[GreenPlastic]

Hello to everyone

I have been using travel shoe wood trees for my shoes because they are half price the regular full feet shoe trees. Now that I am getting some nice shoes, I am thinking about if is actually necesary to get full feet trees.

I mean, is there a diffrence using one or the other in terms of the good maintance of the shoe?

The primary purpose of a shoe tree is to keep the shoe free of moisture and to fill out the shape of the shoe (to keep it from creasing heavily when your foot's not in it).

Any shoe tree that fills out your shoe is probably sufficient for the job. There are some who'll tell you that you need to spend $25+ per pair of high quality trees. Personally speaking, I think that's nonsense. Just get some cedar trees with a split toe that are the right size for your shoes. Don't get them too big or too small -- too big, and they'll potentially damage the shoe; too small, and they won't be able do their job.

 

[GreenPlastic]

I think the value of cedar isn't that it absorbs moisture markedly better than other unfinished woods would absorb moisture; it's that cedar also has a pleasant aroma, is relatively cheap, and is widely available as a material. It's also pretty famously resistant to mold and decay, which means that it can tolerate moisture better than many other types of wood.

The moisture-wicking properties of a shoe tree are going to be at their most pronounced immediately after the shoe comes off your foot. This is the critical stage wherein your tree needs to help absorb any excess moisture inside the shoe (if there is any). More important, however, is the fact that having worn the shoe all day will have warmed and expanded the leather. When the leather begins to cool and contract, having the shoe tree in place will prevent it from contracting too dramatically and wearing out the leather. Cracks and creases can develop, and/or will be more pronounced, if your shoe leather keeps expanding and contracting wildly every time you wear the shoe. Ideally, you want to keep your leather supple and flexible, rather than letting it swing between two extremes any time it's worn vs. whenever it's not worn.

Leather is skin, after all. Just as repeatedly gaining and losing a lot of weight would promote the appearance of stretch marks on human skin, rapidly and repeatedly expanding and contracting shoe leather -- without any stabilization -- leads to degradation.

 

[GreenPlastic]

There is a school of thought in Europe, that warns of the prolonged use of cedar shoe threes as the wood is supposed, not only to draw moisture but
essential oil out of the leather.

I'm not sure if I subscribe to the science behind this theory. Cedar is a naturally oily wood; I don't see any particular reason why it would suck oils out of leather more readily than other woods. If anything, I think it would be less inclined to do so.

 

[GreenPlastic]

+1. The whole "moisture-wicking" virtue of cedar shoe trees is nothing but hype! I just pulled the cedar trees out of a pair of shoes I had worn for about 12 hours yesterday--dry as bones, they were!

Moreover, if the cedar trees did absorb significant quantities of moisture, wouldn't they start to become soft and punky in short order? The claims I have sometimes heard that the feet exude large quantities of sweat in the course of the day seem very questionable. If that were so, why are my socks not sopping wet when I take them off at night?

I think in a thread on SF we agreed that plastic trees could do the job just as well as wooden trees, were it not for the fact that available plastic trees are cheap, flimsy affairs.

Another virtue of American red cedar is that it is soft and easily worked--hence less need to sharpen and replace tools, lowering production costs.

The value of cedar has less to do with moisture wicking and more to do with pleasant aromatics (to help overcome odors) and a natural resistance to decay, mold, and microbial life. Cedar is one of the more resilient woods out there when it comes to resisting rot and decay.