Refurbished Boots

Last month, I mentioned that I found an old pair of jungle boots from when I was active duty.  They were in rough shape after sitting in a closet for about 15 years, but I wanted to see if I could revive them with a little TLC.  After a bit of reading and some elbow grease, I've restored them to a wearable condition.

Since Sunny requested, I'm posting a couple of pictures.

This first image is after I stripped off the old polish.

 The boots didn't look this rough when I started.  I had spit shined them before putting them in the closet, so they were actually quite glossy, but the leather was dry, brittle and cracked.  Stripping them down allowed me to work some badly needed conditioner deep into the leather.  I also used a little bit of leather repair to fill in the worst of the cracks.  This was followed by a light sanding with fine grit sandpaper to get rid of the roughness brought on by the ravages of time.

 

 The second image is after dyeing the boots.

After stripping and sanding the boots, I applied several layers of leather dye, which was followed by a few layers of leather conditioner.

 The third image is after polishing the boots.

This picture shows the boots as they are now, with a high gloss buffed finish.  They're generally completed, but I will continue adding layers of polish for a while, with the goal of spit shining them someday in the future.  You may notice that my boot laces are green.  This is not regulation, but I stood several inspections wearing green laces made from parachute chord, and I never got dinged for it.  I took this idea from a Force Recon Marine who did the same thing.  I went a bit further this time around and added aglets at the end, made from heat shrink.  This is strictly an aesthetic choice.  I melted the ends of the laces to make sure they don't fray.

I also had to touch up the eyelets, which I did using enamel paint.  Another detail, which is difficult to describe, and impossible to see in the pictures, is that I dyed ALL of the leather black.  Before this refurbish, there were surfaces that were still undyed, from the factory.  These nude spots would be where the leather shapes were cut from the original leather swath.  It's a silly minor detail, but in person the boots look a lot more black due to this minuscule change.

I'm looking forward to wearing them to PT this week and telling the kids these boots are over twice their age.