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

[chogall]



I thought there was some bruhaha because Cleverley stated their rtw and semi bespoke shoes were hand welted, and some knowledgeable parties suggested that was a marketing lie. I bring this up only to recount the assertions, not to come down on one side or the other.

GC does claim their RTW being hand welted but I have never seen any third party verification.

Their shoes does look similar to shoes made by EG or AS from the sole.

 

[LJR1]

Hi everyone,

I am new to SF, though have spent the last ~ 2 months reading this thread, and have learned quite a bit through others' experience (particularly that less is more with regards to share care product application). I much appreciate that.

I am also relatively new to quality footwear, with my collection reflecting that: 1 JLP, 1 EG, several AEs (and worse). I have two questions regrading JLP that I hope you may assist me with:

1) Cream and wax options for JLP pewter museum (outside of JLP products).

2) How comparable is the fit between JLP's 7000 and 8000 lasts? What are the major differences? If the fit from a 7000 last is good (at least to my untrained feel), can I expect the same from the 8000 last?

Kind regards,

jack

 

[Xman11815]

Thanks for the help guys

 

[mediahound]

Talking about shoe brushes. My opinion:

 

[Munky]

Comment removed and apologies for my being rude.

 

[mediahound]



I am sorry to be rude but that is one of the most boring videos I have watched.

How exciting do you really expect shoe brushes to be?

 

[patrickBOOTH]



I have dissection pictures of EG and G&G if you fancy those.

GC is supposedly to be hand welted, but I have not seen any dissection pictures of them.

Could you post the dissection pics here?

 

[DWFII]



Could you post the dissection pics here?

Well, somebody here obviously extracts useful information from these things.

The ones I've seen posted in the past were in Japanese and apparently scanned from pages of a magazine at such low resolution that you couldn't see the components to determine what they were.

???

 

[Evsty]

One of my new pairs of museum calf Vass has developed some scuffs on the toe and I'm not sure the best course of action. I had polished the toe to a nice glassy shine and thought it would have protected it a bit more but I guess I kicked the curb a little too hard. What's the best way of repairing the scuff mark? My other question is....how do I keep up with the polish job? Do I have to strip the shoe from all of the wax or can I just re-apply some coats to the toe to keep the nice shine? This is the first time I've attempted that glass toe look but now I have no idea how to upkeep. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[patrickBOOTH]

That japanese one was the one where they claimed G&G's has some sort of "mesh" in-between the upper and lining in the vamp section for reinforcement. Who knows what they could mean. Could be a translation issue. I'm just curious, that's all.

 

[DWFII]



That japanese one was the one where they claimed G&G's has some sort of "mesh" in-between the upper and lining in the vamp section for reinforcement. Who knows what they could mean. Could be a translation issue. I'm just curious, that's all.

I'm curious too.

I'd love to see some really clear and understandable deconstructions. There was a link to a site (I sadly didn't save it) posted on SF some time ago where the fellow who had actually done the deconstructions displayed a series of photos from each breakdown. The unfortunate thing was that he was apparently not a shoemaker or even familiar with shoes in an informed way and that the shoes he deconstructed were pretty run of the mill.

'Course who wants to tear apart a perfectly god $2K shoe for a photo shoot?

The manufacturers could give us a detailed construction sequence but the trouble there is that they end up giving away the "keys to the kingdom"--industrial secrets. Really perspicacious viewers could pick up a tremendous amount of knowledge from photos and video...and do... and as a result every video I've ever seen skips over parts that aren't common knowledge or that the maker doesn't want you to see....like maybe they're using a plastic toe stiffener or something along those lines.

 

[patrickBOOTH]

Crispins is totally transparent. They show their whole process in their videos and even have one of their shoes cut open at trunk shows.

 

[Zapasman]

GYW all the same in 90% of the processes...so no many secrets for many of us. You see one shoemaker video, you know the others too.

 

[patrickBOOTH]

Well the materials used becomes important. Even in the case of handwelting things like insole thickness becomes an objective comparison.

 

[DWFII]

All that's true but....and maybe it's just me...I see things in videos, even ones I've watched a dozen times that I had not seen or noticed before.

Just the other day I saw a single photo of a pair of Delos lasts with a feathered and channeled insole. The interesting thing was that I noticed that Delos/Berlutti appeared to be preforming their heel stiffeners.

I've played around with that concept on and off over the years and I had probably seen that photo before, although I can't recall ever having seen it. But again that was the first time I noticed the stiffener wrapped around the last. Dumb bootmaker, I guess.

Of course I watch videos and examine photos of bespoke makers with far more frequency and avidity than promotional videos put out by the manufacturers. But I'm always seeing new approaches.