If you read the article I wrote earlier this year about prepping your boots for the upcoming season, I have some new information to add.

As it turns out, shoe-gooing your boots while they are brand new is less effective than gooing them after you’ve used them for a while. I’m no chemist, but I assume it has something to do with the adhesion of the goo to the rough surface. With this new knowledge in the memory bank, I will be experimenting on the newest pair of boots by roughing up the leather a little before gooing this year. This should mimic the broken in boots without sealing in the dirt that inevitably covers your boots.

That is the theory anyway. We’ll have to wait to see the final results.

New vs. Old

Here are a few pictures I took this morning of my boots from last year compared to what they looked like at the start of the season. As you can see, they take some ware! These boots are the Zamberlan Vioz GT’s, and I can’t say enough good things about them. Light, comfortable, and durable. They are a little on the pricey side as far as boots go, but I wore them everyday last season and they will be going out for another this year.

Some advice I would like to pass along is to a) load them up with a couple coats of water repellent, and b) Shoe Goo the toe caps and heal seams, especially where the rubber meets the leather. Do both of these while the boots are clean and dirt free and your boots will last far longer than a season. I Shoe Goo’d the pair in the picture about 4 cycles in after I noticed the leather was getting rough on the toes and heel. Putting a good thick layer of Goo on before the boots see action will allow you to screef to your hearts content without worrying about putting a hole in them.

As you can see, the tread takes a beating after repeated screefing. The hole you can see in the middle of the sole only happened on the second last day of the season. I plan on Shoe Goo-ing it up and running these boots into the ground this season.