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Re: Boots
On Fri, 29 Mar 1996, Sharon Sharpe wrote:
> One of the truisms I read in the shelter logs was
> "There's no such thing as waterproof boots"
>
I do a simple test for checking the waterproofness of my boots and suggest
its use for both new and old boots. I fill my tub up with about 4" of cold
water and slowly walk around in it with my socks and boots on for 20 minutes.
If the boots are leakers your socks will get wet. You can tell how much
they leak by weighting the socks before and after the test. The added weight
from foot perspiration should be about 0.2 grams. I tested my two year old
leather Vasue Super Hiker, non-GTX, "waterproof" boots, which appeared to be
in "good" condition but had not kept my feet dry during my Smoky's hike. My
left sock gained 32.1 grams and the right one 56.4 grams. I returned them to
Vasque, they tested them and found the seams to be leaking, and replaced them
with new Super Hikers. I did the same test on these and the gain in sock
weight was 0.2 grams. I use Sno-Seal on my boots but no amount of
waterproofing will help if the seams are not structurally sound. I suspect
that this is the problem with a lot of boots that experience leaking. Of
course, no boot is waterproof from the top end.
Bruce