Better than “real” Dr Martens - Solovair

so we've slightly adjusted our posting schedule and we have a new channel dropping Sundays our new rose Anvil main account posting day where we do the cut in halfs Mondays are the new rose Anvil 2 Channel days where it's a longer format q and A's interviews stuff like that Thursdays remain still a main Channel cut in half day and then Saturday is the launch of the new channel and the new channel is called Rose Anvil builds where we're going to take cobbling to the most extreme and by cabling I mean cobbling we bought a bunch of really cool old equipment so we can round out the information and show you guys not just the finished product being cut in half but show you how boots and shoes are actually made and make some of the wackiest stuff ever the first video drops this Saturday you can go subscribe there's no videos yet so it'll help out if you go subscribe but thank you guys for your support and look out for that video on Saturday these solo bears are in many people's opinions the real Doc Martens or the Doc Martin Killers because they're allegedly built to the same standard that Doc Martin used to make their boots to before they sold out so we're going to dissect this boot and run it through our test to see why people have started buying solo Bears instead of Doc Martin Boots and and to really understand why people call them the real Doc Martens you have to understand solver's history that dates all the way back to the 1800s because in 1881 in northamptonshire England five men in the village of Williston created a Cooperative called northamptonshire productive Society or NPS for short and secured a year-long contract to make army boots for the government and then in 1899 NPS grew to 80 employees as demand increased forcing them to move to a new Factory which they're still in today then they continue to make Footwear and grow their business for the first half of the 1900s and this is where their history starts to become intertwined with Doc Martens because if you remember from the recent Doc Martin video the German doctor Dr Martin creates the air cushioning technology in 1945 and by 1959 they were looking to expand their business and license out their technology and then in 1960 Bill Griggs acquires a license to make Doc Martin Boots and but they didn't have the Machinery or technology to make the airware souls but there was a company in the region that could make them that was NPS so throughout the 60s Dr Martin Boots were made with Griggs uppers and MPS outsoles with the name Doc Martin by solivar so it was a bit of a chimera of the Dr Martin license from Germany the Griggs uppers who bought the license and then The NPS outsoles who were contracted by Griggs who bought the license from Dr Martin to make Dr Martin buy solover and if you don't know what the word of solover is or where it came from it's just literally a shortened fun version of Soul of air solivair and NPS continued to make Footwear under the license for 35-ish years until the 90s and then in 1995 their contract was up with Doc Martin and NPS trademarked the name soliver and continued to make Doc martin-esque boots because at the time in the mid 90s Doc Martens were all the rage everyone was wearing them so they tried to capture a portion of that market by selling solo their boots but soon the popularity started to wane Doc Martin started looking at foreign production and then in 2003 when once again if you remember from the Doc Martin videos Doc Martens were struggling and they cut a thousand jobs in England and moved the vast majority of the production overseas and in 2006 for solo there they were struggling in a very similar way and just about went out of business until Ivan Tilly a local purchased solo there and helped it survive and then from 2006 up until today NPS and solovair have been thriving because they found that little niche of making the real Doc Martin Boots so now you know the history you can understand why people consider solo there to be the true Doc Martens the Doc Martin killer is the real Doc Martens because those high quality docks that built the brand in the 80s and 90s were built by solovair they didn't move production to foreign countries they allegedly didn't change a lot of the production Styles and techniques and materials so now it's time to see if that's actually true by analyzing the materials of this boot starting with the leather first so the things that I'm looking at to judge this leather are thickness cross section and performance with the soul of airs being about 2.2 millimeters thick and the Doc Martens being about 1.8 to 2 millimeters so in theory the solar air should last a little bit longer and be more durable because it's just marginally thicker if you look at the cross section between the two of these you can see that the patterned layer of plastic on top is about the same thickness so you're not going to get any more top coat durability out of the sole of errors but if you look at the actual leather aspect you can see that the Solar Bears have a little bit more of that structural grain pattern that is that really fine fiber structure the top of leather that gives it a smooth texture that holds all those really loose big suede fibers together so even though they both have a similar top coat of plastic the sole of air leather has a little bit better cross section and one thing that's hard to really show on screen is the difference of quality of leather because even though there's similar cross sections and similar plastic Coatings the feel of these two Leathers are really different the Doc Martens have almost foamy empty dry feel to them versus the sole Bears have a lot more conditioning worked into the leather making it more malleable and a little bit more conditioned to the touch and that means the solar air is going to be a little bit more durable and long lasting because the way way I visualize this is a dry foamy leather is like breaking a dry tree branch versus a conditioned and saturated leather it's more like trying to break a green tree branch it's a lot harder it bends more before those fibers actually start breaking so do the tests reflect the extra durability because of the saturation the extra thickness well we did the flame test and both top coats acted about the same we did the puncture test and they acted about the same as well but the Doc Martens had a little bit better score I think that's because of how dry the Doc Martin leather is it seems to be a pretty common Trend with this test the drier the leather the harder it is to puncture through but the harder it is to break in and the less durable it's going to be versus the more conditioned the more that puncture Glides through the leather so you lose a little bit of the puncture resistance by having a conditioned leather but overall I'd way rather have a long lasting more durable condition leather than a dry puncture resistant Leather So leather wise the sole of airs are a little bit thicker a little bit more grain and a little bit more saturated making it a superior leather then if we start looking at the inside of the boots one of my biggest gripes with docs is this really terrible counter cover and counter covers are there to help reinforce one of the highest wear spots inside of a boot which is right at your Hill where it starts slipping and with docks being a very big loose upper you get non-stop heel slip in this at least for me and so how does that compare to the Solar Bears well the Solar Bears isn't leather but it's a lot thicker and it's a lot stronger because the Doc Martens are only half a millimeter of fake suede leather versus The Solar Bears is still a fake leather but it's significantly thicker at two millimeters thick so you have three or you have four times the amount of material to wear through and it's just a lot better for material because of the structure of the fake leather compared to the docks and then the other aspect of the lining which is in the vamp they're very similar the the Doc Martens and Solar Bears have a similar fabric the Solar Bears are just a little bit thicker leading to potentially more durability but the biggest difference on the inside of this boot comes from what you're actually standing up because docks come with a glued in fake leather topped cheap foam insole versus The Solar Bears are just a half sock liner a lot more like a boot with the latex foam underneath and then the rest of the boot you're just standing on the fiberboard itself but when you pull this insole out of the Doc Martens you still have fiberboard but it's a lot thinner at two millimeters thick on the docks and three millimeters thick on the solar bear so you're going to get a little bit more compression out of the sole of airs you're going to get more durability and you're just going to get a lot more footprint inside of the boot because you have more material that's going to hold that shape and it's not going to break down and split like cheap fiberboard is going to do and then maybe the biggest difference between these two is this little patch right here where the fiber board on the Doc Martin stops turns into a lot softer more malleable Fabric and then continues back with the fiberboard and this is going to be more comfortable initially it's going to give you a little bit easier break in but over time this is going to be significantly less durable than a full sheet of fiberboard like in the Solar Bears because all you have to do is wear out this little teeny Stitch anywhere in the inside of here and your boots gonna start falling up part from the inside out so from the inside you can see how the docks are going to be easier to break in a little bit softer underfoot initially but they're not going to be nearly as durable and last as long compared to the sole of airs that are going to be a little bit harder to break in and a little bit more comfortable initially but they're going to be significantly more durable over the long run and then to the biggest difference between these boots that you would never ever know unless you literally cut them in half that's the internal components in the midsole because in the Doc Martens you have a single layer of really cheap foam for the midsole it has a little bit of a backer on it and then you have this little integrated piece at the ball of your foot versus the sole of Errors has a full length felted midsole that's made out of this and no integrated foam piece at the ball of your foot and instead it's structured and lattice like the rest of the outsole foam is mostly air felt is mostly felt and with a little bit of air in between so when you compress foam it bottoms out really bad versus felt you're always going to have some material that's separating you from the structured outsole so you can start to see why people consider solavares to be a true Boot and a lot of people consider Doc Martens to just be a glorified sneaker and one of the biggest differences between boots and sneakers is the shank if you don't know what a shank is it's the structural piece that Bridges the Gap from the heel towards the ball of your foot structuring that little Gap that's caused by the heel because if you don't have it in there what happens is exactly what happens at docks where you start compressing that the boot turns into kind of a boat looking shape you lose all the arc support and if anything it makes them significantly more uncomfortable because of that high pressure spot caused by the heel so in the Solar Bears they fixed that or brought back what Doc Martens used to do which is put in a wooden shank and a wooden shank is not nearly as durable as the steel shank or a fiberglass shape shank or even a composite shank but as long as you're not stomping on shovels and you're not climbing on ladders all day Soul there claims that they'd very very rarely see a broken shank when Boots come back in for a resole do I believe that's true I think it is probably true because I think most people aren't working in solvers and I think if you treat them like casual boots you're not going to break your shank and then to the final difference between the Solar Bears and the Doc Martens is the outsole and I initially thought that the solar air is going to be thicker I thought it's going to be heavier lugs but it turns out they're actually about the same depth of lugs and same thickness but the real difference comes in on how hard the outsoles are because they're both PVC and they're known for wearing out fairly quickly and the hardness of docks come in at a 55 short a which is a little bit on the soft side for for boots you know with really heavy duty boots we see like 70 to 80 short a versus the solo bears come in at a 65 to 70 Shore a so the solar bear should last a good amount longer than the Doc Martens solving that one issue that most people have with docs where that outsole just flattens out after like a month worth of wear and to see if there's any response difference between the two we did the bar drop tests the Doc Martens bounced up 3.5 inches silver is bounced up 4.1 so even a little bit more responsive out of this soul of theirs and I think that's partly due to the the lattice structure that's on the inside of this outsole because the cool thing about docs is you can actually see through the outsole and if you look at the Doc Martens you can see it's a very Square very big lattice structure with a relief for that little piece of foam versus The Solar Bears it's a lot finer of a lattice structure which causes the Solar Bears to have far fewer high pressure spots because there's just a lot more structure on the inside that's being evenly compressed versus these big open squares where you could understand how if you put pressure in the middle of that square you'd have a really dead spot surrounded by a high pressure spot which in my opinion should make the sole of Air's internal components last a lot longer and make the whole boot more comfortable for the extended wear of the boot so to answer the rest of the questions which involve the construction and this thing being heat welded together and the fake Stitch that solver has on the outside of their boot we need to cut this in half to be able to fully test it and explain what's going on the inside of Solar Bears Father's Day is just around the corner and it's time to get your dad some more morning dram because your dad is probably sick of drinking the same coffee over and over and over probably doesn't even put cream or sugar in it like a real man and the cool thing about the morning dram is you can actually introduce some new flavors to his palette because they age their coffee beans in X whiskey barrels to give the coffee just a hint of whiskey flavors no alcohol but it's just enough that it gives you that flavor it gives you that Aroma like I've said in every single one of these ads because we do a lot of ads for the morning dram because you guys like them so pretty clearly you guys are digging the morning dram and that's partly because of the smell it smells so freaking good in the morning when I walk in the shop it smells like leather coffee and whiskey what more could you ask for and one of my favorite Parts about the morning dram is Tommy the owner who won best best whiskey bar in America in 2021 he's a boot nerd he loves the channel and that's how we connected his solid channels like hey I like boots I like coffee I bet your guys do too let's do some ads together and they have a couple cool boxes that are perfect for Father's Day they have their new scotch box that's 85 dollars it includes a scotch Barrel aged coffee a handheld grinder a stainless steel dripper and a ceramic mug and they also have their Barrel age box that has one bag of each of the four barrel aged coffees scotch bourbon rye and filled and sounds American single malt you can give your dad a great variety or if you're a dad yourself or you want to be a dad buy yourself one of these why not it's a good it's a good opportunity to try something new it's a cool brand so use a link in the description and get your dad some new flavor profiles get them some excitement in his life get the morning dram so check them out below and thanks again to the morning dram [Music] good foreign [Music] [Music] we got them cut in half and if you're not subscribed just push that little subscribe button it's a free click For You YouTube never shows you what you're subscribed to anyway and it makes a huge difference for the channel and if you want some supplementary some extracurricular watching of Doc Martens and Solar Bears go check out the iron snails breakdowns he's got a really cool Channel he's one of my favorite creators in the space so check them out below see what's inside [Music] so if you remember in the Doc Martin video this outsole came off like I was tearing tissue paper so let's see if the solo Bears fare any better because honestly the Doc Martens were shockingly easy to tear apart and if you remember the very first soul of air video I did like three years ago the upper was tearing away before the outsole this seemed like it's a lot harder to tear apart oh see I pulled the I actually ripped the Goodyear welt before the actual welt ripped from that heat ceiling so I think what I'm going to do now is cheat a little bit so I'm just going to start the tear a little Little Help From The Knife to see if once it starts going does it go as easily as the Doc Martens did okay so it started so let's see how easy it is to actually tear it yeah yeah okay so it's significantly harder but I can tear it it's way harder yeah okay it's going now so compare these two shots of me tearing the Doc Martens versus the solovaris you can see that the soul of errors are heat welded together significantly better and part of that is due to the surface area that is used to heat weld so right here at the toe you can see that these solo Bears have a flat plane of about 14 15 millimeters versus the Doc Martens only have seven to 11 with a Sawtooth pattern and the actual area that was fused is about 12 millimeters on the solar air versus about six at the thinnest on the Doc Martens so there's a huge difference between these boots Doc Martens are known for splitting and cracking especially in cold weather as you wear them because the only thing holding this outsole on is the melting of the PVC welt to the PVC outsole that is done with a really like a red hot knife that they used to bond those two layers together and there's a clear performance difference between these two boots so much so that I would never really trust a pair of docks because like these are so easy to tear apart and this was really hard to tear apart still not as strong as if it was a true Goodyear welt where the stitches went through the midsole into the insole with the stitching holding it together but this is stronger than I even anticipated from solivair so now to the final questions are solovares actually better are they the real Doc Martens or the Doc Martin Killers I would say yes solar air is better in basically every single way and that's because the soul of airs they've got a signal significantly better counter cover a better leather that's thicker more conditioned and should be longer lasting and the biggest Fel spot in docks with this being heat welded is fixed by the Solar Bears so this breakdown really did confirm that Solar Bears are real boots and Doc Martens are sneakers disguised as boots but are they worth the extra fifty dollars well you get them made in England by the same guys that made the traditional famous stocks from the 80s and 90s and you get a little bit better materials a little better construction but is that worth the extra 50 bucks for me it is I would way rather spend 50 bucks and not have any of the fail spots any of the BS going on the inside of of docks and and they're made in the UK by the people that made the real Docks but there is one caveat and that is that soul of air cannot put the yellow Stitch around the outside of their boot because doc Barton trademarked that and solver cannot use it so if that one yellow Stitch matters to you more than anything else it might not be worth the extra 50 bucks so let me know what you guys think and your experiences in these if you've owned them and thank you guys so much for everything you do and if this video does well I'd like to compare it to the made in England docs to really see who makes the truest made in England Doc Martin Boots so help this video out subscribe do all the other stuff because that's how we decide if we're going to do the next video so thank you guys see ya foreign

Channel: Rose Anvil

Views: 346,438

Keywords: 1460 doc martens, boot review, doc marten, doc marten review, doc martens, doc martens 1460 vs solovair, doc martens vs solovair, doc martins, dr marten 1460, dr marten 1461, dr martens, dr martens 1460, dr martens boots, dr martens boots review, dr martens vs solovair, dr martin, dr martin review, dr. martens, made in england, rose anvil, rose anvil review, solovair boots, solovair boots review, solovair review, solovair vs doc martens, solovair vs dr martens

Id: vkhCcvfVHRs

Length: 19min 7sec (1147 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 08 2023