Polishing Shoes
by David Barth, October 19, 2008
For leather shoes (not suede), I have a secret. Actually, it isn't a secret, but something I can do with old shoes.
When I bought a used pair of Diesel shoes at a garage sale in September 2008, they looked scruffy.
Having been in the Navy, I'm a whiz at polishing shoes, and I was able to make them look almost like new.
Carol often brings me her shoes to polish, but I'm not great at polishing colored shoes because I just can't do a
great job with liquid polish.
However, with a can of Kiwi polish, I go to town, and bring worn leather back to life, making it look neat and shiny
and nourishing the leather at the same time.
First, I wipe the shoes off with a damp paper towel or rag. Then I apply a liberal coating of brown, black, or cordovan
polish, depending on the original shoe color. Sometimes I apply brown to cordovan shoes just to tone down the reddish
color.
Then I take my shoe brush and brush very fast. The fast brushing heats the polish and helps it shine.
After that I use an old T-shirt and go over them again to bring out the highlights.
In the Navy, I spit-polished. We called it that, but most guys, and I, didn't use spit. We filled the Kiwi polish lid
with tap water. We wrapped an old T-shirt around our finger, dipped it into the water, then into the polish, and
applied it to the shoe in a circular manner. The trick was to lightly rub the polished area in a circular
motion with the damp cloth until the polish began to shine.
Sometimes we spent hours on a pair of shoes. I don't do that anymore, but back in the Navy, polishing shoes was like
quilting. It gave us a chance to get together and gab, tell sea stories, girl stories, and just generally
gossip.
When I was home on leave one time, I took a pair of Dad's black wingtips and polished them to the same high shine that
I did to my own Navy dress shoes. Dad wore them to work the next day and came home that evening saying that he had
gotten several comments from fellow workers about his "new" shoes. He told them that his Navy son had just polished
his old shoes.