**The Official Shoe Care Thread: Tutorials, Photos, etc.** - Page 204

But I feel like even doing that you are doing more harm than good. I think our conversation began when you said you disagreed with my statement that wax doesn't need to be stripped. I still agree with that providing you are conditioning the vamp of your shoes and not keeping a high shine with wax polish over the vamp.

If I had any evidence that my process was doing more harm than good I would have stopped doing it decades ago, but I have dozens of pairs of shoes in my collection that I can show you pictures of with a shiny vamp and no signs of damage. In fact I have never gotten rid of a pair of shoes, in my 40 years as an adult, because of cracks in the vamp.

You have no basis for your assumption that my process does more harm than good, other than your belief than cleaning wax from a shoe on a relatively frequent basis is bad for the shoe. You could just as easily say brushing a shoe too often is bad for a shoe. You have no evidence, just assumption in either case.

Part of the issue may be simply related to semantics: When I refer to taking wax off of a shoe I refer to it as cleaning the shoe, not stripping the shoe.

When I remove wax from a shoe I use Lexol leather cleaner which is a glycerin rich, pH balanced leather cleaner. This cleaner removes wax and is not harmful to the leather (according to Lexol, and direct experience).

I have tried RenoMat for cleaning, but it is just too strong, and results in actually stripping the wax down to the finish of the leather. I don’t know the ingredients of RenoMat because they are not listed (although Kirby might be able to find out), but I would suspect something like a small percentage of acetone or something similar. If I wanted to “strip” a pair of shoes I would use RenoMat.

I don’t believe that it is harmful to strip a pair of shoe of all wax, every once in a while, but I wouldn’t suggest doing it frequently. In fact just a few of my posts ago (#2990), in this thread, I stated “I would caution against cleaning shoes to this degree (using cleaners like Renomat) too frequently.”.

Leather is pretty resilient if properly cared for, The most critical factor in caring for leather is along the lines that you promote, which is keeping the leather conditioned.

Leather is made up of a tangle of fibers resembling a pad of steel wool. These fibers are held together with protein bonds. In the tanning process, hides are soaked in chemicals to prevent the fibers and their bonds from decomposing. Then fats and oils are tumbled with the hides to keep the protein bonds from drying out and to make the leather supple.

Keeping those protein bonds lubricated and supple is a key to long-lasting leather. If those bonds dry out completely, they shrink, become brittle and break. Once broken, they can't be mended. The leather is permanently weakened.

Stripping a shoe to the finish does not dry out the protein bonds to any large degree (an expert like Ron Rider could probably tell us to what degree, since he does this sort of thing frequently when refinishing shoes), unless you saturate the leather in acetone repeatedly without replacing the oils and simply let it dry out. You would have to purposely be trying to damage the shoe to do this.

My disagreement with you is your statement that “If you want your shoes to last you shouldn't maintain a ‘shine’ on the vamp of your shoe.". Not only do I not believe that, I have decades of results that say it is not true. I do agree with you that stripping a shoe just to condition it is worse than just keeping a low shine on your shoes. However, those are not the only two options (and they are not even diametrically opposed).

My regiment of cleaning a shoe, conditioning, and polishing on a relatively frequent basis has worked very well for me over the years, and sits somewhere between stripping a shoe just to condition it, and only adding conditioner without ever removing wax.

 

leather conforms to shape of the last/tree/foot so lasted shoe trees helps them stay in shape.

 

To be honest you don't have 'evidence' either, you have your personal experience. As useful as that may be, who's to say your experience is more valuable or accurate than Patricks experience?

 

There are individuals on this forum whose shoes have never left their homes, others who wear their shoes infrequently and baby them avoiding long walks in the concrete jungle and the like. And then there are some of us who wear our shoes as shoes, we'll walk on concrete, carpet, grass, mud and rain without a second thought!

 

Our experiences are relative.

my opinion is that the truth is somewhere in the midle!! renomat (and all heavy cleaners) is not for everyweek clean, great product but very strong!!

i dont think that there would be a proble with a maintained shine on the vamp !! if you put a lot wax it ll crack but i dont think that it ll be harmfull for the leather(it ll look bad but not something more than that)all these if the shoes are properly conditioned !!

 

Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)

I would never try to dismiss someone's experience, that's all we really have to go by in life.

However, in the context of this discussion it is Patrick that is dismissing my experience, not the other way around. He believes that my shoe care process is harmful to my shoes, but I have evidence (shoes with perfectly fine vamps) to show for my decades of using the process. Patrick has never used my process (that he has mentioned), but not only does he dismiss my experience, he states that it is harmful.

I appreciate Patrick's experience with putting too much polish on the vamp over time and having them crack. I suspect that is more common than not, simply because the average guy that does polish his shoes usually buys a tin of paste polish (with a low oil to paste ratio) at their local convenience store (Johnson and Johnson’s sales figures of their Kiwi polish would probably bear that out), and then applies and brushes that polish onto his shoe each time he wants to shine them, basically building up layer after layer of wax with very little oils for conditioning. Over time the leather dries out and the vamps crack from flexing.

I believe that is what happened to Patrick’s shoes in the past, and his solution was to stop putting wax on the vamp and instead start applying oils. Smart move on Patrick’s part, as it solved his problem. His belief that keeping the vamp conditioned is a good thing is proven by his experience with the process.

To extrapolate that experience into the assumption that the wax was the problem is invalid in my opinion, and my experience. I therefore disagree with the statement that “If you want your shoes to last you shouldn't maintain a ‘shine’ on the vamp of your shoe.", and believe that it perpetuates a misunderstanding of the root cause of the problem.

Oh Jesus. Stop writing essays on shoe care. Your opinion is not far from Patrick's in general and you're overreacting to the minor differences. Do whatever works for you. 

Too many details about shoe care in a shoe care thread? Whatever. I'm done.

 

Wait what?  This is Styleforum, we had threads on gemming that span pages and brand discussion that took an hour to read.  And you are complaining about minor differences?

 

Perfection is found only in those minor differences.

 

Love your blog/website, very informative.  Nice discussion and IME you are right; shoe wax won't really 'crack' on the vamp until many layers has been caked on.

Yes, pages of responses back and forth. A page of text per post on mind-numbingly minor differences of opinion? Not so much. 

 

Then don't read it if you don't care.

 

Anyway, I'm wearing shell boots today, and they're pretty shiny, probably because I buffed them a while ago before storing them. NICE. Unfortunately the left somehow got some gashes in the heel that I'm afraid are too deep to take out with a deer bone... but I'll try.

Hi everyone - first post here...

 

Just purchased my first pair of dress shoes "Allen Edmond's Pennyworth", which I love. I've pretty much worn casual loafers for the past 8 years (Tod's, Farrago, etc.) as I don't really need to dress up for work. Admittedly I haven't kept as good of care of my shoes as I should have. Anyway...looking to start now.

 

I've read through this thread trying to find what I need, but I've found it to be little too detailed for my beginner status ....I have heel dressing, conditioner, water proof spray, and shoe polish (all from Allen Edmond's). I was hoping to lay out my plan for upkeep and have you guys let me know what I am doing right or wrong, could be doing better, as well as any other products I might need (Admittedly - I do not know exactly what I am doing...)

 

Every month or so - (leather)

 

1. Put conditioner on a rag and rub/buffer it into the shoe

 

2. Let it dry and after 10 min or so - wipe off excess conditioner - let it dry

 

3. Apply shoe polish to a cloth and rub/buffer it into shoe

 

4. Wipe off excess with a polish cloth - let dry

 

Thanks!!

^^ You should be putting on so little product (both conditioner and polish) that "wipe off" is an exaggeration. It doesn't take very much time for most of these to "dry," only things like Obenauf's LP need significant time to really soak in. You also really only need to apply polish if they aren't shiny enough for you, not at any fixed interval. If you're wearing a pair frequently, that's likely to be less than a month. I often just condition, and use pigmented polish more rarely. Try it and see what you think! If you don't like the results, try something else.