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Whatever you do, get some shoe trees. When you wear shoes they get slightly damp from sweat. They also crease a little where your toes flex. When you take the shoe off it dries. The drying shrinks the leather uppers. If there are no trees the shrinkage pulls the toes up. This deepens the creases. If the cycle is repeated the creases deepen. And if the creases aren't moisturised they eventually become cracks. If you use trees from new and you moisturise the uppers, the creases will stay shallow for many years.
nick_h.-
Yeah just about to pull the trigger on some, just checking with the sellers that they come with those little plastic stretchers as I have weird shaped feet and could do with stretching them out a bit more in a couple of spots even after more than 6 years. Would have saved myself a lot of pain if I'd just bought them with the boots tbh.
Going to strip them back, use 'leather filler' on the cracks and dye. Maybe I'll get flack for that on here but they have seen some abuse and hopefully this will bring them back a bit. Lesson learnt.
Polygon
Didn't realize how much my Redwings had dried out over summer and they cracked badly last week. Should I attempt to glue these or just polish over and accept they're going to die eventually? I've slathered in mink oil to rehydrate now. Just had the soles replaced this year too!