Shoe Antiquing - Page 2

In response to emailsPM's, yes, these shoes are available through Franco's Fine Clothier. They are working on updating the website to show the styles that are available, especially from Martegani.....any of my shoes can be ordered through Franco's and you can request this type of antiquing from me. General price for my shoes from stock is $415 and then an additional $150 for the heavy antiquing (like the slip-on, called 'Pompeii', and the left shoe of the lace-up sample, called 'Arno'...the right 'Arno' is moderate, and would be an additional $100 for the work)....I will need around 2 weeks for the finishing work. The process for any of these reequests would be to purchase the shoes from Franco's, verify your fit/satisfaction, then return to me directly, with payment and instructions, for the finishing work.

Feel free to continue to PM or email (email is best....ron[at]rm1891[dot]com) for more details....I will handle all requests as usual.

Thanks....I was just posting for interest sake, but seems as if alot of interest in this....

Ron

Well, since the Forum seems to be on a antiquing jag here lately, I will continue this thread with the process from the beginning. Here we have a pair of Lobb's sent to me after a 'botched' job.....don't know if a homemade version or an attempt by a repair shop, but this is a good example of how you can almost ruin a pair of nice shoes if you don't know what you are doing. Also, there will be some suggestions/points here that should be considered by some of the other posters that are attempting this work at home and starting threads to show the results.

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Notice the flaking finish in spots.....I have no idea what was used but the toe and heel areas were stripped with something very harsh - my guess is Acetone....I read that others are using this and I don't suggest it; get 'deglazer' from Angelus...contains acetone, but is much more gentle and the proper thing to use - and this has caused, thru time, the picking off of the finish. It's not hard to take a new pair of shoes and dye them, streak them, etc., and have them look good....it's something else entirely to develop a nice finish that wears well. Be careful of quick jobs - they end up like this more times than not.

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5 AM comes earlier and earlier......

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Proper preperation is everything. Left shoe properly deglazed and soles taped. Simple work.....wrap high quality cotton cloth around 2 or 3 fingers, soak with deglazer and rub off the existing finish. I also use a razor blade to get into the seams where previous polish builds up....this should take around 10 minutes and you need to rotate the rag and dip constantly.

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Instructions for this pair are to fix the finish as best as possible and make dark brown with some antiquing. First steps I take are to highlight the seams and the base of the uppers. No matter how dark you need to go in color, you have to get there in steps....never start with the final color, but slowly get to what you want by building bases of other colors. This is an important point....the real way to a nice finish is to CONSTANTLY rub out the layers of finish you build. The last thing you want to do is coat the shoe in 1 or 2 levels of dye and then try to polish it out...you end up with highly contrasted streaks, taky build-up of dye and a non-durable finish. No matter how good you get the dye to adhere (and every pair is different based on the leather, factory finishing, etc.), the finish will wear out pretty much from the get-go....if you don't build layers you will get a shoe with drastic highlights in a short period of time. Here I can also see how much damage was done to the toe (and heel) by the previous stripping.....means I am guessing that this will require at least 15 levels of dye/rub out.

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Don't be in a rush to do the entire shoe at one time....I always do small areas - maybe 1/5th at a time. Except the toe, which I always try to do at once. Remember, when you re-coat, you always loosen the previous coat, so blending is easy if the prep was done properly. Here we started with Russet (using Fiebings on this one....no mixing with analine as it's not neccessary on this job) and have moved to Medium Brown, giving us a cognac sort of base. Again, not trying to get a flat finish....just slowly building the layers. In between doing larger areas (with either daubers or sponges) I use various sizes of artists brushes to get into the small pieces like buckle holders, corners, as well as brushing all seams before more coats are applied.

Two hours later and we are starting to get somewhere with the blotching toe.....taking many layers and much elbow grease! Heel area still a disaster....

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5 AM till 8 AM this morning and we are finally getting a good build....I'd like to know what was put on these previously . You can see that we are slowly getting to a nice brown color....have moved to a mix of Mahagony and Medium Brown in the same jar and we will continue this evening, probably with another 4 coats before calling it a night.

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At this moment we have around 3 hours into this pair of shoes....probably 3/4 done. This has taken a bit longer than normal due to the problems of the previous attempt at refinishing, but unless you are building enough layers to occupy about 3-4 hours, I can't imagine that the finish will wear nicely, let alone durably.

I'll pick it up again tomorrow when we, hopefully, get to the final steps.