Can I sand my leather shoes to remove scratches? - Page 3

People are pushing for the OP to do something that makes no sense. An odd sense of humour, no doubt.

It is a shame when a shoe is cut or scuffed....so how does it make sense to increase or add to the damage?

The suggestion to glue down any loose flaps of leather is a reasonable one. If the damage is cuts, you can use a bone or a spoon to push the edges of the cut back together, sometimes making the cut almost disappear right then and there.

If it is a scuff, moistening the scuffed area and then burnishing it with a bone or the back of a spoon will re-create a smooth surface, albeit not a perfect "full-grain" surface. Let dry.

Then use the Saphir to fill in the gaps or cover the scuff.

DW, can't OP just sand the entire shoe, then brush with a wire brush to bring up the nap, ending up with "suede" shoes?

I think that Iroh is experimenting with this technique.

You would think that, wouldn't you? But a closer look at the structure of full grain leather suggests that it is not so easy.

Tanned cattle hides, in particular, are thicker than we suspect when looking at a piece of shoe leather or even the shoe itself. The same hide that makes a 12 iron (1/4") thick) leather outsole can be the basis for a 2 ounce full grain calf. The grain surface is the densest part of the hide and the strongest.

Suede is often a split taken off the flesh side of the hide, leaving the full grain to be sold as an additional, full grain hide (a twofer). But in that splitting process, the fleshside layer (technically a "split") loses a lot of its strength and coherence.

The best suede, however (at least in my opinion), is a full grain leather dyed and finished such that the fleshside is intended to be visible...and, functionally, the exposed surface.

Sanding through the grainside of a full grain leather comes closer to creating a nu-buck than a suede...unless you sand so deeply that you completely eliminate the grain surface.

At which point, you will have destroyed better than 50% of the strength that was inherent in the leather.

I don't know what could possibly make the OP think this would be a good idea. Its like asking if a torn pant leg can be repaired by cutting off the leg.

True dat.

There's so much win in this post I don't know where to begin.

Thank you, sir.

I had a big gash in one of my shoes, a deep cut much bigger than the OP's. I think I was drunk because I didn't even remember how it happened the next day, I took the shoe to my cobbler and he put some kind of cement on it and I think he sanded a little bit very softly and he cleaned and polished. It came out surprisingly well, you can still see a thin "scar" there but it's much better.

Crap. When I saw "rikod" I read "Iroh" and got all excited.

Ummm seriously? A brand new pair of boots of mine would look worse than the pic in the OP after one day of wearing.

it's a similar kind of post though

Less talk, more sanding.


Do that shit!!!

Well guys, I had a stain due to some light damage in my shoes that I couldn't undo properly using aceton as all efforts to re-dye the shoes were in vain due to the leather absorbing the dye differently in different places. If the differences would have been small it wouldn't have bothered me but alas, that was not the case.

So I decided to acquaint them to sandpaper; results below.

PLEASE NOTE- I would not recommend anyone doing this unless it is your very last resort.

How they were when i got them


After sanding


After dyeing


After some polishing



Edited by Crat - 3/25/12 at 7:01am