/fa/ - Fashion

Conditioned my Viberg double butts for the first time yesterday. The more I wear them the more deeply weird they seem. The veg tan tends to show more of the little nicks and scrapes that happen to them than chrome tanned leathers which is cool. The stitching used for the stitchdown is also pretty thick compared to other pairs I've seen, but they still have Viberg's crazy SPI. The leather itself has extremely fine creasing and there's no rolling at all. Only on the right boot can you see a somewhat larger, more defined crease on the vamp. This cut of leather is usually used for belts and it definitely shows in the way it acts when stressed.

The decision to fit these with the smaller eyelets and thus thinner laces is really strange considering how stiff the leather continues to be The boots just do not want to give which puts a lot of extra pressure on the laces. The copper eyelets had a couple of small burrs which ate through laces in no time flat. I had to sit down with a jeweler's loupe and needle file and go over every single eyelet to make sure everything was smoothed out and even then I've had to come back and re-file a couple where I missed a small edge or two. I've had to buy two extra pairs of laces to replace ones that have been destroyed.

These bastards took some time to break in and after a few months of wearing them 2-3 days a week they still feel like they need more. I would not call them comfortable, long days in these can be brutal towards the end. Hopefully that will continue to change but we'll see.