Hi I'm Kirby Allison, founder
of The Hanger Project.
The purpose of this video is to
show you how to take your
uneven,
unfinished edges & heels
and refinish those to produce a
nice,
highly polished,
and clean dressed edge & heel.
In this tutorial which is
probably our most comprehensive
edge heel care video,
we're going to be using the
alcohol based liquid leather
dye from Saphir Teinture
Francaise to finish our
edges.
The general overview of this
is that we're first going to
smooth out our edges using a
very fine sandpaper,
then we're going to dye it
using a alcohol based liquid
leather dye used as an edge
dressing, and then finally
we're going to finish them off
with a little bit of neutral
wax polish in order to provide
that nice high shine
that you expect from a new pair
of dress shoes.
These are a pair of my Anthony
Cleverley Baron De Rede
buckskin tassel loafers,
probably my favorite pair of
casual shoes that I own- super
easy to wear and incredibly
elegant.
One of the problems that you
can see with the regular use
of these shoes, is something
that I call driver's heel.
Basically, anyone that's
driving in their vehicle a lot
is going to wear
the right heel of their shoe
faster than the other shoe
because of the drivers pedal.
So as you can see,
this is really uneven
and it's just not
a smooth edge anymore.
What we're going to do first
is we're going to take a really
fine sandpaper to sand
that edge down,
to smooth it out
before we re-dye it using
the teinture Francaise alcohol
based liquid leather
dye.
The first step here is I'm
going to use a really high grit
fine sandpaper that I bought at
a local hardware store to
basically sand down and
re-smooth any unfinished
elements of the edge.
Now, whenever you do this,
you're going to see the color
strip away from whatever
previously applied edge
dressing, but don't worry about
that because you're going to
completely redo the edge using
the liquid based edge dressing
in the next video.
Take a little bit of really
fine sandpaper and
then anywhere that you see an
uneven, unsmooth surface,
just take this and sand it.
You may want to experiment with
different types of grits.
This is a really high grit,
fifteen hundred
sandpaper,
but honestly I think
it may be a little bit
overkill-I could probably use
an 800 grit.
Using a sandpaper to sand down
your edges is completely
optional and it's just based on
a judgment call as to whether
or not you're comfortable doing
it, and whether or not you
think your edges need it.
So,
if you have any really rough or
uneven areas of your
edge or your heel,
that's where the sandpaper
comes in and is very helpful.
But if you feel across it with
your finger or you're just
looking at it and you don't see
any areas of unevenness that
you think need to be sanded,
you can completely skip this
step.
Next we're going to re-color
the edge using Saphir's
Teinture Francaise alcohol
based liquid
leather dye.
Now we're using this as an edge
dressing but all edge
dressings really are just
leather dyes.
I prefer using
the liquid based
leather dye versus the
cream based renovating
repair cream, just because I
find that it does a better job
penetrating the edge,
and it really just leaves that
kind of natural look
of stacked heels,
and you know,
a highly finished kind of
bespoke edge than a cream based
edge dressing.
One thing to be careful of is
that this is a permanent
leather dye, right.So I'm using
a leather shoeshine carpet to
protect my desk and
you have to be very careful
when applying this to your
edges and not to actually make
contact with the upper leather
because if you do dye
the leather there is nothing to
do to remove that,
so you have to be very careful
and that's why I would
certainly say that this is kind
of a little bit more of an
advanced
application.
I'm going to
wet the little cotton
applicator and then I'm
going to try to remove
as much of this excess dye
from the applicator as
possible.
And again, the purpose is to
just help me further control
the amount of dye that I'm
applying.
Take the applicator and you're
just going to brush it across
the heel.
You can see that alcohol based
dye really soak into
the leather.
Now be very careful,
especially kind of along
the waist of the shoe where the
heel- where the edge is very
tight
or cut close to the actual
upper, and then just
rub this along the edge,
and allow it to soak in.
Now you can see you need a
little bit of time for the
alcohol to absorb into
the leather.
Again because this is an
alcohol based dye,
the leather is really going to
soak it in,
so just allow a little bit of
time to dry before
you turn it over
and
then just continue to
dye this heel- again being very
careful
around
the actual upper,
and then if you feel that you
need more saturation,
just do more applications.
So it really doesn't take much
to fully dye the heel.
Make sure you put the cap back
on so that you don't have this
spilling.
And then allow this alcohol
based dye to dry
for you know three to five
minutes.
Now one of the things that
you'll see is after you apply
the leather dye,
you're going to end up with a
really dull heel.
Now I think that a highly
polished heel is much sharper
than a dull one,
so what we're going to do next
is we're going to come on top
of this with some of the
Saphir Medaille D'Or
pommadier wax polish to just
wax the edge
and the heel to provide that
shine. So now that you've
allowed the liquid based
edge dressing to dry,
the next step and again,
optional, but one that I prefer
is to then come on top of it
using a neutral wax polish
to just shine the edge in the
heels.
So I'm going to
apply Saphir Pommadier neutral
wax polish
with a
welt
brush.
Now with these suede shoes it's
particularly important
to be careful because
what I don't want with suede
which really would be less of a
problem with standard calfskin,
is to get into the wax polish
on the suede itself,
so I'm going to be really
careful here in my application.
Now there's two benefits to
applying a wax polish using
a welt brush: First
is that with any type of
Goodyear welted shoe,
the wax actually helps
nourish and protect
the welt stitching
in addition to shining
the shoes.
I'm just going to apply some of
this on the edge,
and
then being very careful I'm
going to try to get into
the actual welt without
getting any of the wax polish
on the suede.
Now as I said,
if this was a
pair of calfskin shoes I'd be
able to be a lot less careful.
I'm just applying this here
using a brush.
Now one of
the things that you could also
try that I haven't yet,
is to use the mirror gloss
for this step because again,
it's a harder based
wax polish.
Which will probably give you an
even better shine for the heels
and edges.
I'm just applying the
wax polish,
you know you really
don't need to massage
it in there super tough.
OK.
I've applied the pommadier wax
polished to the edge,
ow I'm going to allow this five
to 10 minutes to fully dry
before I come back on top of it
using another
dauber to buff that up.
After I've allowed the Saphir
Pate De Luxe wax polish to dry,
I'm going to take a clean
Dauber and basically
buff that wax off.
So using brisk motions,
I'm just
buffing that edge and
that heel.
The purpose here like the
effect is really the same thing
that you would see if you're
actually polishing a wax
polish on the uppers,
is it you're simply going to
bring that wax polish up to a
higher shine.
The effect is subtle but you
can absolutely see that we've
brought up the shine of these
heels.
So not only have we smoothed
them out using the sandpaper,
but we recolored them
using the Saphir
teinture Francaise alcohol
based leather dye,
and then now we waxed
and shined them
using a standard
Pate De Luxe wax polish.
So with this edge care video
we've taken a dull,
uneven edge and heel
and we've completely refinished
that to a heel that's almost
as good as a new pair of shoes
if not, actually even better.
We did that using a little bit
of sandpaper to smooth the
edge,
followed by the teinture
Francaise alcohol based liquid
leather dye to recover the
edges, and then we finished it
off the little bit of the
Medaille D'Or Paté De Luxe wax
polish to then shine those
edges and give them just that
little bit of extra pop.
As you can see,
these edges and heels look
fantastic and the shoes are
ready for another day out.
So thanks for joining us.
I'm Kirby Allison founder of
The Hanger Project.
If you have any questions about
this video feel free
to email us at
shoeshine@Hangerproject.com or
ask in the comments section
below. We love hearing
questions and if there's
anything we can do to help you
take care of your shoes let us
know.
Thanks for joining us.