I Cut The #1 American Boot In Half – Red Wing Iron Ranger

it's time to cut open probably the most
American boot by the most American boot brand and see if they live up to all the
hype and cut them in half and see what's inside and this is the second half of
the hundred thousand subscriber mark milestone videos last time we did the
thousand dollar Jordans cut these in half and how we're doing these so thanks
for everyone that's subscribed up to this point if you haven't subscribed
consider subscribing because we're gonna keep doing boots and shoes and maybe
start doing some high-end luxury brand bags and coats and belts and stuff so
now let's talk a little bit about these boots so the brand of these boots is
obviously Red Wing the model is the iron Ranger and the leather I got is I think
their most popular leather it's the cop copper rough and tough leather I
think is what it's called they retail for $329.99 and you
guys asked me to start weighing the boots so we can compare them that way these
weigh one pound 14 ounces and these are 100% made in America I wore these boots
around for the weekend I was working on my motorcycle so I beat them up pretty bad
and also a lot of you guys keep asking where the triumph build is at and I'm
working on it I'm probably just gonna do one video
that covers the entire build but if you want to see more of the day to day
process of rebuilding that triumph it's on my Instagram and I post usually work
on the weekends but for my initial impressions of these they do run a
little bit large on the website they recommend getting half a size smaller or
a full size smaller than what you usually get and I think that's true these are a little bit big for me and these are really stiff and you get
them which is usually good sign for a nice quality boot it's gonna take a
little while to break these in it's not they're a lot stiffer than the Doc Martens their
way stiffer than the RM Williams and they're probably the most stiff hardest
leather boot that we've reviewed up to this point
Red Wings they're such a big company that lot of people I think discredit them and
and don't think they live up to their heritage roots and style and
construction techniques but these are a heavy-duty boot I was really impressed
by how thick the leather is and how high-quality the leather is so now let's
go over a few of the features of these boots that kind of separate them from
the rest of the boots we've torn apart so first let's talk about the leather so
this is an oil tanned leather which is really just a chrome tanned leather that
has a lot of oils infused into it and what that does is it's kind of a self
conditioning boot where you don't have to condition this nearly as often as a
veg tan boot and those oils kind of protect the boot from the environment it doesn't
they don't absorb nearly as much water and they don't take as much care and
that's so that's why you see a lot more of the chrome tan in the boot category
especially with these heritage style boots compared to like dress boot because veg
tan leather is gonna absorb water a lot more and it's gonna take a lot more care
to make it so it doesn't crack because it's just it's just a drier leather this
is also a full grain leather so you can see some of little scars and stuff like
on this side you can see a little bug bite I think or something there a lot of
people don't like seeing the natural flaws in leather I love it I think it's
cool to see the natural state of leather and not have tons of dyes on top of it
and then for the thickness of the leather I don't have an exact reading on
that yet because my little caliper doesn't reach to where I can get a
single layer another thing that a lot of people say when they're reviewing these
boots is there a little bulbous bulbish bulbous I don't know what the correct
word of that is but I don't think they're that bad I think a lot of people feel get
little self-conscious when they're looking straight down at the boots
they're wearing but I don't think these are nearly as bad as everyone says they
are online I and these are like too big for me and they still didn't look like
clown shoes to me next let's talk about the toe cap so a lot of you guys
probably already know this but it's worth repeating so what is the purpose
of having an extra layer on top of the toe here so these are originally work
boots and a lot of people wear out spots on the toes from kicking stuff or
rubbing on stuff and so a toe cap allows you to have an extra layer of protection
there but also when it comes time to resole your boots or replace that patch
instead of replacing the entire vamp which is this alter here you just
replace that toe cap so it's an easier repair job it's a cheaper repair job and
it's faster and so a lot of boot companies have just kind of adopted that
and made it more of a style thing but the cool thing about these boots is this
is very much a true representation of what a toe cap is used for because you
can see it's got the four lines of stitching and it's a really heavy thick
piece of leather so I really like this toe cap that it's not just for style
next thing is this stitch style on these boots so this is if you watched the how to
tell if your dog Martens a fake we talked about the puritan stitch the
chain stitch and this boot has a lot of that chain stitching it's got chain
stitching through here and then up over where the the counter cap this is all
chain stitched so what does chain stitching chain stitching is the style
of stitching where most sewing machines do a lock stitch where
the thread is hooked together and it's dependent on each other for strength
well this kind of loops the thread around itself and we'll do a close-up to
you and see what I'm talking about this is a stronger stitch and it allows for a
little bit more movement without wearing that thread out and so that's why you
see a lot of chain stitching in areas where you've got a lot of movement and
torsion and flex and movement because it's a stronger stitch for that type of
area one cool thing about these Red Wings is if you look closely you can see
some shininess around the threads here and the way that they do their stitching
is they've got like a little vat of wax and as the thread gets pulled through
that wax it's waxing the threads as you're stitching and then as a boot goes
through the rest of the building that wax dries and you get that little layer of
shininess on there now let's talk about what we know about the construction of
these boots and one thing that's really cool about Red Wing is they
cut open a lot of their boots already like if you go to the Red Wings store
sometimes they'll have a boot that's cut in half so you can see how they built
which i think is cool because it's like a sign of a company that's proud of how
their boots are built so we know a lot before we cut them in half so let's go
through what we do know so starting with the sole this is a Vibram mini lug sole
they switched it from the previous sole they didn't have any traction on it it was just flat to
this mini lug sole this is a rubber sole this is a really good sole for
someone who wants that traction of having some tread but doesn't want those
big lugs like on my Chippewa boots these are like my hiking and hunting boots
they've got a big chunky Vibram sole on them and if that's not your style these
are a good alternative because you're not gonna slip nearly as much and they have
that low profile the outsole is stitched on with a 270 degree goodyear welt which
means it doesn't go all the way around the heel it stops where the heel begins
and it just goes around the toe let me know what you guys know about this and
maybe you can help educate me on benefits of the 270 welt but moving up I
believe there's a cork midsole in here cork midsoles are really nice because
they break into the shape of your foot instead of just being like a hard
plastic or something that's not gonna mold to your foot cork compresses over
time so it gives you nice contoured edges and a footprint basically so it
makes it more comfortable and your weight of your foots more evenly
distributed and then above that would be your leather insole the thing I like
about this leather insole over a fiber board insole like most fish the boots
that we torn apart is it's not gonna stink leather is a natural antibacterial
so it's not gonna smell like a shoe as fast as a cheaper boot it's gonna break
into your foot more fully just like that cork midsole is gonna do and it's just
longer-lasting it's not gonna break apart and then on top of that right at
the heel you've got a little sock liner there that just
the nails that go into the heel the heel block and then you've got the upper and
we kind of talked about the leather for the upper oh and there is also I forgot
to mention this there is also a steel shank in here I'm pretty sure so now
that we kind of know the general construction let's cut these in half
and see if that really is what's going on inside there's a few questions I have
about these boots that cutting them in half will hopefully help answer
these are going to be more painful for me to cut apart than these
thousand-dollar sneakers because I've been wanting a pair of these for so long
but let's cut them in half am i sweaty yeah this uh kicked my butt
we didn't even get all the way through the shank just pulled it out halfway through
this is a super wide shank but let's see what's inside well that was quite the
battle getting through this boot part of the reason was I cut right through the
middle of this giant nail and then the big reason was this giant shank they
have in this boot so this is a triple ribbed shank most of the shanks that we've
seen our single rib and they're about half the width of this one and usually
I'm really good at just kind of skirting along the side of the shank without
cutting through it so this one I went straight through the middle and then it
came out so I'll cut the rest of this in half and get it installed back in the
one boot half for display purposes and if you want half of an iron Ranger I will
tell you how to win at the end of the video so I'll probably cut this other
one in half and give out one of the sides because apparently people like
that now let's go through the layers of what's going on in here and if there's
anything else that we missed in our initial breakdown
you've got the rubber outsole cork filler on the midsole you've got the
shank it was wider than I expected you've got the really thick layer of
leather for the insole I'm actually really impressed at how thick this
leather is on the insole compared to the $500 RM Williams it's even thicker than
RM Williams so that's gonna conform more to your foot it's going to last longer
it's just I think it's better to have it a little bit thicker and then one thing
that was really surprising is these nails that go through I knew it was
nailed but they're pretty substantial nails I think next let's rip the rest of
this out rip the guts out of it and kind of see what else is going on because we
still don't know what the counter is made out of and I still can't really measure
thickness of the leather so let's cut the rest of this apart these well-made
boots are such a pain to tear apart like I'm literally sore the next day after
doing this style of boots so let's go through some things that we didn't know
right off the bat so the heel block is put on by these clinch nails it's a
pretty common thing to see in well made footwear so clinch nails
basically they hammer them on through the boot they hit the anvil and it
causes those nails to clinch over and cause and make a little hook that allows
them to not be easily pulled out as you could see by my struggle there's clinch
nails that hold the heel block on and then there's also another set of nails
that hold this part of the sole on to the insole as well another thing you can
see how many layers are in this toe box so we've got the two layers of leather
and you've got another layer of some black material it's like a fabric
reinforced rubber is what I would call it for lack of a real term and opening
this up you can see a little bit better detail of the chain stitching or the
puritan stitch the counter was one of the questions we had so this counter is
a cardboard compressed cardboard counter so now we can finally reach in far
enough to test the leather yeah it looks like about two millimeters to 2.25 ish in
that area so a pretty thick leather it looks like there's little inserts inside
this heel block that prevent these nails these clinch nails from going too
far which is really interesting and I don't know if we talked about the
purpose of the sock liner but it's basically just a thin layer to cover up
those nails see it just goes on right there to cover those nails up otherwise you'd
see those at the bottom of your shoe and potentially compress that leather enough
that it might snag on a sock or you might feel in your heel
have you guys ever had any experience where you could feel the nails in your
heel it's a pretty common way of doing it most of the big boot companies that
produce high quality boots do it this exact same way so now the question is do these
live up to all the hype surrounding them I think they do I was really impressed
with the leather quality how they're built the materials on the inside and
how freakin hard it was a tear apart I think these are a good boot that's gonna
last a long time they should last through several resoles they yeah
I'm really impressed with these boots obviously there's some things that could
be improved like if we're getting nitpicky it'd be nice to have a leather
counter in there maybe an extra layer of leather between the outsole and the cork
filling I've seen that in some boots but a lot of these features you're gonna pay
another two hundred dollars for and you're going to get that the whites and
Nix and Westco area so this is a nice mid-range price boot so what do you get
for the 300 dollar boot the main thing that most people like in these boots is
that they're american-made pretty much everything on this boot is American made
starting with a leather from the tannery they own all the way down to the
construction and a lot of the testing and manufacturing and the forms and the
molds everything is done in-house in America by Americans so if that's your
thing this is a really good boot if you're trying to support your
american-made goods so you end up paying for that so that's why you've got that
price difference between a two hundred dollar boot that's made in China versus
a three hundred and thirty dollar boot that's made in America so that pretty
much wraps up the red wing iron Ranger boot review if you want to win this boot
all you got to do is subscribe to the YouTube channel follow me on Instagram
@rose_anvil and LIKE and comment on the post of the boot
breakdown of this particular boot basically has all the different parts
labeled and then will select a comment in a couple weeks to choose a winner and
if you want to see some people who wore these longer than a couple days and get
their opinions on them one of them is stride wise next one is Carl Murawski I
think is how you say his name oh and the boot guy those three channels have all done
reviews of these boots so if you want more iron Ranger information check out
their channels and if you want to buy these boots and not cut them in half
I'll put a link to the list team from Red Wing in the description so you can
go buy because they're really nice boots thanks for all you guys support and be
sure to LIKE comment and subscribe to help this video out these thousand
dollar sneakers were it's gonna be a hard one to recoup the cost the same
with these ones so anything you guys can do to help this video out is very much
appreciated so thanks for everything see ya

As found on YouTube