quote:

Originally posted by Tom Harris:
What I do is wear them around all day for a few days and at nights I shower in them, hot shower, so the leather loosens up and forms to my feet.

"Goal oriented people find ways"

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9. Depending on the type of boot you get, you may or may not need to shape them to your feet to accelerate or facilitate the "break-in" process. There are a million methods of accomplishing this. Some folks wear their boots in the shower, and then walk around with them wet until they dry on their feet. Some folks just wear their boots for a month until they are broken in the hard way.

I used to literally soak my boots in a BUCKET of Neet's Foot Oil, which can be a very expensive proposition if you go to the store and see how much an entire bucket's worth will cost you. The thing is, Neet's Foot Oil breaks down the leather, whether you are using old-style authentic green jungle boots, newer-style black jungle boots, full-leather standard Army-issue boots, or whatever. I have no idea what kind of boots are issued these days, or permitted. But Neet's Foot Oil can make your boots softer than slippers, meaning the uppers will be nice and soft, and waterproof as HELL. When you are a grunt, and you live and die on your feet, no money is too much for the right ****, and Neet's Foot Oil IS the ****. No, I don't own stock or Neet's Foot Oil futures.

10. The Neet's Foot Oil treatment is only appropriate for boots worn in the field. It will ruin all chance for boots to look "normal" or pretty for garrison purposes, but for field boots, you will thank me every day you wear them in the bush if you prepare your field boots in this way. I used to soak my boots, completely immersing them, (at least just the leather part, or completely, if they were all leather boots), for about two weeks. No kidding. Periodically, I would pull the boots out, and rough up the outer surface with a steel brush, carefully. This was so the Neet's Foot Oil could soak in deeper into the leather, completely saturating it. When I came back from the bush, I would clean my boots, then reinsert them into a bucket, or just liberally coat them repeatedly with more layers, to maintain the water repellency and softness.

11. Boots prepared in this way are completely waterproof. They will leak Neet's Foot Oil onto your socks for awhile after you prepare them (this is ugly, but harmless), but they will last a long time, remain totally waterproof, and require very rare applications of black shoe polish, which means you can skip packing a can of polish and a rag in your ruck. Your boots will stay black, no matter what, and you will not have to polish them. Your boots will get softer than hell, and very comfortable, and you will like them more than tennis shoes. Your boots will be as waterproof or more so than a set of gore tex boots, but they will be a hell of a lot cheaper, even considering the cost of the Neet's Foot Oil (it might cost around $20-30 for enough to immerse your boots, with a bucket large enough to fit both boots in it).