Originally Posted by SoCalSoftailSlim

By the way, here are the Mythbusters findings on steel toe boots:

Episode 42: Steel Toe Amputation, Bottle Rocket Blast Off
You can launch someone 30-40ft with a bottle-rocket-powered backpack: mythbusted (the engineering on this one was a bit questionable)
Steel toe boots have a higher amputation risk than regular boots: mythbusted
Steel Cap Amputation
Myth: Steel-toed boots are more dangerous than regular boots -- if something falls on the boots, the steel can curl in and cut off your toes

They were able to find one occurrence of amputation while wearing steel-toed boots occurring in real life. In 2002, an Australian worker lost his 3rd toe when some steel pipes feel from a forklift.

Adam and Jamie constructed various tests for this myth using both a guillotine toe-smasher and an arbor-press. Initially they used frangible feet that Adam made, but it turned out that they made a mistake in assuming that their frangible feet would model real human feet being crushed. For better comparisons they ended up using clay.

Frangible Feet Construction
Adam constructed frangible feet to test with based on landmine frangible feet. After testing chicken legs, bamboo, and fiberglass as substitutes for human bones, he decided to use fiberglass bones. The bones were set in a ballistics gel cast of Adam's leg.

For those wondering, the full frangible leg construction process was: * Pour dental alginate over leg and surround with plaster bandages to get leg mold. (link to website on making plaster casting with dental alginate) * Fill alginate mold with silicon-based rubber to make a rubber leg * Make plaster mold of rubber leg * Make a plaster mold of a skeletal foot * Fill mold with hard resin fiberglass cocktail to make bones * Use hot glue gun to make tendons to connect bones * Place resin bones inside plaster leg mold and fill with ballistics gel mix (used a different ballistics gel mix than usual)

Guillotine drop test 1
NOTE: in turned out that the results from this test were somewhat invalid. After testing with the steel-toed boots they tested with the regular boots and discovered that the ballistics gel was too springy and was invalidating their results. While ballistics gel is good for simulating bullet impacts on flesh, it's not so good for testing crushing.

Setup: * Guillotine-style toe crusher that drops a flag metal bar onto the toe of a boot beneath. * Used the highest-rated (ANSI-75) steel toe boots.

Results: * 75lbs from 3 feet (official ANSI test height and weight): mashed the leather down a bit, but nothing injurious. * 400lbs from 3 ft: more deformation in the steel plate, but only damage to frangible foot was a broken metatarsal (big toe). Adam: "I want to see some toes cut off or crushed beyond all recognition" * 400lbs from 6 ft: a lot of pancaking of steel cap and lots of broken bones beneath, but no toe amputation.

They didn't detail the results from the regular boot because of their discovery about the ballistics gel being too springy.

Guillotine drop on boots filled with clay
Because of the ballistics gel problem they decided to use clay instead of the frangible bone legs they had constructed. Clay is the method ANSI uses to test boots.

At the official test height of 3ft with 75lbs there was 0.5" of clay compression with the steel-toe boot, which is exactly to spec. The regular boot failed horribly, with the clay being completely splattered.

Arbor press test to find total failure point
They used an arbor press to squish boots to their total failure point. The steel-toe boot was able to take 6000lbs of pressure before total failure; the regular boot was only able to take about 1200lbs, which was hard to measure as it failed so quickly.

Shearing attachment tests
In order to test a worst case scenario, they made a shearing attachment, which was a thin metal plate that would hit the boot on edge.

They mounted the shearing attachment to the arbor press: at 750 lbs it broke every bone in the frangible foot; at 1400 lbs it severed all the bones in the feet.

They then mounted the shearing attachment on the guillotine and raised it to it's max height of 6ft and max weight of 400lbs. The blade glanced off the steel plate, shearing the entire shoe in half. They tested again and got the same result. In this particular scenario, were a heavy blade to drop on your foot you could actually lose more of your foot as the steel cap could direct the glade further up the foot as it did in the test. This isn't the failure mode described in the tests, though, and regardless of what type of boot you used there would be amputation.

Mythbusted: They had to mount a blade in order to get amputation with the steel toe boot and all their other tests showed much more damage to the foot when regular boots are used.

Originally Posted by SoCalSoftailSlim

OP, how much money do you want to spend?

There are a lot of motorcycle boots out there, but the prices are all over the map.

Originally Posted by Reddog01

I would like to stay under $150.00

Originally Posted by Freak Show

yeah well, i'm diabetic and if i get a fractured toe i have to get an x-ray to check for a possible infection, broken would be even worse, crimping of the steel might fracture and break a toe. but if the leather gives a little it may not break my toes.. but either way i'm taking a chance.. cool that they did the experiment.

Originally Posted by SPRINGER

This is basically what I do also. On my boots, in that area, is a double piece of leather for added protection from wear and tear from shifting. My boots are around 10 years old and after years of shifting, the toes of my boots haven't collapsed at all but I also chose my boots just for that reason, the added leather protection.

Originally Posted by ISP-FLHTK

I have two different pair of riding boots that are not new. I also ride on a daily basis with tennis shoes for short errands around town. None of my shoes/boots show any wear from the toe shifter.


Never could get used to heel shifter when they first started coming out, so I have several in my "parts" bucket.


If you footgear is showing wear then you are not getting your foot "on up in there" far enough!