Soooo...What did you do? I had thought of this, but I am hard on shoes, mine will distress naturally just fine I'm sure. Good work on the artificial job though!
Ouch! I could never subject a pair of Indy boots to such abuse. I think one guy said it best, last year after seeing CS: "Those poor Aldens have been sanded to within an inch of their lives!"
Great job Knibs! I like the really the sandy look. I distressed my Todd's boots as well. It only hurts for a second, but once you get in there and start simulating Indy's boot life, it's a lot of fun. Here's a link to a little boot distressing slideshow I put together. I'm working with a three phase distressing process. I've offered more details on the process in the slide show below. Here's the final product (after aging for two days):
You might want to put some leather dressing on those to tone it down. Anyone with naturally distressed boots will recognize the heavy sanding and scraping.
Wade...everything you touch is so freakin' Indy. My bag strap is rediculous. So cool. Now this. You're killin' me dude! Out with the secrets! How, in detail, did you do this? I've got some todds boots and I want mine to look like yours! In case anyone can't tell...i'm a pretty big Wade fan.
Wade Egan wrote:Great job Knibs! I like the really the sandy look. I distressed my Todd's boots as well. It only hurts for a second, but once you get in there and start simulating Indy's boot life, it's a lot of fun. Here's a link to a little boot distressing slideshow I put together. I'm working with a three phase distressing process. I've offered more details on the process in the slide show below. Here's the final product (after aging for two days):
Nope. Just the dark brown leather dye and neatsfoot oil. Together with the dirt, sanding and rocks it tones the 'red' color down a lot. But as you can see with Indy's boot, there still is some reddish hue left in the uppers.
I like the workyou guys have put into distressing these boots. I also might be tempted to go over these cut marks with a light grade of sandpaper to smooth them out, eliminate the cut marks.
I wonder if there is any way you could order Todd's boots in a natural color, like the whip, so you could color/distress them to whatever shade of brown you choose. The best method I have seen is using a few applications of leather oil and use. Anyway, it would be nice to have this option.
Inspired from the Wade Egan weathering process and the beautiful color of the Tundraraider's 405's I finally decided to weather and darken slightly my Todd's boots. I've used several steps to obtain a leather color that seems used but not artificial (abrasive sponge, rocks, dark brown shoe polish, fuller's earth). I'm pretty satisfied with the result.
I'd love to hear your opinion, critisism and advices.
Thanks Michael!
The pair of boots you've posted it's truly beautiful and pretty dead-on for the truck chase scene in Raiders!
I'm always very undecided for the type of weathering to apply to my Todd's boots: I like the super-dusty look in the above example, but I also like the dark tone present in some LC scenes (e.a. the Word of God scene). Beside this, I've choose the dark color due to the type of leather used in the Todd's replicas: I found really hard obtain a light brown color like the one in the Tundraraider's example; from my boots I have obtained only a light pumpkin/salmon color.
Great distressing work on these boots. Unfortunately, Todd's wider laces are the only thing I see that gives away their origin. Are Alden's laces available to replace the Todd's? If so, they would be 99% indistinguishable from Aldens. Call me crazy, but if I should get a pair of Todd's boots to age, it would have to have the smaller Alden laces. So I'm a little nit-picky - sorry. This setup is quite the bargain too.