kentyman
Senior Member
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- Oct 1, 2012
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Kentyman, sorry to say, but the renovateur is probably contributing to the dryness that you see there. There is a lot of turpentine in that stuff, and it should only be used sparingly. I personally only use about a half a q-tip tip amount on the toe and heels of my shoes to raise a shine in them again. You need to condition the vamps and use a good quality cream polish. I would use Lexol, Bick 4, and a good cream, better yet a Glenkaren shoe cream, which is a perfect one stop product for the vamp, imo. Reno, is more of a cleaner/polish than a real conditioner. I have only had bad experiences with it using it solely as a conditioner.
Huh, I hadn't considered that but that makes a lot of sense. Perhaps that's why I'm seeing the cracking along the entire vamp instead of just where it was stretched. I was thinking of it as more of a conditioner than cleaner but it sounds like I have that backwards. I don't have Lexol or Bick 4, so I'll start by giving it a good dose of AE Leather Lotion. I'll also see if my AE Walnut Premium Polish looks like a good enough match to fill in the light spots. If that doesn't work, I may by the products you suggested.
Thank you for chiming in.
Kentyman,
I got my local cobbler to stretch my Loake's Chester brogues. He used a fairly heavy duty, aluminium affair, which looked a bit like a last. He charged me £2 and with the agreement that, if they still didn't fit, he would do them without further charge. Sounded like a bargain to me! He made a very good job of them and the stretching can only be seen if you look very closely at the shoes. The leather shows no marks or creases in the area he worked on. With the addition of an arch support, they are now very comfortable. Previously, I had used Saphir leather Softener on them but this seemed to do nothing.
I'd like to pick his brain on how to do it in the least harsh way. My guess is I was too aggressive with the placement of the (too small) shoe stretcher, the amount of shoe stretch spray I used, and the actual tightness of the stretcher. That, and the aforementioned Reno bath I gave it!