Why The US Military Loves Chicago's Leather.

so why do some mechanics prefer to use this 111-year-old leather on vital oil rig seals to keep everything closed instead of modern Plastics and [Music] rubber sorry one second have you ever had a wine or tea that makes your mouth feel dry the reason your mouth feels dry is because there are tannins in those wine and teas and similar tannins go into this leather and this leather is some of the most magical leather and the entire planet I'm assuming when it came out 111 years ago the world lost their minds and I'm correct because even to this day1 years later this is one of the most popular Leathers on the planet and during World War II 18 million square ft of this leather was being produced per month that's more than this Factory now produces in many many years this leather changed everything from being worn in Boots to being in tanks to being in airplanes to being in trucks Oh and speaking of absolutely insane stories 3 years before the second world war and in krackow Poland a man said hey I think it's a great idea uh for me to start a footwear company and everybody said yeah doesn't seem like anything's going to go wrong soon and then World War II happened especially in Poland and somehow this company still exists and that company's name is goral Footwear they moved to Sheffield England in 2005 I flew to Scotland in 2024 goral reached out to me and said Michael why don't you swing by England we'll make you a pair of boots then you can leave I said okay gorl that sounds great I'll be right there I got on a Scottish plane where the seats were made of Harris Tweed I flew to Sheffield England then went into a factory in Sheffield England where people only speak Polish and got boots made for me what a crazy Journey gorl had so far they survived World War II and now they're surviving YouTubers These Boots are called the charman boots and I wore the black ones in Scotland for the entire time every day on the plane when I got home everything through rain sleep snow ocean water obviously they held up fantastically and the brown ones on my feet are going through their maiden voyage right now as I film in Vermont so anyways this is today's agenda number one what what happened 111 years ago that made the US military want 18 million square ft of this leather per month number two sorry gorl but your boots are made weird but that's not a bad thing trick you trick you you should have seen your face they are made weird I'm not lying but there is a benefit that I like to them I do it on every boot video I'll talk about it later and this is a little better than most boots number three is called catastrophic failure that is the answer to the question posed in the beginning of this video we'll elaborate on that more and number four there are two things that I would change on these boots to make them the perfect boots for me of this style the combat Doc Martin alternative whatever you want to call it this is the reason we're in New Hampshire we're puppy sitting Lou hi if you're a big fat leather nerd you already know what I'm talking about but this is hor chomel leather chomel Chom XL cxl whatever you want to call it hor was founded in Chicago in 1905 and they sold mostly shell civan because people used it as a razor STP but then Gillette came along and said hey screw the straight razor what about disposable razors and everybody was like ah that sounds better and in 1913 what got really popular after it was invented of course was chome XL leather first off what's up everybody it's Michael CEO founder operator coo CFO of iron snail Industries and Co nice to see you all this video is sponsored by goral and why did I feel comfortable doing a sponsored video by gorl I've worn These Boots pretty extensively I understand how they're made Rose Anvil did a video where he cut them in half and you can see the materials inside of them I flew to to their Factory I met the people I saw the materials I saw the machines I talked to everybody and these boots are fantastic I was really happy when goral reached out to me because they're great boots and you can get 15% off of these boots by using my code iron 15 how's that when hor was making this leather they could have processed it in two different ways they could have Chrome tanned it or they could have vegetable tanned it or technically they could have also brain tanned it or oil tanned it they did none of those things but at the same time they also did vegetable tanning and chrome tanning and sandwich them together but to truly understand how vegetable tanning and Chrome tanning come together to make Chrome XL you need to have a basic understanding about how leather tanning works we are tightening spaghetti by the way a lot of this information comes from Nick hor hor themselves there's a really awesome podcast called the full grain podcast where they talk extensively about Chrome XL leather highly recommended but anyways on one of those podcast episodes they were talking about what tanning leather actually does and the example that they gave is picture a big jelly sorry I don't I just gross me out all of a sudden picture a big bowl full of spaghetti that you can wiggle it's loose it's all over around and everything like that when you tan leather lock all of that spaghetti together you can't you know sift your little fingers through it or anything like that it is now locked and it's a strong piece of leather I'm going to use soldiers as an analogy instead the phrase tanning leather stems from the one of the original ways of tanning leather vegetable tanning in things like tree bark and tea and wine like I was talking about before there is something or are something called tannins big fat molecules that make your mouth feel dry those tannins in the vegetable matter bond to collagen molecules and essentially lock everything down to go to my analogy picture a bunch of people in a wide open field just running around crazy they're running a muck and picture me a bad guy in this scenario walking on the field I can get past everybody pretty easily because people run by I wait then I go in and I can get into the center of the field and that's what's happening when a dead animal's skin is not processed it rots bacteria comes in anything can get into it and destroy it but if we introduce tannins to those people that are running around like crazy in the field all of a sudden they are an army all locked together hand in hand not letting anything in so the leather now leather doesn't go bad doesn't get gross and things can't be introduced into it now vegetable tanning and chrome tanning make two different kinds of armies vegetable tanning remember I said it was important that the tannin are big and fat they're so big it takes a long time to actually get into the hide and start this cross linking process start making all of the soldiers so you have to leave the hides in this solution for a much longer time but there are a lot of benefits to vegetable tanning there are also some to Chrome tanning but they're different vegetable tanning if we're sticking to this Army analogy huge huge Army extensive massive Army and all the soldiers are holding hands like this and they cover the entire Battlefield that makes a very stiff and a very rigid leather and also since they're holding hands there's Pockets that makes the leather more breathable than Chrome tan which we talk about in a second but it's a very stiff and moldable leather if you get it wet you can mold leather to a different shape the vegetable tanning process is also much more natural which results in a much more natural leather it patinas over time it darkens it can get water spots because it's porous water can enter easier Chrome tanning is essentially the complete opposite of vegetable tanning it's incredibly fast it's not natural it doesn't use tannins it uses chromium salt which get into the leather well get into the hide and boom then it becomes leather in like a day when the vegetable tanning process is way way way longer and that means the cross-linking that happens the army that is forming is different than vegetable tan the chromium Army would not be as extensive it wouldn't be as huge and widespread but it' be very highly trained soldiers very very close together almost bonded together so they're a specialized impenetrable force which means the leather is softer and more pliable because it's not this extensive network of rigid people all across the battlefield and also since everything is so close together the leather is less breathable and more water resistant so both have cons and both have Pros oh drat those both sound so cool I wish I could have both at the same time well guess what you can have both at the same time but when I called hor I said you can have both at the same time they said yeah but that's not good enough we can do even more so they did even more that's not the end of how chroma leather is made there's one more thing that makes it [Music] cool to put it simply These Boots Are constructed in a very peculiar way and these are not cheap boots these are very luxurious boots they are expensive boots do not get me wrong but they feel expensive they are beefy tanks constructed interestingly obviously L we know the outer leather here is hor Chrome XL but these are also leather lined and the leather lining is half as thick as the outer Chrome XL lining but that's very thick these are thick boots this is actually a combination of two different things so this is a Blake stitched boot through and through all in all but it's also sidewall stitched which you see you know if you look at your sneakers there's usually a sidewall the rubber that comes up onto the upper and you see stitching around that that's exactly what's happening here and you can see it better on the boots that I'm wearing because of one of my design choices so when you are repairing these or resoling them or whatever the actual shape of the boot never needs to get modified and it's cool it gives you a little bit more water resistance which I will test in a second you're not undoing the Blake Stitch you're getting the sidewall Stitch out pulling it off popping another one on and restitching it so really these aren't the most water resistant boots they're not rubber boots or anything like that but they are very water resistant even past the sidewall they're water resistant really up until this pittin stitch on the side you could stick your foot in water right up to the Puritan stitch for a pretty long time you're okay my Fe Peter is still dry I'm going to put the pittin stitch in a little bit still fine there we go it's just starting to come through the purtin Stitch so you have Chrome tanning you have vegetable tanning and then you probably know where this is going based off of what I said before you have the best of both worlds which is combination tanning you start by Chrome tanning this leather and then you retan it through the vegetable tanning process and that gives you the Hannah Montana special The Best of Both Worlds leather that is still water resistant but now a little bit breathable it's also a little bit moldable it also patinas it also stays soft but is strong it is the best of both worlds that is why it's the Hannah Montana special that's a song that she released I think in 2005 Bute didn't stop there they have their combination 10 leather but they also hot stuff it they fill this leather with oils and waxes so much so that the leather looks wet when you have it and so much stuff is packed inside of this leather that when you move it around it's a pull-up leather cuz you're displacing all of the oils and everything so you see the actual color change and it has finally the proper companies that make really high pressure jobs want to use this over plastic or rubbers for gaskets and seals and motor seals especially in World War II but even now today according to Nick horen the reason Chrome XL leather and it's not pure Chrome XL leather it's not this beautiful leather that's on boots slightly different kind of leather the reason it's used on gaskets and seals on oil rigs and stuff like that is because there isn't catastrophic failure vegetable tan leather Chrome tan leather some plastic some rubbers whatever it may be I'm baffled that there's not a modern technology that beats it they fail or could fail abruptly so if you're on a machine a very important gasket in the engine could just fail which sucks but PR XL what they're using fails slowly so you can hear it fail over time and you can anticipate when you need to replace a gasket thus saving the life of whatever machine you are working on is very important when you have big giant tanks and planes and trucks and stuff in World War II and oil rigs of today the first thing that I want to change luckily for us or you if you like this ch change too you can just do this change gell is a small enough company where you could request different things on your boot but the first thing I would change is I think adding a different color sidewall Stitch adds just enough pop they look a little bit more like Doc Martin I don't know if uh you noticed that but I do think it is a good look and Doc Martins does it for a reason so I would change this sidewall stitch on this black boot I want mine to be a really dark green like just enough where you could see it the only thing I would like to add on these boots are speed hooks on the top three so I can just lace these up quick I could to them off quickly I love speed hooks I know it's an aesthetic thing to not put speed hooks on but your boy likes speed hooks anyways even though this video is sponsored by gell don't forget about that I would recommend These Boots I'm not lying I'm not trying to tell you some code I'm not trying to sell you bad boots you can see them cut in half you can see them built these are awesome boots made in Sheffield England thank you gell for sponsoring this video you paid for a lot of wool of all things anyhoo so thank you so much for watching I'll see you very soon next week or even sooner

Channel: The Iron Snail

Views: 36,380

Keywords: combat, doc marten, leather, boots, horween, chromexcel, solovair, made in England, 1460, black, best boot

Id: COET1h8qcjk

Length: 11min 56sec (716 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 12 2024