 G'day. Welcome to Bootlossophy. I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands that I live and work on, the Wajat people of Nungabuja. Now today I'm doing something a little bit different. Again I'm not reviewing any boots but I'm going to talk about the top five things that I do to take care of my boots. So on my YouTube channel and on my Instagram account which is at TechO, a lot of people message me or put a comment in my videos about how I actually take care of my boots. Now you know I am not a boot expert. I have grown to understand what boots are like in terms of makeup and how they're made and how to look after them but I am in no way a boot expert or a leather expert. However, when people ask me these questions like how do you take care of your boots, I treat it with a little bit of care because I do understand it because I'm on YouTube. People will look at what I say and maybe try and copy what I say. So I have to be really careful and I want to say to you that this is my in expert personal opinion of how I look after my boots and if you want to try them that's fine but you know a caveat this comes from me. Okay so let me go to the top five things that I do to care for my boots. The first thing that I do is to brush my boots regularly and regularly I think does depend on your use scenarios. How often do you wear your boots? Where do you wear them? Are they in dusty situations? Are they in gritty dirty muddy situations or are they just in on the sidewalk and going to and from your office and maybe driving? But whatever that is I think you still do need to brush regularly whether it's every two or three wears as in fact what Trickers recommends or what I generally do roughly once a week if I've been wearing them quite regularly. And the first thing I invest in is a good quality horsehair brush. A fine horsehair brush apparently the bristles get into the grain of the leather and can actually brush out the boots. A good horsehair brush like this will look after smooth grain leather primarily like this grandstone diesel boots in Saddle 10 and a good way of brushing a good vigorous way of brushing make sure that you're getting rid of dirt and dust and and the grimy kinds of things from particularly city life but maybe a dusty trail because dust in effect is one of the worst enemies of leather and therefore a boots because they can scratch in time they can act like sandpaper and really damage the leather. So number one is is to brush. How do you brush? I think a good vigorous brushing is important so you're doing things like that I mean take a look at how a cobbler does it or a shoe shine specialist. So a good vigorous brush like that right across the boot and I know it's can be quite difficult getting a grip and so on but a good vigorous brush will actually warm up the leather move the wetsas and oils around and in many instances particularly with smooth grain boots really give it a nice burnish. Now as for as sorry I'm talking away from the camera as for suede boots or roughouts or even wax suede I'm not sure that I use this necessarily I get something similar but maybe something with a stiffer bristle which I haven't taken out with me but I use that to sort of brush the dirt away from the from the welt area and maybe around the seams because what you want to do is again get rid of that dry dirt dust and gritty sort of stuff but a brush for wax suede or unwax suede you get something like this which is a suede brush and on one side it has rubber bristles so that you can actually get into the welting sort of clean them out it's got a little welt cleaner this bit here so you can even just put the teeth in it's rubber it's soft rubber flexi and then it has a set of copper bristles surrounded by plastic bristles and that's the sort of stuff that you can brush the suede to get the nap to lie down you can use it on wax suede there's no there's no problem with that you're not going to necessarily rub off all that wax but certainly when it starts to patina you can you can use it to clean it up so that's step number one step number two is to condition and protect your leather now why does leather need conditioning well it's skin it might be dead skin but it's still skin and I'm sure you've seen like really old leathers it's been maybe even left out in the sun and the rain and how it cracks and dries up and curls you don't necessarily want that to happen to your boots right you spent a lot of money on them so you want to make sure they're conditioned like your skin so that it remains supple and smooth and soft now what type of conditioners you use I think will depend on the types of leathers so in terms of a chrome excel in my Alan Edmonds Higgins mill I use something like Venetian shoe cream for a waxier leather like this Oak Street bootmakers trench boot in natural Dublin I use something a little bit waxier and I think you can do that by the feel of the leather this actually feels waxy whereas the chrome excel feels kind of like internally waxy and oily it's not necessarily sitting on the top and the saddle tan diesel boots which are from an Italian tannery by the lassie these are veg tan and they actually feel dry and soft but but not oily at all so these can take a kind of waxy shoe polish like Venetian shoe cream conditioner so in talking about conditioners my number one for smooth leathers is Venetian shoe cream it's a sort of creamy waxy conditioner that you can put on your hand so you can actually feel what they feel like when you sort of apply it to the leathers and smooth them in what you do with that kind of a conditioner is put on a thin smear maybe a second if the leather so dry it soaks it up allow it to haze up as it dries and then brush them off in the way that I showed you same thing for chrome excel I do exactly the same thing Venetian shoe cream and haze it up and then brush it off I have two balm like conditioners one is this old tin of RM Williams saddle and leather dressing and the other one is a is an Aussie favorite of mine oak wood leather care conditioner both of these are balm like and quite waxy to the touch and those I find lovely eucalyptus smell those I find really good for the wax your letters like the natural Dublin and you can also use these or or even the Venetian shoe cream on wax letters and waxed roughouts because it will protect it and condition it and not necessarily rewax it which you'd have to do with an actual heavier kind of wax coating and and a heat gun to sort of melted in so what next number three that's the cleaning and the conditioning and by the way if you do want to protect them with a little bit of water resistance the saddle 10 veg 10 for example is not particularly waterproof so when this gets wet it does have spotty dark bits which scare the crap out of you but as they dry then they come back to the normal but what you might want to do is put on a thin smear of a wax polish neutral and then just brush and buff it up so I'm sorry I was starting to talk about number three number three is when you're not wearing the shoes use shoe trees so I have three examples over here and I think any one of these would do this one though I treat with some caution because the way you use this is you push it into the vamp of the boot and then this curls up and pushes against the heel counter to push this forward if your levers or particularly your heel counter isn't stiff enough I find that this can deform your boot I am not a big fan of this one this is another popular one that you'll find is it's sort of spring loaded and as you push it into the boot and slip this bit on some of them have a different ending over here they might just have a wooden wooden sort of heel replica as you push it in push it on the tension is created by the spring and what happens is you actually push that a little bit wider so that it fits into the shape of your toolbox my favorite however is this one which is sprung that way so you can slip it in and push it in and it has a little little toe spring so that keeps it apart when it's actually in the boot whichever one you use make sure you use a wooden one specifically if you can get them they're a little bit more expensive cedar because cedar smells really nice it absorbs the sweat from your boots and it really creates quite a nice smell and antifungal effect in there so boot trees number four it's not actually a care process but it is a procedure and it is to rotate your boots you really shouldn't wear your boots every day two or three days maybe that's fine but then give them at least a day if not if you want of the two or three days if not a couple of days rest and put something else on so you should at least rotate your boots and preferably a different boot a day so if you have two pairs of boots go Monday boot one Tuesday boot two and so on and the reason for that is that leather is a living breathing thing so as your feet sweat in it and you might not realize this and that sweat does get absorbed inside the boot now if you wear that every day that could cause fungal issues but not only that that could really damage the leather because it gets weakened through the moisture so item number four is to make sure that you rotate your boots every day now finally step number five I call this I guess another procedure is once in a while you don't have to do it like every week or every month but once in a while whenever you pull your boots on inspect your boots what you're looking for are a few things one is look at heel wear now these are reasonably new so you can see there's no heel wear but you see the thickness of that rubber top lift this is called a top lift that's called the heel stack just there see that rubber top lift and how thick that is if these were an old pair of boots it is possible that you wear this section down because that's where you have your heel strike it's possible you wear this heel section down really really a lot and it's also possible if you're not careful you start wearing it into the heel stack the idea is to make sure that you understand where it's got to and before it gets to the heel stack go and see your cobbler I call item number five use a professional so make sure it doesn't cut into the heel stack get that top lift replaced the other place to look at is the top of the heel top of the toe because that's the other place that as you walk off wears out especially especially leather soles if you look at that can you see that I'm wearing the edge off and I'll turn it this way around might be a bit easier can you see that I'm beginning to actually get into the midsole so that's the outsole and then that's the midsole and that's the welt now if you wear your outsole off that's fine you can always replace that if you start to wear into your midsole that's problematic because it means you're going to have to replace the midsole as well as the outsole if you ever wore into the welt you're in deep poo because you're going to have to replace the welt and despite a good you voted boot being re-solable there are degrees of difficulty in re-soling your boots and if you get into the welt and you want to replace that that's going to cost you a lot of moolah so be aware of the where you can put toe taps on those brass things that you sometimes see try toe taps and I will put them on these very soon I did not put them on these new because one of the things I did want to do is figure out where the where was going to be because I don't want to put a toe tap then it starts wearing over here so wear it for a little while figure out where you're where you're aware is going to be and maybe put a toe tap on so those are the things I'd look for in terms of then getting to a professional to to fix those issues now another one these are casual boots and they're really brand new but the other thing you're looking at is maybe wear patterns and if your boots have been dry and you've ignored rule number two which is condition your boots and they start to dry and crack you might want to get that seem to very quickly because if you if you wear through and crack leather at the at the creases it you may not come back from that so the lesson in item number five is be aware what your boots look like and how they're worn and immediately earlier than later go into professional I say earlier than later because if you went and repaired say that top lift before it wears into the heel stack you're only going to pay in Australia probably about $20 if that if you then started to wear into the heel stack and what the cobbler has to do is remove the top lift and then remove the leather and the heel stack and replace the leather in the heel stack and then color the edge you know that's going to start costing you a lot so if you do it early 20 bucks that might well save you 75 80 $100 same thing goes for that of course because if you imagine replacing a leather sole could be quite pricey but then replacing a leather sole a leather midsole and a leather welt could be monstrous so earlier rather than later so there you have it guys a summary is that if there's any expense going to be spent on your boots do it now in small cumulative sums go and buy yourself a good conditioner which this one is actually quite expensive but spread out over multiple boots over multiple wears you're not going to have a problem spending that money and spreading it out as opposed to spending three times that much having to repair your leather and the same thing goes for brushing and wearing care okay so I hope you enjoyed that video please don't ask me any more how I take care of my boots I will keep you referring you to this video so you know what to do now click on the like button click on the subscribe button and take care and I'll see you in my next video