Best waterproof treatment for leather boots?

For a quick memory of those days it's worth having a look at archive.org for the Government Information films. There's one "Wing to Wing" that has a quck run through the Canberra, Valiant, Meteor, Swift, Vampire, Superfortress, Shackleton and a couple I have never heard of before including an American bomber with what appears to be six radial engines and four podded jet engines.

Also an early 60s newsreel of the Paris airshow.

Alan blames Mr Poucher: it's mentioned in 'The Lakeland Peaks'. Nowt to do with the fly-boys: their boots were usually replaced after a dip in the North Sea as 'no longer fit for flying' or sunk without trace!

Yes. It was strafed at an angle of about 45 degrees and only one bomb hit the runway. (there is an aerial photo of the crater somewhere) I think that it was done just to show the enemy that we could come out and hit them from home territory.

Another fact to come out of the Falkland Isles was that there was a record sailing from the Falklands to the battle of the River Plate by HMS Cumberland that will never be beaten for speed. Do not take this as fact, as I am sure that I have read about it, but I cannot quote a reference to it.

AS far as WW II conflicts, I think this shows what our Royal Navy took for us, to win that war.

We owe them dear.

Dave

I think

"It stinks, it remains sticky so everything glues to your boots, it comes off all over the rest of your kit, and it needs renewing far too often."

just about sums it up.

Chief test pilot at the time was B Beaumont (sp) and it was reported by someone that was on comms that he accelerated down the runway and at the point of rotation was heard to say...

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee As he headed for the skye. His PTT had stuck open.

Dave

I didn't know it was that bad, but I really do hope that we can still get these old bangers in the air again. They are our history and we should be extremely proud of them.

I have all the skills to help in this, but I live in the North West and most of the work that is going on to get these aircraft flying again is outside of my commuting distance. I would love to help.

Dave

renewing

Dubbin should be allowed to soak in for a while and then any stickyness polished off with a cloth. It is highly effective at keeping not only the leather supple, but also the thread sewn seams. I wouldn't advocate it for your best dancing pumps, but for my scuffed toe tector concreting boots it's fine

AWEM

Unfortunately, the link wrapped. It's late and and I have had lots of problems that prevent me looking :-(

Dave

Andy Champ posted this:

CBA. Why bother, when the oil only needs doing once a decade? Anbd takes moments, plus a few days of neglect...

Your original post was fine in my reader, I think the problem arises once someone replies and their reader inserts the quotes '>' in the original text. This is what breaks the line wrap and the link.

There must be lots of things you, and the rest of us, have never heard but it doesn't mean they aren't right.

And don't forget. "There's a right way, a wrong way and then there's the army/navy/marine way." If something doesn't fit with the latter no matter how good it was you'd have never been told. ;o)

Isopropyl nitrate. Jesus. Boom!

Yes, thanks for the short link. I can't find the setting that stops wibbles from wrapping (40tude) - any one know, please?

At least you looked it up. The sad part about the Lightning saga are the serious comments by ex-erks (trained with manuals not chemistry) about trying to replace the stuff with nitromethane. The concept of monopropellant just doesn't seem to have registered.

Serious advice from some local Rolls people (Hey, there has to be some benefit to living in Bristol) was that it might very well be possible to convert them to electric start, as the appropriate bits were manufactured for other models of Avon.

No, mineral oils don't have the right lubricating properties for leather. You need either animal oils (mink or neatsfoot) or vegetable oils. Most vegetable oils go rancid though, which rules out olive for starters. Castor or camellia oils don't, so they're usable. Personally I'd use camellia because it smells nicer, but it wouldn't be cheap to "fill yer boots".

Neatsfoot is mainly pig these days, and smells wrong.

I'm unreliably informed (by a chap from The Forest) that year-old badgers can be rendered for their fat and oil, in a manner similar to mink.

And there's always the Spike Milligan approach.

Nononono. "There's the army way and there's the wrong way."

(Childhood scars will never heal)

Owain

Yup!

Ex-chemist, innit.

Monopropellants frighten the living poo out of me. If you can find a copy, there's a fabulous book called "Ignition! The History of liquid fuelled rocketry" which talks about monopropellants, including the story of the people who suggested a stochiometric mixture of liquid methane and liquid oxygen as such.

Apparently it could be made to detonate by shining a bright light on it.