Alright. Here’s the fast and short. Longer below. Excellent boots that last, are comfortable, have excellent traction on ice, snow and wet+smooth surfaces, and are worth the 100. Very happy with them. Heres the long. I’ve had these boots since September of 2018. It is now February of 2020. So, a year and 5 months, give or take some days. I’m assuming they ran a touch big, because I put in some gel inserts and they then fit nicely, not too tight and not too loose. Just right. The use: My work for the first 8 months consisted mainly of lumber work at Home Depot, so nothing crazy, but a fair bit of being on my knees (hence the worm through tops). The rest of the time was spent as a do-it-all for a small city including digging out and replacing broken water lines, building parks and more. I’ve taken these hiking for 12 hours at a time, worn them in knee high snow, worked on a ranch, rode horses, etc. I’ve basically worn these just about every day since I bought them, even to church. The results: They are very comfortable, maybe partially because of the insert which I believe others recommended in the reviews which was why I bought them. They are reasonably water tight, even with the hole in the top like in my photos. My feet got cold in the snow, but they only got damp after a couple of hours trudging in it. Ymmv. The aren’t too heavy, but they also aren’t pink nike running shoes. The anti-slip traction sole design is phenomenal. I often forgot how slippery ice was until someone else ate it while I might as well have been walking on wet asphalt. I honestly have no complaints. At this stage, I finally had the padding on the back of the heel inside of the left boot wear through to the seam that joins the two sections (ankle support and heel) of the boot together, which rendered them unusable because it would rub my heel raw. I took them to a boot repair place and he said that he wouldn’t be able to stitch new padding to the plastic. I did a quick search and found these leather adhesive pads that you can see inside of the boot. I cut away and cleaned up the lining inside of the boot, made a couple of cuts into the patches so they curved nicely and sat flat when I attached them inside of the boot and bam. Got my work boots back. The only other thing to note is that on the left boot on the back left corner, it looks like the boot is separating from the rubber sole. I imagine I’m still likely to get another 4-5 months at least out of these. Finally, I’ve seen some complaints about the sole of the boot ripping in half. Like i said, I’ve spent a lot of time on my knees with these boots bent in half with my feet in them. The only way I can see these ripping like that is if they suffer a lateral cut somewhere across the sole in roughly the area that flexes when you step/fold the boot. The damage in the center of the ball area of the boots is actually recent and caused by me being dumb. I was putting a t-post into the ground and thought I would jump on the pointy spade bit at the bottom. That punctured, but didn’t penetrate, the sole of the boots. Essentially, it was unnecessarily accrued damage. So yeah. Good boot. Excellent for the price!!! Tons and tons of hours and miles in them, with hard work. Hope to have them for another year, I expect 4-5 months at the least. If the back wears through, buy a leather adhesive patch and patch it! Much better then spending another 100 on another pair.
