Nubuck leather vs smooth leater in trekking and hiking boots

[Helen Watts]

Smooth leather perfectly repels water, beautifully shines and is resistant against damages. nubuck repels water worse. Nevertheless, it is very resistant against damages, it retains good appearance for a long time, and does not have requirements to special care. Relatively bad water resistance can be compensated by impregnations. Actually, in cases of hiking tours I would advise nubuck , rather than smooth leather. It is not by chance that major manufacturing lines of footwear for outdoors are presented by models out of nubuck . nubuck is far more resistant to unfavorable weather conditions: constant wetting, drying, and temperature changes as compared to smooth leather, and it cracks considerably less. This is one of the main reasons for its use when manufacturing outdoor footwear.

Edited: Roger Caffin, Online Community Monitor, BPL

[Mark]

This looks like spam, too.

-Mark

[Roger Caffin]

Hi Helen

I rather think you have missed the major reason for the use of Nubuck leather on outdoor footwear. Compared to surface leather it is CHEAPER. Without this incentive it would not exist.

It is made by skivving off the back layer from a sheet of leather using a machine of rather ancient design. That way instead of a single piece of thick surface leather you have a thin layer of surface leather and a layer of nubuck. The thin surface leather is probably worth more then the thick layer because people don't want their leather shoes made out of leather 3-4 mm thick.

The big disadvantages of leather of any sort in modern outdoors footwear are the high weight and the way leather absorbs so much water and takes so long to dry.

Cheers

[Author]

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