home made boot polish

griffshrek

Well-Known Member
Hello all

I'm feeling rather pleased with myself so I thought I would share with you my home made boot/shoe polish recipe . I know shoe polish is not that expensive and still affordable but I do love trying to be a little bit self sufficient and using stuff I have around the house.

I keep a couple bee hives and as well as plenty of tasty honey they also give me a good supply of beeswax , I have made furniture polish (which is great) so I thought I would try boot / shoe polish.

The boots that have been my guinea pig are my beloved Lowa's with the weather we have had over the past weeks they have had a good robust testing

I didn't weight any of my ingredients it was more estimating and the feel of the polish. These are my guesstimate measurements for the final product.

1/ 4 x egg cups of beeswax
2/ 1/2 egg cup of Vaseline
3/ oxo size piece of soap
4/ 1/4 egg cup of methylated spirit
5/ 1/2 egg of cup neatsfoot oil
6/ 1/4 egg cup charcoal powder ( BBQ charcoal ground to fine powder)

method
melt beeswax , soap & vaseline in old pan then take off heat mix in methylated spirit, neatsfoot oil & charcoal then mix and tip into old shoe polish tins or any other container.


This make a good black polish a little bit harder than standard polish it apply's a bit like a dubin and absorbs in well, when polished it produces a surprisingly good shine

As said I have field tested this on my boots over the last 3 weeks ,walking dogs every day, out shooting etc (in sh**e conditions) in that time I have re polished the boots 3 times (once a week as normal ) the polish is better than the standard polish I use it seems a tougher and more harder wearing.

I now have a about 1 yrs supply and pleased with myself

 
It's got to be better than the awful nasty shoe polish that I bought from Tesco recently. I normally buy kiwi but they didn't have any in brown.

Now if you use charcoal to give the colour when making black polish, what would you use besides the obvious to make brown shoe polish?
 
Not 100% sure where it is - but I have a few specialist books on such things: from back in the days when if you needed polish or some machine oil you went to the pantry & made something up from a formula

The only problem is that one book that I know which contains formula/recipes for just about any product you'd need in the home lists the ingredients using the olde worlde names - potash of this & extract of that...it'd need some translating into real world chemicals/products

I'll have a look tomorrow & see what I can find about the colouring agents
 
Jusr done a little search and found for black polish another way to colour the polish was using artist oil paint dye i suppose instead of black dye use brown.

Neil
 
And turps does a better job than meths, doesn't evaporate off as readily (so might make the product closer to the "commercial" offering).
 
The greenshop.co.uk has rare earth pigments to go with their eco paints which would probably work fine. Probably most other paint shops would have similar. I have a sackful of graphite at the forge (for paint finishes and hot work lubricant) so I would use that for the black pigment. I seem to remember soot and lamp black were used for black pigments for such things in the past

Pigments at The Greenshop

I use White Spirit rather then Turps or Turps Substitute when making up my microcrystalline waxes, and I went for lanolin rather then neatsfoot oil in my leather salves.

What properties do you find the soap and vaseline contribute?

Alan
 
And turps does a better job than meths, doesn't evaporate off as readily (so might make the product closer to the "commercial" offering).
Hello Matt H, never seen you on the site for some time??, Iam with you on this one, I use turps, get it a litre at a time, put few ice cubes in........just like Glen the noo single malt !!!!!

keep well
 
Hello Matt H, never seen you on the site for some time??, Iam with you on this one, I use turps, get it a litre at a time, put few ice cubes in........just like Glen the noo single malt !!!!!

keep well

I'm still around and lurking patrick.

As for the turps, I'm trying to give it up for drinking, never a fan of flammable farts!
 
The inside of a banana skin is great for shining you shoes. wouldn't have thought it'd make them waterproof but I don't know? The banana is good for you too.
 
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