Sole dressing

[jcusey]

What do you re-stain sole and heel edges with when you don't want them to be black? If the uppers aren't black or some other dark color, it looks silly for the sole edges to be black, but all of that sole dressing stuff comes just in black. Can you just use shoe cream in the appropriate color?

 

[Renault78law]

Allen Edmonds makes a heel and sole dressing in brown.

 

[RIDER]

the best sole dressing is not sole dressing - it's Fiebings dye. What color do you need?

 

[jcusey]

the best sole dressing is not sole dressing - it's Fiebings dye. What color do you need?

Could you elaborate about what this is and why it's the best option?

I'm looking for a nice mid-brown.

 

[RIDER]

http://www.tinhornleathercraft.citymax.com/catalog....597.htm basic alcohol-based leather dye. If you ever take something in to be dyed, this is what they will use - industry standard, I guess you would say. I don't know whats in the products labeled 'sole edge dressing', but my guess is it's just polish because it doesn't seem to work too well. Remember, sole edges are veg tanned, so they don't polish so well - they need to be dyed every so often. The only problem is don't make a mistake - but it's really not hard to do. It comes with a dauber and wear some gloves. I have most of the colors and use it on every pair that my customers want cleaned up. Funny story though...new salesmen comes in and decides that he should polish up his shoes. So he goes to my bench and takes a rag and dips it into the jar (I keep the basic black and brown in old mayo jars, not marked) and wipes it on his shoes like polish. He thought I had some special polish or something...he gets dye on his shoes in streaks, his clothes, hands, everywhere. Clothing salesmen, go figure. Don't do this, just the edges.

 

[bengal-stripe]

I find shoe cream (the one in the glass jars) perfectly adequate. Cream has a much higher covering power than polish, that's the reason why I don't like cream for shoe care (overpowers everything), but it makes it ideal to treat the sole edge and heals. My standard application tool is one index finger (I don't bother with an application rag). Ten minutes later I give it a hard buffing with a coarse rag.

As I use cream very little it has become quite dry, which gives it even more covering power. On very light tan, unstained sole edges, I find Dubbin (which is fat) works beautifully. Every now and then I use a bit of sandpaper to smooth the sole edge. (Be careful not to scratch the leather of the uppers.)

 

[bch]

Buy some brown edge dressing. Kiwi makes it, but it's harder to find that the black. Go to a shoe store or shoe repair shop. Failing that, it's easy to find on the web. I found this with a quick google. (All the usual disclaimers apply): http://www.keosashoerepair.com/store...._id=142