This is mostly quite obvious stuff - like ramming in an open door - but the true purpose of the post is actually to write down the recipe on DIY leather conditioner for safe-keeping.
The most important step to prepare one's boots for winter usage is, of course, to wear a second pair of thick enough wool socks over your ordinay socks. That goes a long way. The second most important step is to have a good insole. I prefer wool ones. This is basically enough for winter and - by just adjusting how heavy socks one is wearing - can be used all year around.
But one trick I just recently stumbled upon that makes a lot of difference for colder days is to also add a plastic mesh insole under your wool one, to trap some air and thus give better isolation and warmth and also help keep the wool insole dry. This actually plays out pretty well if you, like me, have a standing desk in the office and is too lazy to change footwear when at work.
It is, of course, a bit sad that the mesh insoles are made of plastic but I imagine that wooden ones might break too easily and that textile fiber based ones might compress too easily - but perhaps metal ones should be a possibility? Anyways, it also seems to be a military thing - mine are the kind the Swedish army uses but I've also seen Czech ones for sale on the web.
In the picture above, I've turned the plastic mesh insole from the stripped boot upside down, so you can see the ridges and gorges that is doing the air-trapping. The side that should be facing up against your wool insole is just flat with holes.
In the not yet stripped boot, you can also see how you always should take the insoles out of the foodbed and place them in the boot-shaft when you're not using the boot, to make them dry quicker and be ready for next time you put your boots on again.
Finally, regardless of winter or summer, you should clean your boots when dirty and regulary treat them with leather conditioner to prevent the leather from drying out and cracking and overall prolong the lifespan of your boots (and remember that a good cobbler probably can resole your boots as the outer sole is likely to wear out before the upper boot).
I spent some time of searching for a good recipe of DIY leather conditioner and let me tell you, there are surprisingly many out on the Internet! But I kept searching until I found one that I liked the look of (although I should probably spent years on testing them all out on actual leather instead, but in the end, I'm only human). The following recipe has A) just a few ingredients and B) just organic ingredients - no syntetic or mineralbased oils. Here's the web-page where I found it: https://propolis-ratgeber.info/lederpflege-selber-machen/
DIY Leather Conditioner
- 5 parts coconut oil (or olive oil)
- 4 parts Lanolin (i.e., woolfat)
- 1 part beeswax (2 parts for a firmer creme)
