Took a pair of boots out of the wardrobe to wear today ... now I'll admit they have not been worn for a few years ... but they were put away clean & wardrobe is dry.
Put first one on and noticed a big black smudge on floor ...... looked at soles and they had turned 'soft' almost like a rubber paste ... any pressure and big chunks of tread fall off ,,, you can squeeze the heel of boot and pieces come away.
These are British Army "Boots Combat High" issue ProBoot (made by Tuff), just never seen rubber soles go soft like this .... split yes but not go soft.
The leather of the boots is fine ... as clean as good condition as day they were put away.
The crepe soles shoes of my childhood always did this eventually, even if you didn't step in any oil (and very much faster if you did).
More recently I've had a couple of pairs of shoes (one was Clarks) which when taken out of the wardrobe after a period of non-use, I found one of the soles to have perished into a pile of crumbs.
We had a similar thing happen to the rubber feet on our daughters electric piano. It had been stood on end in the spare (junk) room for a few months then just placed on the bed for a while. When we lifted it off there were 4 black rings on the quilt cover and upon inspection the feet had gone as Rick described.
I don't think they had been exposed to any chemicals (although their perfume makes me cough sometimes). ;-(
I have had old boots / shoes where the sole looks dry and it cracks & splits. This was so strange .. as each piece breaks off the texture is like .. a rowntrees fruit pastille ... sticky jelly crumb.
Checked the wardrobe ... no marks, no spills of anything.
Same thing the other week. 10 year old elf+safety, foamed sole, 'Totectors' brand new but never used. Walking through a shoe shop and each step was squealing loudly and 'sticking' rather inelegantly to their polished vinyl floor tiles. Managed to get outside without anyone spotting the trail of black rubber footsteps and waste. Got home (literally down to my uppers) to find another sodding trail of rubber on the carpets. Would seem a failure mode unique to a badly chosen moulding material.
I had a loaned pair do that at HMS Raleigh. The fact the soles were turning to shreddies made them really comfy for doubling along tarmac to the assault course and back. The leather was supple too so I didn't want a stiff new pair! At the end of my course they got binned. Now I tend to wear the ECW (cold weather) ones on rifle ranges. Much nicer with padded tops, yellow patch on the sole. Have a pair of the normal (never laced up) ones at home. Real civvie walking? Never been blistered by my Brasher hiking boots and decent socks.
I forgot to say it's the same issue they had at the start of Telic when the papers said the troops' boots were melting. They weren't; it was new old stock with the chemical breakdown of the rubber. No complaints with the Magnum/Lowa/Meindl desert coloured ones they do now.
Sounds like the same problem that affected the pinch rollers and idler wheels of Ferrograph Series 7 tape recorders (details of which are well documented on several websites)...
I had a pair of safety boots do this; may well have been Tuff. My first reaction was chemicals, although I was fairly sure I hadn't been paddling in any.
I forgot to say it's the same issue they had at the start of Telic when the papers said the troops' boots were melting. They weren't; it was new old stock with the chemical breakdown of the rubber. No complaints with the Magnum/Lowa/Meindl desert coloured ones they do now.
I remember reading that ..... these boots were not new, well worn in .... and were the 'newer' version of BCH, with speed lacing, fewer pieces of leather and padded collar & tongue ... obviously the sole compound has broken down.
Good old MOD ... give contract to make to a price not to quality.
I had the later Gortex lined & thinsulate insulated boots (Cold weather) and as you say those are much better ... checked - soles on them are currently fine.
The factory that made them 'Tuf' was at Blaenavon in S.Wales ... think that went bust and is now a housing estate.
Yes. Not familiar with those specifically, but I've seen it happen on
*many* computer tape drives of various types. It affects some drives and not others. Storage conditions don't seem to play a part - and to a certain extent, nor does age (older drives are more prone to it, but it's not like you can pick a mid-1980s drive and know it's going to be bad).
The odd thing in Rick's case is the speed at which it's affected his boots though, which makes me wonder if it's not a different problem (contamination or manufacturing error) even though the symptoms are the same.
I had a pair sat in the box for around 10 years, maybe a bit more (they were in a special offer with the second pair half price or something back in the late 90's) This pair have never been worn apart from to check the fit. The other near identical pair have been worn on and off for many years and eventually disintegrated though scuffs and stitching failures.
I had forgotten where the spare pair was and only discovered them when we were painting the kitchen ceiling a few months ago - somehow they had found their way onto the top of a kitchen cupboard, I opened the box and discovered the soles had turned to mush. I cleaned off the sticky residue with washing up liquid and left them on a shelf in the workshop to 'dry', your post reminded me to check them - they soles are still so soft the 'examiners slip' which is just a piece of thin paper floating around in the box had cut though the sole like butter.
I had been blaming cooking oil in the air reacting with the rubber, but now I'm not so sure what it was. I'm tempted to bake them in the oven and see if I can 'cure' them.
I have a Series 7 here where the pinch roller has merely cracked enough to insert a sheet of 80gsm paper in the gap. Not sure of the condition of the idler wheel as haven't got around to dismantling it.
(looking for a replacement pinch roller at the moment as want to service & sell this underused machine, pointers appreciated - model 724)
Is it possible to make one? There's a few folk who do that for the rollers on computer drives - use rubber tubing of the right i/d, then mount the roller on a lathe or similar and sand it down to the correct o/d. The hub on your unit might not be a cylinder, of course, which makes such a repair a bit tricky...
Just had the same thing, pair of Ecco shoes with rubber/crepe like soles (purchased 2003 I think, but only worn about a dozen times, barely a mark on them) put them on today and didn't notice any problem immediately, first sign was that they picked up a piece of paper, I thought I'd trodden on some chewing gum or similar, then when I started driving the pressure on the heel caused chunks to drop off, I had to scuff bits off in the car park so I wouldn't leave bits stuck to a customers carpets.
Good god - and the same with me too! I'm relieved that there are others wh o have experienced exactly the same thing - I thought it was just the way I stored things and was getting paranoid as to why this was happening. Alway s tended to wear the older style 'Coasta' soled Totector black leather safe ty shoes (work necessitated them) as they were so comfy, but having had sev eral pairs over the years (and indeed a few spare pairs - making half a doz en in total, of which a few are brand new and unworn, just stored away care fully), I've also noticed how the treads start going soft and then sticky - ultimately gungey and very gooey. Two older worn pairs have now been slung because of this - they were literally melting and were beyond repair, but my two or three new, boxed, reserve pairs are also starting to go sticky at the soles....and I can't think of how best to arrest this deterioration. T alcum powder has been tried, also I've painted them with some sort of leath er/rubber preservative, but the gungeyness still remains beneath the protec tive coat..... so it looks as if there is no cure to them going like this.
I have also found that the removable rubber-foamed insoles that you get wit h some trainers (e.g. Reebok) have a tendency to do the same thing - start perishing and turning to sticky gungey mush....even though, again, they hav e been stored away, unworn, in a dry, dark wardrobe.
Blimey going back a bit on this one, but yes, I have had brand new, but old shoes go this way. Its the same process that seems to afflict drive belts and pressure rollers of some tape recorders. I imagine the synthetic substance es plasticizer leaches out over time causing the stickiness, leaving not much left other than either powder or sticky goo.
Answer, there is none other than a better selection of material at the start. The opposite also can occur, ie some soles go hard and crack. I wonder if shoe warehouses have sell by dates on such items so they don't keep them long enough to get this happening. Brian
You're replying to a 4 year old post. You're posting lines which are far too long.
Natural rubber is susceptable to both oxidation and to microbial attack on the protein-like chains. It will therefore deteriorate without being "used". The less vulcanising (and hence the softer it is), the faster this will happen. The presence of oxidising agents (such as ozone around high voltage or nearby contact arcing) really speed this up.
It's quite common to find a pair of shoes which have been unused for years, where the rubber soles have completely disintegrated in storage. In normal use, the rest of the shoe would have worn out first, so you would not have had this happen before you chucked them out, but they can't be stored for years and remain usable.
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