bluesmandan
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Here’s those chips...
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Engineer Boots, Harness Boots...
- Thread starter Creeping Past
- Start date
yeah texon does both those things. takes shape of yer foot and gets more bendy. think of it like... a hardcover book.
in my chippewa engineer boots I ordered wider, then dropped in a thorogood ultimate shock footbed with a pedag holiday 3/4 arch support (winds up working like a leather slip). they're steel toe not for armour but because the steel pulls heat off yer foot. It way too hot to wear composite toe caps in texas. those boots aint made for walkin (and I want to walk around in em anyway which is why I tweaked mine) theyre made to stand and shovel coal into a steam engine while yer wearin seersucker overalls (most definitely not 21 ounce japanese raw denim or filson tin pants). all about standin in place keeping your foot in the... oh... um... y'all might not know this, but its the relaxed position.
sit down on a bench and cross your leg letting the top leg and foot hang comfotably. the foot isnt at 90 degrees to your shin. it yawns open to about 120 degrees or something. thats what the heel is for. yer foot is supposed to be held in that comfortable spot and you just stand right there next to coal engine fires on a rocking train moving through 90 degree at night texas. You'd be swinging a shovel back and forth throwin coal into the fire, and when exhausted you'd clip yer shins, right? Thats why its armoured up so thick in paraffin and beeswax like brigandine straps or boiled leather cuirass. Its loose to both let heat out and to help with deflecting the blow of the shovel.
theyre not biker boots at all. bikers from california just... um... capricious.
I can't remember where I swiped this pic from, but holmes is not wearin the best choice in footwear. hot coals tumbling back out would take his laces.
I got a russian cobbler buddy from russian social media and he has a video tweaking wolverines for russian winter. His coolest trick is gator clips from a battery to heat the nails that go down from inside the boot, and he replaces em with screws. I love it. I mention this because... Chippewa sometimes forgets what they're doin and may not remember to drop nails or screws down into the heel, and its just held on with cement and can get knocked off. I think amazon reviews show a few that got boogered up that way (cause again it aint really a biker's boot) and that aint the end. Just get you a drill and drop screws from the top underneath the heel slip. Brass if you got it.
edit 2: I am a published academic, and I wish I had citations for all of that, but luckily I'm also more a historiographer than a historian, so I think it'll be self-evident, but related trivia thing... sailors had nautical shifts of four hours punctuated by a bell, so you could be shovelin coal into an engine furnace three and a half hours, and have heard the seven bells meanin yer almost done, and thats where "kick the seven bells outta you" comes from. some weird stuff out there about it bein a thievin school. engineer boots wont drown you like some laced metatarsal guard welder boot.
in my chippewa engineer boots I ordered wider, then dropped in a thorogood ultimate shock footbed with a pedag holiday 3/4 arch support (winds up working like a leather slip). they're steel toe not for armour but because the steel pulls heat off yer foot. It way too hot to wear composite toe caps in texas. those boots aint made for walkin (and I want to walk around in em anyway which is why I tweaked mine) theyre made to stand and shovel coal into a steam engine while yer wearin seersucker overalls (most definitely not 21 ounce japanese raw denim or filson tin pants). all about standin in place keeping your foot in the... oh... um... y'all might not know this, but its the relaxed position.
sit down on a bench and cross your leg letting the top leg and foot hang comfotably. the foot isnt at 90 degrees to your shin. it yawns open to about 120 degrees or something. thats what the heel is for. yer foot is supposed to be held in that comfortable spot and you just stand right there next to coal engine fires on a rocking train moving through 90 degree at night texas. You'd be swinging a shovel back and forth throwin coal into the fire, and when exhausted you'd clip yer shins, right? Thats why its armoured up so thick in paraffin and beeswax like brigandine straps or boiled leather cuirass. Its loose to both let heat out and to help with deflecting the blow of the shovel.
theyre not biker boots at all. bikers from california just... um... capricious.
I can't remember where I swiped this pic from, but holmes is not wearin the best choice in footwear. hot coals tumbling back out would take his laces.
I got a russian cobbler buddy from russian social media and he has a video tweaking wolverines for russian winter. His coolest trick is gator clips from a battery to heat the nails that go down from inside the boot, and he replaces em with screws. I love it. I mention this because... Chippewa sometimes forgets what they're doin and may not remember to drop nails or screws down into the heel, and its just held on with cement and can get knocked off. I think amazon reviews show a few that got boogered up that way (cause again it aint really a biker's boot) and that aint the end. Just get you a drill and drop screws from the top underneath the heel slip. Brass if you got it.
edit 2: I am a published academic, and I wish I had citations for all of that, but luckily I'm also more a historiographer than a historian, so I think it'll be self-evident, but related trivia thing... sailors had nautical shifts of four hours punctuated by a bell, so you could be shovelin coal into an engine furnace three and a half hours, and have heard the seven bells meanin yer almost done, and thats where "kick the seven bells outta you" comes from. some weird stuff out there about it bein a thievin school. engineer boots wont drown you like some laced metatarsal guard welder boot.
Last edited:
JacketAddict
One of the Regulars
- Messages
- 188
I concur with Wesco! You simply cannot beat them for quality - they will last your lifetime and more and they are rebuildable. You don't have to go with custom you can find your size and style in stock on the website or 2nd hand. I live close to the Wesco factory in Scappoose, Oregon and its awesome to visit there. The also have "factory seconds" on offer on their website. How can you beat these Black Tie Domain Engineers right here?
Or how about these - from left to right Redwood Harness round toe, Domain Brown Engineer Patrol toe, Redwood Morrison, Redwood Harness:
Or how about these - from left to right Redwood Harness round toe, Domain Brown Engineer Patrol toe, Redwood Morrison, Redwood Harness:
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I thought more on the prompt to explain texon and poron, and I checked to make sure I put it the right way. Not sure I did.
There are lots of more recent things going on in footwear. You might get more what you expect from a Nike Cortez with a Spurothane footbed. You might get more what you expect from a Zeha Berlin if you use a swiss Noene 2mm undersole. With a sizeable armoured boot you might find its sorely undershanked now that American Shank is closed and you can't get the arch support shanks in large sizes anymore, and want to use something with thermoplastic molding that doubles as a shank from either Powerstep or Superfeet. One of my favorite things nobody in the USA does anymore was the "arch preserver" stuff going on in ET Wright shoes where the thick heel counter continued forward and twisted into an arch support. Afaik there are some small batches of those still made in Italy.
super annoying that a decent arch support triple rib shank only gets made for sizes up to like... 11. you'd think one of these evangelized pacific northwest 12 pound boots would have a arch support shank for sizes up to 16EEE. Might even think they'd leave you room to cope with shock absorption or energy return needs in a more elastic space since they wont make a proper shank anymore. Nope.
"best" always has a context. best for what?
texon and poron are best in the context of familiarity. most of the glue sniffing tinker dog farmers masquerading as cobblers in america don't have to think hard about what texon and poron are going to do. its pretty well known.
if yer mind isn't clouded by barge fumes, and your test arenas are
1. austin texas moshpit at emos for jesus lizard
2. blacktop runway at old airport shootin episodes of super bikes for speed channel in july afternoon
man. "best" is gonna mean somethin totally different for both of those arenas. take a hundred dollar corcoran 1500 for the win in the texas moshpit, and take a justin family brand boot (or maybe a frye) for the win on the texas dragstrip lugging around camera gear all day.
There are lots of more recent things going on in footwear. You might get more what you expect from a Nike Cortez with a Spurothane footbed. You might get more what you expect from a Zeha Berlin if you use a swiss Noene 2mm undersole. With a sizeable armoured boot you might find its sorely undershanked now that American Shank is closed and you can't get the arch support shanks in large sizes anymore, and want to use something with thermoplastic molding that doubles as a shank from either Powerstep or Superfeet. One of my favorite things nobody in the USA does anymore was the "arch preserver" stuff going on in ET Wright shoes where the thick heel counter continued forward and twisted into an arch support. Afaik there are some small batches of those still made in Italy.
super annoying that a decent arch support triple rib shank only gets made for sizes up to like... 11. you'd think one of these evangelized pacific northwest 12 pound boots would have a arch support shank for sizes up to 16EEE. Might even think they'd leave you room to cope with shock absorption or energy return needs in a more elastic space since they wont make a proper shank anymore. Nope.
"best" always has a context. best for what?
texon and poron are best in the context of familiarity. most of the glue sniffing tinker dog farmers masquerading as cobblers in america don't have to think hard about what texon and poron are going to do. its pretty well known.
if yer mind isn't clouded by barge fumes, and your test arenas are
1. austin texas moshpit at emos for jesus lizard
2. blacktop runway at old airport shootin episodes of super bikes for speed channel in july afternoon
man. "best" is gonna mean somethin totally different for both of those arenas. take a hundred dollar corcoran 1500 for the win in the texas moshpit, and take a justin family brand boot (or maybe a frye) for the win on the texas dragstrip lugging around camera gear all day.
bluesmandan
A-List Customer
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I read or watched a vid that said texon is used in a lot of goodyear welted shoes because it works well when resoling (won’t break down or crack like leather might) — besides adding rigidity to a shoe that needs stability. The durability of it and use for adding rigidity makes me question whether or not it is a component that “breaks in” - ie molds to the bottom of your foot.
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two mechanical things need to happen for us in a boot
energy absorb
energy return
so most of our classic boot types like harness, engineer, m42, m43, polishable korean war jump boot, dual density desert weight rough out boot, et al will use poron (silicon) for energy return, and use the texon (paper) for energy absorb/cancel and thats the part that does mold to your foot kinda like the the hardcover of a school textbook. It takes time, but the curvature it assumes increases the surface area with which it can cancel energy.
I posit that most cobblers because of their assembly needs will put texon below the poron because in bench assembly theyre building it upside down and stuff is going to adhere to the texon paper a lot better. I think this has always been a hurdle for correct energy return from a shank cause it'll get held too much by the cork... kinda like putting block risers on your leaf springs. yeah you ride a little higher but you lose some bounce. this also means the shanks get flattened out and become just... puncture resistant plates and heat sinks (which aint a bad thing).
Mindful of two different test arenas 1)moshpit 2)dragstrip camera work I would look at the relationship of the texon and poron differently.
In a moshpit I'd want the energy return poron or sorbothane closer to my foot, and the energy cancel part like texon or noene closer to the ground. This is kinda what those vibram sierra outsoles are tryin to do for desert storm boots. Thats an instance where I want -my- energy returned into my leg, but not necessarily everyone else's.
Standin at the dragstrip loaded up with heavy batteries and lenses... I want to reverse the order. I want each foot step to land like a deadblow hammer. As much energy canceled as possible. In that instance I would be reversing the position of the texon and poron except that I can't always, so I might lay in 2mm of soene, and then top off with a pedag leather. Stays a lot cooler.
So going up from ground to foot in a perfect engineer's boot...
I'll take raw cord neoprene w/ cats paw no slip washers, then shanks, then noene, then pedag leather. Thats gonna be the opposite of bounce, the opposite of friction against foot for heat, and ofc you'd want steel toe for that to pull heat away from toe box.
Doin an engineer's boot so that its cork nitrile or PU chevrons against the ground, then an anemic little shank or pair of shanks, then texon, then poron, and then a squishy gel insert or somethin... thats kinda backwards, and thats what most people are calling the best engineer's boot. no idea whats goin on in their head. It must be evading my evaluation because of some fetishist pursuit I dont understand like filling your boot with vaseline and having midgets throw flowers at you. Not to kink shame anyone... its just a different purpose than what engineer boots are designed for.
Like... you could deep wax your engineers til they were hard like beefeater ammo boots, but I suspect we'd disable our ability to get an engineer's boot on if it no longer stretched, and any of the shovel swings that hit the higher quarter would maybe shatter it like eggshell instead of bein soft and deflecting the blow.
I wouldnt go that far, but I also think its a mistake, for non fetish purposes, to mink oil engineer boots til theyre floppy like cavaliers or slouch boots.
Attaching two more pics of regular steel shanks as we know them, and this diagram of a vibram tweety where it seems to posit the spring action of the shank is present in its cleat configuration (I am somewhat skeptical but also can't try this since tweety is not made in a size big enough for me).
edit/add: I forget to write or ask for graphene coatings cause there is just the one footwear brand doin that right now, but for perfection's sake I'd coat a raw cord outsole in graphene especially at the heel, but then not on the cats paw no slip washers.
energy absorb
energy return
so most of our classic boot types like harness, engineer, m42, m43, polishable korean war jump boot, dual density desert weight rough out boot, et al will use poron (silicon) for energy return, and use the texon (paper) for energy absorb/cancel and thats the part that does mold to your foot kinda like the the hardcover of a school textbook. It takes time, but the curvature it assumes increases the surface area with which it can cancel energy.
I posit that most cobblers because of their assembly needs will put texon below the poron because in bench assembly theyre building it upside down and stuff is going to adhere to the texon paper a lot better. I think this has always been a hurdle for correct energy return from a shank cause it'll get held too much by the cork... kinda like putting block risers on your leaf springs. yeah you ride a little higher but you lose some bounce. this also means the shanks get flattened out and become just... puncture resistant plates and heat sinks (which aint a bad thing).
Mindful of two different test arenas 1)moshpit 2)dragstrip camera work I would look at the relationship of the texon and poron differently.
In a moshpit I'd want the energy return poron or sorbothane closer to my foot, and the energy cancel part like texon or noene closer to the ground. This is kinda what those vibram sierra outsoles are tryin to do for desert storm boots. Thats an instance where I want -my- energy returned into my leg, but not necessarily everyone else's.
Standin at the dragstrip loaded up with heavy batteries and lenses... I want to reverse the order. I want each foot step to land like a deadblow hammer. As much energy canceled as possible. In that instance I would be reversing the position of the texon and poron except that I can't always, so I might lay in 2mm of soene, and then top off with a pedag leather. Stays a lot cooler.
So going up from ground to foot in a perfect engineer's boot...
I'll take raw cord neoprene w/ cats paw no slip washers, then shanks, then noene, then pedag leather. Thats gonna be the opposite of bounce, the opposite of friction against foot for heat, and ofc you'd want steel toe for that to pull heat away from toe box.
Doin an engineer's boot so that its cork nitrile or PU chevrons against the ground, then an anemic little shank or pair of shanks, then texon, then poron, and then a squishy gel insert or somethin... thats kinda backwards, and thats what most people are calling the best engineer's boot. no idea whats goin on in their head. It must be evading my evaluation because of some fetishist pursuit I dont understand like filling your boot with vaseline and having midgets throw flowers at you. Not to kink shame anyone... its just a different purpose than what engineer boots are designed for.
Like... you could deep wax your engineers til they were hard like beefeater ammo boots, but I suspect we'd disable our ability to get an engineer's boot on if it no longer stretched, and any of the shovel swings that hit the higher quarter would maybe shatter it like eggshell instead of bein soft and deflecting the blow.
I wouldnt go that far, but I also think its a mistake, for non fetish purposes, to mink oil engineer boots til theyre floppy like cavaliers or slouch boots.
Attaching two more pics of regular steel shanks as we know them, and this diagram of a vibram tweety where it seems to posit the spring action of the shank is present in its cleat configuration (I am somewhat skeptical but also can't try this since tweety is not made in a size big enough for me).
edit/add: I forget to write or ask for graphene coatings cause there is just the one footwear brand doin that right now, but for perfection's sake I'd coat a raw cord outsole in graphene especially at the heel, but then not on the cats paw no slip washers.
Last edited:
trapp
Practically Family
- Messages
- 546
- Location
- bay area, ca
View attachment 148530
Nice collection! That brown domain has to be some of the least appreciated and under the radar boot leather around. All the boots I've seen in this leather are stunning. I think member Dav has a nice pair as well.
Nice collection! That brown domain has to be some of the least appreciated and under the radar boot leather around. All the boots I've seen in this leather are stunning. I think member Dav has a nice pair as well.
Mich486
One Too Many
- Messages
- 1,690
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Bfd70
I'll Lock Up
- Messages
- 4,255
- Location
- Traverse city
I was playing around with the bootbuilder on Wescos site today. There is an optionto raise or lower heel height. Obviously stock boots from various makers come with a standard height. From what I can gather that height is within 1/2” of each other. Is it just a matter of preference? Without any greater knowledge i’d imagine i would prefer them lower than standard. Just seems like it would be slightly more natural. I’m tall enough that i’m not looking for a boost.
Pretty much any boot I order (Dayton, White's or Wesco) will have a 1/4" drop on the heel. I just don't like that tall of a heel and being a guy on the short side at only 5' 8", I don't want to have a higher heel like I am trying to boost my height.
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bluesmandan
A-List Customer
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I think arch support is part of it... the higher the heel usually is more arch support in my experience. Usually.
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If you order the whites logger/dogger? Heel with a prominent angular spur, at the standard or high height, you are in for a serious risk of ankle injury. Many vintage images of engineer boots have pretty high heels, same goes for RoleClub. But high heel is not the only “authentic” heel height
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I'm giving serious consideration to a pair of these next month. I think they represent a good entry point to give engineer boots a try.
deaner33
New in Town
- Messages
- 32
- Location
- Jackson, Mississippi
I tend to like the block heels on my boots - they seem a little easier to walk longer distances in, but I do like the bell shaped heel on the Lone Wolf engineers.
Bfd70
I'll Lock Up
- Messages
- 4,255
- Location
- Traverse city
I’ve got a week of heavy wear inand they are breaking in nicely.
trapp
Practically Family
- Messages
- 546
- Location
- bay area, ca
Nice. Who made those?
Bfd70
I'll Lock Up
- Messages
- 4,255
- Location
- Traverse city
Anyone able to weigh in on which boots have the biggest toe box?
Bfd70
I'll Lock Up
- Messages
- 4,255
- Location
- Traverse city
Neato
