Sniff a fashion boot and you won't smell leather. It'll smell of cannibals. I wouldn't even compare them with Thursday boots as much as I love them. Thursday are entry-level boots. They sell for 200 US dollars in about 375 Aussie through Amazon in Australia. The real comparison is with quality boots like Australia's Aaron Williams Chelsea boots that sell for nearly 600 Aussie dollars. American Heritage Boots like Red Wing and Wolverine sell here in Australia for over 500 dollars. Parkhurst, another of my favorite brands, costs around 500 Aussie as well. If you bought Alden from a US website it would cost you close to a thousand dollars landed. So if you agree with me that Grandstone boots are a quality boot then it is in the ballpark with those competitors. But I can't stress this enough, I think they are excellent quality. Some people have compared the way they're made, their attention to detail, the stitching, the QC as being Alden or better than Vibeau quality. I agree. I think made in China and direct to consumer obviously play a role in pricing because quality-wise I think these are worth another 100 to 200 dollars more, that's US dollars. I'm not going to shut that from the rooftops. I like their pricing and at that pricing I'll keep buying. So that's it. That's what I think about the Grandstone diesel boot in Saddle Town, Beijing. If you have a pair, join in the conversation in the comments below. Do you agree with my assessment? If you don't have a pair yet, tell me what you think of what you see. Would you buy a pair? Leave a few comments below and if you like this video, I hope you did. Can you do me a favor and click on the like button below? I'm like all the other YouTube channels. Liking one of my videos will mean that YouTube will show this to more people and that will help me build my channel. And if you haven't already, why don't you subscribe to my channel by clicking the subscribe button as well. I'm not going to send you scam emails or anything. All that'll do is that it'll tell YouTube that people like the channel enough to follow me and that will also help me grow my channel and get it to more viewers. And when I release more boot reviews and boot related content, which I hope you like, YouTube will let you know it's up and you can watch it. So help me out. Like and subscribe below. Now just watch to the end because I'll put some vision of what I wear with these boots after the credits. I hope to see you again soon. Till next time, bye.