More words of wisdom from our friend, Valentine...
Bad habits have nothing to do with age - except older folks have had more time to develop them, and younger folks haven't had enough time to learn the difference...
Originally Posted by
Valentine
The newbie looks for new products he doesn't have and the old timer has stuff that's useable that's ten, twenty and thirty years old.
So... you're saying that there's something wrong with a young guy that doesn't have boots going out and buying boots? How is a guy that doesn't have boots supposed to wear his 10, 20, or 30yr old boots - that he doesn't have? Is he supposed to go buy 30yr old boots from some old guys widow? I can't really follow your logic on this.
My son is 2yrs old, in 16yrs, he's not going to have a 30yr old pair of boots to put on - how is it not logical that he has to go buy a pair of boots? People that don't have things have to buy them - I can't buy a Model T off of the showroom floor today, just like I can't get the certain model of Redwings I used to wear to work any more.
Guys have to buy what's available for them to buy at the time they're going to buy it; it's pretty hard to go back in time to buy a pair of boots.
Originally Posted by
Valentine
Like rehabing a pair of winter boots in summer that he old timer had for years, while the newbie is looking for an expensive new pair of boots in October.
Like working up a diy leather prep that will do the job on old boots, but isn't modern enough to prep some new boots.
I'm calling 100% bullschitt on this. Young guys might fall for marketing gimmicks on new junk, but I'll say it has NOT been my experience that older guys take care of leather worth a d@mn. At least the younger guys know they're supposed to use SOMETHING on leather, or they don't buy leather at all - old guys are prone to abuse and neglect leather.
As a young(er) guy... wait, lemme elaborate on that - as a younger guy that started leathersmithing 20yrs ago as a YOUNG guy... I've spent a lot of time rehabbing old leather products for old farts that didn't have the sense to properly maintain them; I even make a lot of money repairing and replacing leather gear that old guys didn't treat properly.
I've also made a lot of money buying and reselling horses from old guys that thought the horses were "rips," because they'd buck for them. Then I see the broken down saddles and the corresponding sores on the horses withers, and it all makes sense. Those old farts swear, time and time again, that there's nothing wrong with their old saddle, they've been riding it for 30yrs... But the reality is that they're crippling their horses, or causing them to behave poorly because it doesn't fit their horse properly, nor protect their horse properly. But it's pretty d@mn hard to teach old guys anything - so they sell me a "bucking rip snort" that they want rid of for cheap, I feed it long enough for the saddle sores to heal, get a properly fit saddle on them, polish off the rough edges, and sell them for double to quintuple the price.
And I'll be 100% honest, you must not get out much if you have boots that have lasted 30yrs. Men that wear boots outside will wear out boots... That's a fact of life. Even with proper treatment, boots, like any heavy use leathergoods, are not life-long accessories.
Older guys have tended to be the least diligent at cleaning and maintaining rifles/firearms as well. I first noticed that when I was part-timing at a gunshop in college, and I still get a lot of repair work through local guys that know "DJ fixes guns." More often than not, I find that older guys have never done any more than hit them with WD-40, maybe Hoppe's No.9 if the gun is lucky, and run a brush and a few patches down the bore. I pulled apart an older Win 1400 autoloader this winter, a friend's grandpa's shotgun, that had been misfeeding and misfiring on him. There was, without exaggerating, a half inch thick carbon cake in the end of the piston tube, and the rings were dry as a bone. He'd never pulled the thing apart since he'd owned, it, at least 40yrs.
Age doesn't necessarily beget wisdom nor diligence. More often, it begets habit. If the "habit" is diligence, then great, if not, then not so much...