What goes into a bespoke shoeshine? Anders Sundström, a world-renowned shoeshiner, demonstrates his skills on my shoes while revealing the philosophy, precision, and care required for a truly custom shine.
Video Transcript [Lightly Edited for Clarity]:
Raphael: Anders Sundström is perhaps one of the finest shoeshiners in the world. The problem for me is that he lives in Sweden, and I hardly ever get there. So, when I was in London, and I had the chance to meet him at Arterton, at the Princes Arcade, I just had to get a shoeshine from him. Anders, nice to meet you.
Anders: It was pleasant, yeah. So, today, we’re gonna restore a pair of shoes for you.
Raphael: Sounds great. I mean, they have never been polished. This is the original Baker leather, like, factory finish worn. I think we made the shoes in 2020.
Anders: Yeah.
Raphael: And yeah, this is gonna be their—
Anders: Two years for not polishing—shame on you.
Raphael: Oh, four years.
Anders: Oh, sorry, four years.
Raphael: Four years, four years. So, it’s the inaugural polish of these shoes.
Anders: But they are in really good condition, though.
Raphael: It’s because, you know, I have a large, like, shoe closet, so I don’t wear the same shoes a lot.
Anders: Yeah.
Raphael: But I found that when I travel, I like these shoes because I know I can wear them all day, every day. They’re like a workhorse. And you know, the Baker leather, right? It’s very thick.
Anders: Yeah.
Raphael: So, it’s like, it’s a shoe that’s meant to be worn.
Anders: Yeah.
Raphael: And you saw, like, we added toe spring.
Anders: Yes.
Raphael: The idea was we wanted it—a shoe that was not a show shoe. Sometimes, when you go to the world championships—like, you were the first world champion—
Anders: In Sweden, yeah.
Raphael: …shoeshiner in recent history. But sometimes, what you see there, it’s just—it’s art.
Anders: It’s more art than practicality, of course. Yeah.
Raphael: So, I wanted us to be a shoe that was going to be worn—a workhorse.
Anders: Well, then comfort is obviously key. And, like you … I see you have a wider foot, and thus a wider last, so it seems to fit really well, I think. But when it comes to shoeshining, what we’re going to do first is just to get them in a good precondition before we add the foam stuff—the shine. First, we need to make sure that this leather, though durable, has all the nutrients it needs to continue for an additional four years.
Raphael: Yeah, because I, you know, I used to be really into shoe shining. It’s—you dry things out, right? And at the time, there wasn’t too much online resource reading and stuff. So, I, you know, I put, like, the hard wax on here, and then you get all the cracks—the leather cracks.
And, similar to you, I started buying used shoes. You know, so I had, like, old Church’s shoes, and they were already old when I got them. And then I had them for a while. And then you get—you know, they look like, sometimes, Prince Charles’s shoes. You’ve seen those, right? Where there’s, like, the leather coming off and stuff. So, yes, I don’t want that to happen.
Anders: No.
Raphael: And I’m really curious to learn from you today.
Anders: Absolutely. So, first off, I’m just gonna strip off the laces here.
Raphael: Okay.
Anders: Generally, I do recommend to make sure that they’re off because we don’t want shoe care within the laces here, and they’re gonna—
Raphael: Having to take off the shoe if it’s—
Anders: Yeah, yeah…
Raphael: Do we take it off?
Anders: Let’s see how far we get if we run into a trouble here.
Raphael: Well, also, when you polish it with the shoelaces on, they get stained. Well, and then you also don’t get to all the cracks here.
Anders: So, first off, these are made with wax. So, so they need wax as well. But the problem is when you put—applying the product, they are on, you can’t really reach all the places like you said, and especially the tongue.
Raphael: Yes.
Anders: Typical place that people forget.
Raphael: You even see it on new shoes sometimes, you know, when they have the patina.
Anders: Yes.
Raphael: The tongue is—it looks very different, because it’s still, like, in the crust state.
Anders: Exactly. But a good shoeshiner, he puts energy into the parts of your shoe. Even the parts where you don’t see, because most people look at the toes, like, this is how you define a good shine. No, no, no… It’s—you need to take a look at the inner part of the shoe.
This is … usually forgotten—underneath the sole, the sole edge. Those are the parts that usually people forget, but are as vital as the upper, because not only—it’s the whole appearance of the shoe that will matter when it comes to perception.
Is shoeshining a big thing in Sweden?
Raphael: Is shoeshining a big thing in Sweden?
Anders: It has become quite, I would say. Most people tend to their shoes more. I have been lectured by Polish people that Swedish people are terrible, which is partly correct. But in the fan base of gentleman’s fashion, I would say that most people actually do tend to their shoes.
Raphael: How about, you know, like, actual shoe stands, like, like this?
Anders: In public, it doesn’t exist.
Raphael: Same in Germany—it doesn’t exist. In the U.S., you know, you go to the airport and stuff, you see it. You go downtown, you see it.
Anders: Yeah, I’ve seen it in Frankfurt. I think it was a shoe shiner in an airport, but not in the—it’s really sad because it’s a really good profession. So, what we’re going to do first is just remove excess dirt. Again, like I said, they’re in quite good condition as it is. But the problem is, it’s not here—it’s in the welt. You know, a lot of dirt gets into the welt. So, we’re going to use a wild boar brush. This specific brush is very coarse.
Raphael: It’s very stiff and coarse. It’s just a thicker hair.
Anders: Very thick. And the general idea here is that this will help us to brush off that excess dirt before we start using the fantastic chemistry that we’re gonna run into. This obviously doesn’t add any shine—it just removes dirt. A really good thing just to have, you know, inside when you get home—just brush off, especially around the welt, because it’s much easier to get it off when it’s just stuck. So, when you brush off using the wild boar brush, you just need to make sure to do a simple brush-off on the upper and then go around the welt. Because this will help to remove the parts where you’re gonna have a bit of trickiness.
Raphael: So, do you get in here as well?
Anders: Yeah, so these as well. You try to reach in a bit.
Raphael: Like, back here, yeah.
Anders: That is the same. Because you do get a lot of dust, and if you’re a perfectionist—some people are—you start to look at the small details, and they matter when it comes to finishing a shoe. And I would say that you will speed up aging if you gather up a lot of dirt. So, you want it clean and neat. So, here, we just remove—you go around the welt. You see, I focus a lot around the sole. And this is just—this is usually where we end up with a lot of dust and dirt, generally. So, we just go spin around and just clean it off.
So, this is obviously, like I said, we haven’t added a bit of shine, but just removed excess. Now, you do have some stains still, like here. So, here, we want to use something that loosens it up. And so, we’re gonna use a specific foam product that I made, which is the Reviving Cream. So, this is a happy little mistake where we wanted to just see how far we can get when it comes to cleaning and nourishing, and just skip shine, skip waterproofing.
This is just—we tried and just played around, and this sort of came out, which is a fantastic part. There are similar others, but where we just want to start to dissolve old waxes and pigmentation to get a solid, perfect state.
Raphael: A good foundation.
Anders: Foundation, perfect, exactly. So, this will just help to remove excess.
Anders: And also add all the oils and waxes that are needed for sustainability, so the shoes keep that subtle flexibility.
Raphael: That’s a good trick. Like, I thought maybe a toothbrush, but this works too.
Anders: Yes.
Raphael: Now, you know, I saw, like, this brand is Paul Brunngård, and your name is Anders.
Anders: Anders Sundström.
Raphael: But you talked about “we.” Tell me more about that.
Anders: So, Paul Brunngård is the owner of Brunngård Group, which is a general shoe care. And what we wanted with PB was that we wanted to create a brand founded in the pure passion of shoe care, but giving the modern twist that hasn’t been seen in shoe care for quite some time.
Raphael: Interesting. So, did, like, Paul approach you? Was it like, did the Shoe Shining World Championship have anything to do with that?
Anders: Oh, yeah. So, Brunngård actually is one of the sponsors of the Shoe Shining Championship in Sweden. And there, I met Paul. And I asked him—he asked me, “Anders, we want to make the best shoe care in the world.” It’s like, sure, fair enough. I can do it but under one condition—no compromise. And he said yes.
Raphael: Did he know what he signed up for?
Anders: No, he didn’t know what he signed up for. So, that’s my main narrative when I’ve designed every product—that we didn’t want to compromise when it came to creating everything from scratch, which is the heart of this specific brand.
Raphael: So, it’s all about uncompromising quality. Now, you know, just because you can shine shoes well doesn’t mean you understand the chemistry. I mean, it’s one part of it, right? Like, you, you know how to use the product. How did you manage that part?
Anders: Well, I’m an engineer, so I took a bit of a different approach. I started with the drawing board and researched everything there is to know about actually formulating the products. I took it on like a typical engineer point of view—problem-solving. And obviously, like I said, I’ve done a bit of shoeshining through my days, so I know what works and doesn’t work, and where other products are good and not good.
Raphael: So, you had the field experience, yeah. And then you’re an engineer, you’re tenacious, and you did the research. I mean, it’s similar to me. I went to law school, right? And I hated law. But it’s—I found that if you have a passion and you’re a problem solver, you can figure a lot of things out. And, you know, it’s like training by doing.
Some people call it the real-world MBA—you know, don’t go to school, just start the business, and you’ll learn more than if you actually go to school. So, it’s a different approach to the whole thing. And, I mean, there isn’t even like—you could have gotten a chemistry degree, but it’s not like there is a shoe-polishing chemistry degree or anything like that.
Anders: Right. So, when you’re formulating the chemistry, you need to take into account multiple factors—not just mixing different parts. It’s not a lotion. It’s a—
Raphael: But I see you—you know, you’re applying the cream now on your hand first, on your palm, with the idea that it doesn’t get blotchy, right? You don’t want to blob. You want it more evenly spread out on your cloth.
Anders: Typical mistake people make. So, when you apply any product—it doesn’t have to be my brand, it’s just any kind of chemical product—on each leather, if you have a concentrated dot of cream or wax and you apply it on the leather, you’re going to have a high concentration of solvents penetrating into the leather. To solve this, what we do is apply it on the palm or a lid or what have you. And you just pull it into a thin layer, and adding thin layers above each other creates a barrier, which means that you can apply more continuously. So, it’s a small, good trick for any product.
Raphael: So, if you have sensitive skin, would you recommend doing that, or are the products gentle enough that it should be fine?
Anders: It should be fine. I mean, if you’re worried, just use gloves—like polyester or synthetic gloves. Most people—there are professionals who spit-shine using fingers, which is fine. I mean—
Raphael: And they do it all day, every day, and they’re fine, so it should be fine.
Anders: Got it. It’s fine. I mean, obviously, it’s chemistry. You always have to take that into account if you’re exposed to too much.
Raphael: Sure.
Anders: Yeah. So, now we’ve applied the Reviving Cream. And my general recommendation is it needs to be allowed to set. This will take some time. But for this case, what we’ll do is—we’ll now want to add pigmentation.
This is a cream with pigmentation. Now, what you also have in a cream, like a polish cream, is that you have harder waxes for a high shine, and you also have waterproofing from those waxes. So, a cream—a proper cream—adds a variety of different factors like waterproofing, pigmentation, shine, and nourishment. So, it’s usually a multifunctional product.
Raphael: So, formula-wise, you know, pigment-wise, have you found you can have too much pigment?
Anders: Oh yeah. I’ve seen a lot of customers that overapply pigmentation and thus ruin the beautiful structure of full-grain leather, which is really sad because the patina and the structure of the leather sort of give the identity to the shoe. So, generally, I would recommend—
Raphael: And then, for a patina, typically, you need the lower layer to be lighter in color and the upper layers to be darker. That way, you get this museum effect, and you look into the leather, so to speak. So, with too much pigmentation, it’s not going to work. What about a black shoe? I would guess on a black shoe—pigmentation—
Anders: Well, black shoes are not as sensitive since you don’t really—you can just add pigmentation. You don’t have the issue. The problem is that if you add too much, you can still ruin the texture of the wax and leather itself. So, it’s all about, you know, getting a bit of balance.
Raphael: Yeah. And these are the kinds of things that you figure out by actually doing it. Like, you don’t need to weigh it or get the volume. If you do it a few times, I think you can figure it out.
Anders: So, when I apply cream—now, this is a generally dark shoe—I could apply more, but what I do is just dab a bit of finger, and then you just do a quick polish. So, it’s fairly clean. I don’t give high concentration, and the cream or waxes, or whatever product you work with, are inside the textile and fiber structure. So, you continuously add more without overapplying. Now, this shoe, obviously, didn’t need a lot of new pigmentation. It was in fairly good condition as it was, but for this case, we just want to add—oh, and don’t forget, you have a lot of wear on the tongue. So—
Raphael: You know, the interesting part is—when I got the leather, I also got a few cuttings because I had a belt made out of it. And I noticed that the leather, just by sitting—it’s not—the wax is pulled out of the leather, and you get this white, hazy effect.
Anders: Yes.
Raphael: But, you know, it must be a natural part of the leather because the unworn leather that was just laying on the shelf exhibited that effect. And actually, the leather on the shelf looked much hazier than the tongue. So, it’s just a part of this leather—it’s this Baker leather. It’s the kind of imitation Russian hatch grain, and I specifically wanted a newer leather. I didn’t want something original, old, because I’ve seen old shoes, and, you know, they dry out, and I wanted a shoe that would last.
Anders: The hazing you’re talking about—it’s not really a problem, but as long as you just apply a bit of product like a cream or a polish, it will sort of help to dissolve it. The Reviving Cream is fantastic at doing this because it really dissolves the waxes and creates this even layer. Now, we’re working with the artistic cream, which is more focused on getting all the different parts that you need.
Raphael: So, one thing I noticed—you know, you have this bottle here, which is 150 milliliters, but the other ones are just 30 milliliters.
Anders: Yeah. So, the polish is 30 milliliters, and the cream is 50.
Raphael: Why?
Anders: Because the biggest mistake with polishes is that you don’t actually need to polish that often, which means they sit in the war room a bit too long, and they harden too much, and you just have to throw them away.
Raphael: Oh, so basically, over time, shoe polish degrades. Is that right?
Anders: Yes. Everything—because as soon as you open it, you start to lose solvents, and it starts to shrink. Eventually, it cracks and gets too hard because the function of a wax polish—especially wax polish—is that it needs to have both the solvents to help retain soft application as well as penetration. And the evaporation of solvents also has a function in achieving a high shine.
Raphael: So, really, buying the 100-milliliter hard wax shoe polishes is good if you’re a shoeshiner and do this professionally every day.
Anders: Yes.
Raphael: But for the at-home enthusiast, it’s overkill, and your product goes bad, and you might end up using a product that’s already past its peak.
Anders: Yes. Because you obviously always want to be at where the product is at its best.
Raphael: Is there a difference between the softer pigmented emulsions and the hard wax paste, or do they both go off at the same rate?
Anders: No, so the thing about wax polish is that it only consists of wax and solvents. That’s the main part of a wax polish, and the solvent evaporates fast—especially if a good wax polish uses solvents that evaporate quickly.
Anders: Why we want speed in evaporation is actually for settling the wax fast and drawing energy from temperature, thus speeding up wax solidification and creating a faster layer buildup.
Raphael: So, why do we need a solvent in the first place?
Anders: Multiple reasons. The original reason was that we want to apply wax, but wax is hard. So, we add solvents to keep it soft. That’s why I have, for example, waxes and oils, which, of course, nourish the leather but also create a really great shine. So, I’m going to show you one important part of the shoe care routine. Now, we’ve applied a reviving cream and artistic cream on the upper of the shoe.
Raphael: And what color did you use?
Anders: A mahogany on your—mahogany-like, yeah. So, the rule there is that if you want to keep the color, use the same or lighter. It’s always okay to use a lighter color. If you want to change the color slightly, use darker—just to force it to change.
Raphael: So, don’t worry that the color matches exactly, because it probably won’t?
Anders: No.
Raphael: But you just look at the—
Anders: Actually, even if it matches when you hold it side by side, it’s going to be different as soon as you apply it. So, it’s just about adding small amounts. And actually, if you wear shoes properly, you don’t need to add a lot of pigmentation often. One of the most important parts that people forget is the sole edge. Now, the sole edge for the upper is what the shoe is for the suit.
If you fail to wear proper shoes for a proper suit, it sort of fails—same with the sole edge. If you fix the upper but not the sole edge, it’s not going to look really nice. So, what we’re going to do now is restore the sole edge as well. The first step in this is adding pigmentation, and this is usually what you see in the front of the toe. This is a lot of wear.
Raphael: Yes.
Anders: A lot of wear. Fully natural—not a problem. You can use dyes. I do not recommend using dyes because it looks really nice when you’re done but doesn’t look nice when you walk and use the shoes. A cream adds pigmentation that is more natural—
Raphael: And durable consistently.
Anders: And it’s easy to restore. So—
Raphael: But you see these shoes—consider how old they are and it’s the first time they’re polished. There’s not much wear on the tip, and it’s because of the toe spring of the shoe. That was the idea. I think if you have a shoe like a Gaziano & Girling shoe, which has a bit of a longer toe box—a longer last—you’ll see more wear.
It looks really cool when you take the photo. I think all the Parisian shoemakers—you know, Dimitri Gomez—there’s always no toe spring, and it looks really nice. But I wanted something that was more geared towards wearing them, not photographing them.
Anders: And don’t forget that it’s more natural to walk in. So, it’s for comfort. Not all shoes are comfortable. Obviously, Gaziano & Girling do very comfortable shoes, but— With the sole edge, we don’t need to worry about dabbing on the other hand. So, we simply just apply the cream like so, and this will help to just restore the color. Like so—this is only the first step. A cool trick, by the way, when you have shoes where you wear the tip of the toe, you can just add a bit of black or dark brown underneath.
Raphael: Yep.
Anders: This will make it so that when you look at it from above, it’s going to look more square, which looks more proper—more new, which is the goal here. And we’ll just continuously apply the cream until we cover the whole sole edge with the cream. And don’t forget the heel. Typically, if you’re doing this, you have to apply it on the heel as well.
Raphael: So now, when you do the entire procedure for someone in a relatively quick way, how long does that take you?
Anders: Depends on the ambition. So, if we’re going to do a quickie, we can do it in 10 minutes.
Raphael: Nice.
Anders: Then we’re super fast—and maybe I don’t talk.
Raphael: 80/20—biggest bang for the buck.
Anders: Yeah, exactly. But then you just add cream. The problem with every shoe care routine is that what we want is time. If you do it at home, it’s never a problem because you can apply it and continue the next day. But for this stage, when we’re doing it, we have to apply a bit of speed. So, we apply the cream on both shoes. You’ve got to be a bit careful because you don’t want excess to rub off on the—
Raphael: The welt part.
Anders: Yeah, welt.
Raphael: Because sometimes, when you leave stuff there, it builds up. Ideally, I always use a toothbrush to kind of get it out. Is that too harsh because of the bristles?
Anders: No, you can use a toothbrush to get it out, which is fine. It just has to be a bit gentle because, I mean, it’s plastic. Plastic is hard, so it can scratch. I would use the wild boar brush, for example. It’s efficient at cleaning and a bit more gentle than plastic.
Raphael: It’s interesting because I know in the shaving world, traditionally, you had Badger and Super Badger brushes, which were the cream of the crop. But in recent years, you have a lot more synthetic brushes that work really well. But in terms of shoe polishing, you swear by natural animal hair.
Anders: Definitely. By all means. I haven’t used a single synthetic brush with the same results so far. I’m open—Until the day I’m wrong. So, first off, by just applying cream, this can be done in one minute. It looks much neater—more like it’s new.
There is a way to force it in—a way to extend the line. This is where we’ve created a sort of sole edge iron. This is a fun little tool. I know real shoemakers have real sole edge irons. This is sort of a perfect at-home kind of product.
Raphael: And the edge iron—it sometimes has a shape on it too, and it’s heated up with fire. So, it’s not something most people would do at home. This is a version you created that you can just use at home.
Anders: Yeah, so the idea is that we want to compress the waxes, oils, and pigmentation into the fiber of the leather. The beauty of it is that not only will you get a smooth surface, but it will also be shiny. Like I told you, when you wear a leather sole, this is still the inside of the leather. It will wear quite fast. You’ll get an uneven surface, and it will start to lose that square shape because it’s square. By continuously using this, you can retain that square shape.
Raphael: Like a 90-degree angle shape.
Anders: Exactly. Exactly. Super picky—I know I am—but it looks much nicer when you’ve done it. You can even use it on the heel as well. If we just do this, we can add it on the edge here. Obviously, these are parts of the shoe that need to be resoled and reheeled, but you can extend the appearance of these parts—definitely the lifetime.
Raphael: Now, when you do it at home, you can also take the shoe off and lay it flat like this, right?
Anders: Oh, yeah.
Raphael: Push down.
Anders: When I do it myself, I have it like this, and I think of someone I’m annoyed by, and then I go nuts. So, pressure—you don’t have to be shy. You don’t have to go all Schwarzenegger on it, but proper pressure is good. A cheap way—it’s not as good—is you can take a spoon and heat it up.
But it doesn’t work as well as this because this creates friction and heat while compressing. When you get that super neat shine, you want to polish it off, obviously. But this is just the pre-state to get a smooth, perfect surface. If you want to do it properly, do okay on the upper, but make sure to do something on the sole edge.
Raphael: Interesting. Yeah, because you said oftentimes that’s the part that’s more neglected.
Anders: Always neglected. For me, I’ve gone to focusing more on the sole than the upper. You can do conditioning on the upper quite fast, and then you’re done. It all depends on time, obviously. So now, we’ve squared off the sole edge, and we’ve squared off here on the heel. So it’s smoother.
Raphael: Yeah.
Anders: Just neat.
Raphael: What about the waist area, which is typically a little more round? You don’t touch that?
Anders: You can if you need. This is untouched at the moment. So, you don’t need to—but you can.
Raphael: If it’s in that shape?
Anders: Yeah. So, if you walk a lot in water, the leather will start to become almost like suede because it’s still the inside of the leather—this part. So, it’s going to split up, and you need to compress the fibers into that solid structure. These have a more curved shape, so you might have to work a bit on the angle as you move it. But the most common part is the toe. Also, if you want, you can add cream underneath the forefront of the shoe.
Like I said, this helps retain the view when you look at it from the side. When you apply a cream, you have to wait a bit longer. It has to—the solvents and the water need to evaporate. It takes a bit more time. But for this case, we can just brush it off first with a horsehair brush. A horsehair brush would use horse tail hair. It’s good because it’s solid enough to remove excess, which is usually what you’re going to have with a lot of creams.
But it’s also going to buff up to a fairly good extent. The buffing with polishing brushes—that’s what we’re going to use next. It adds a bit of shine, obviously. But for a high shine, we want to use the polishing brushes. And you can actually move down to the sole edge here as well, just to brush off the excess product. Now remember, if you’re lazy and you want to do as little as possible—which some people do—you can at this stage actually be finished. Because if I take a water droplet, it will run right off because we did use a proper shoe cream.
There are some shoe creams that don’t really provide any waterproofing, which is really sad because it’s a—it’s a bit of a complicated product. Because you actually want to mix water—some water with some of the waxes who need emulsification in the way. So, now we’ve applied cream on the upper and the sole edge.
Pigmentation-wise, we’re all done. What we want to do now is add extra waterproofing and shine. And to do this, we want to use a polish, which is ideal. It doesn’t provide a lot of nourishment. It does provide a bit of beeswax.
Raphael: Wax and solvents.
Anders: Wax and solvents, exactly.
Raphael: What wax do you use? Is it like a blend of waxes?
Anders: It’s always a blend because you have—you could use pure beeswax, but it doesn’t. That beeswax is very sticky, and it does provide kind of a dull shine. However, it’s extremely important in the formulation because it creates a wax blend that is stable. You also need to create a wax gel so that you can use some Ozokerite or other mineral waxes. For example, you could also use vegetable options as well.
Raphael: Carnauba is—
Anders: Carnauba is a very hard wax, which is aimed for creating a high shine. And this is the same with Montan waxes. The problem with, for example, Montan waxes—this is what you’re going to see in the spit shine—is that when you have too much of the—for example, Montan wax, it has a tendency to shrink.
When you apply the wax on the shoe, it takes a bit of time and it shrinks. And what happens to something that’s hard and brittle and shrinks? It cracks. So, we try to avoid that in our spit shine. So first, when we apply a polish, we apply a thin layer.
Raphael: By fingers? So, you just, like, rotate around twice and then kind of, with a little bit of pressure—maybe show people how much you’re actually having on the finger when you’re done.
Anders: You can use—apply it either on a finger—a thin layer. Remember, always thin layers when it comes to applying wax. And Sublime Wax is so suitable to be used on the whole shoe. You don’t have to worry about the creases. Obviously, you could spit shine with it, but what we’re going to use for spit shining is a specific product that’s aimed for speed and shine.
Raphael: You know, sometimes when you work with, you know, colognes—
Anders: Yeah.
Raphael: You can rely on natural and artificial ingredients, right? With the natural ingredients, of course, they’re natural, but you have a much higher fluctuation. You know, maybe this year it rained a lot. Maybe this year it was really dry. And because of that, you know, the natural ingredients will smell different and be different. Do you look for more, you know, man-made waxes or natural waxes, or does it not matter so much?
Do you look for more, you know, man-made waxes or natural waxes, or does it not matter so much?
Anders: Most of the man-made waxes are fossil-based or coal-based. Montan waxes also crack, for example. Mineral waxes that people use—those are based on coal. They have some properties that are very good, but the problem is, for example, they do have—for example, like, Ozokerite—to have a tendency to shrink, which can cause a lot of issues when you apply it.
So, it’s all about finding a balance between some—you’re going to get the best properties of all the different wax components and get it into a stable—because that’s the problem. You need to get a stable wax gel that solidifies during production to a stable—and that isn’t grainy. I’ve seen a lot of poor waxes that are grainy, and this is typically because of a cooling process that isn’t properly made for those specific waxes. And we apply it here on the whole shoe. And, of course, don’t forget the heel, the toe.
Raphael: Yeah, when you do it yourself, it’s easy to just put your shoe in the back. When you’re sitting like this, you don’t see the back very easily. On your own, you just apply it.
Anders: You just move it around.
Raphael: Exactly—it’s super easy.
Anders: When you do shining like this, usually what you have to do is focus more on this area. And a professional shiner knows how to work both ways, but it’s more of a challenge to get behind the heel. So this is just—you can colorize—you don’t have to. You can use a neutral one. You can use a pigmented one.
Raphael: And so, you also apply this all over?
Anders: So since this is a slightly softer wax, it’s really designed to be used fast. So if you have too hard wax, it’s going to be hard to apply, and it’s going to be tricky to work with. And you are going to have issues with the vamp, for example, where we have creases. So this is—you could, like I said, spit shine with it. No problem. But if you want to spit shine really well, really fast, you want to use products that are aimed for this.
And there are other brands that use harder ends of the waxes in their portfolio, just to get a balance. But for this case— I have customers that do prefer to spit shine with the Sublime Wax. It’s all about preference. There’s no—there’s actually no one way that is correct. There are only good and bad results. That’s my theory in life when it comes to shoe shining because there’s a long vastitude of different solutions to good results.
Raphael: Well, and maybe sometimes someone wants a spit-shine tip, and maybe sometimes someone doesn’t. That’s okay.
Anders: Exactly. So now I’ve—I have applied the wax. And as I said, an ideal shoe shining just allows time to dry because this will allow the wax to settle, which means that my next phase—
Raphael: How long would you say?
Anders: If you apply wax, a minimum of 10 minutes—that’s ideal. You don’t have to, but ideally, at least 10 minutes.
Raphael: But you can also leave it for a day, or is that too long?
Anders: Definitely. No, you could leave it for a day. It’s just a matter of what your—what you have.
Raphael: One thing that I used to do at this stage is, rather than waiting, I would put my shoes in the freezer.
Anders: Funny you say that. I play with temperature. We’re going to come to that because that’s a very interesting part. When it comes to spit shining, temperature is one of the most important parts of getting speed into your routine. Most people think you just use tap water. No—no. Cold water and warm water will give you vastly different results.
Both are good, but good at different things. Cold water will speed up solidification, and you will be able to build layers fast. However, building layers fast and getting a really neat and clean shine are two different things. So that’s why we want warm water at the end and cold water at the beginning.
So you can use ice water for shining when building layers. And then, what you would do is just add, for example, warm water. And warm water with, for example, some isopropanol or some alcohol, just to speed up solidification even further. Because there’s a chemistry to what actually happens when you start spit shining. There are more complicated things under the hood.
But now, when you just apply wax and brush it off, it’s not as complicated. You will speed up solidification, but the shine will not be as clean, which is obviously what I—
Raphael: See, so it’s like, are you going for speed, or are you going for perfection, so to speak?
Anders: So you start with speed and end with perfection. That’s where you get a perfect speed. So now I’ve applied wax to the heel. I have applied wax to the sole edge as well. And by this stage—and also, this is a good trick—by applying first on the upper, and then I do the sole edge; this gives a bit of time for the wax on the upper to settle, so I can focus on really getting a nice shine here without leaving it on the side.
So, even with wax, we can use the sole edge to get that neat, really nice, smooth surface. It’s not shiny yet. It’s okay. It’s not gonna be. This will just force the surface to be very smooth.
Raphael: Seal.
Anders: Exactly. So, when we spit shine it, it goes to super gloss, which is what I like. Right. So now we’ve applied wax to the upper and the sole edge. What we want to do now is just get an okay shine. And what we’re going to use now is the yak hair brush. There are two different types of polishing brushes: they’re goat and they’re yak, which I would say are the most common ones.
Anders: The thing about yak—
Raphael: What is a yak?
Anders: Yak is a Mongolian yak. It’s a sort of cow-ish animal that’s native to Mongolia and has very big fur, so it’s suitable for high up in the mountains. And the hair on the belly of the beast is super, super thin and super soft. Now—
Raphael: That’s what keeps it insulated. It’s like with beaver, for example—the fine underhair, right?
Anders: Yes. And it’s the same with goat hair. If you want to use the best goat hair, you want to use the belly hair.
Raphael: Have you ever tried beaver?
Anders: I have not tried beaver. That’s a new one. That’s going to my next— I think people are going to be a bit— I think it’s going to be a bit sketchy. I don’t know. Fun thing, I’ll look into it. But yak and goat—so, goat is thicker. It’s super soft, but it’s slightly thicker, which means you get rigidity and can brush it off. But it’s not going to be dense enough to get that compression of the waxes into a solid, perfect shine. So that’s why we want the middle to be yak and the edge to be goat for a perfect polishing brush.
Raphael: Otherwise, if the entire brush is goat, it’s a problem.
Anders: Yeah. You can actually use a 100% goat hair brush, but it’s perfect for, let’s say, you come home and just want to brush off your shoe for a good shine.
Raphael: And you can see here, this is a proper brush. It’s like two stages. So, if you take this thing off here, you’ll see that the hair goes from here and down here. So, it’s really in there. It’s not just glued in there but tied down and held in place. You can also see the angle of the brush. It goes down here and then angles more out, and then you’ll see the same on this one here— which is the hallmark of a good quality brush.
Anders: Now, we played around with it—not only to make it in walnut, which was fun—but also by adding magnets and other features like that.
Raphael: Yeah, you were selling it in a box, right? And so the box has magnets, so it just stays in place. Yeah, kind of a little design detail.
Anders: Yeah, exactly. So, the yak hair brush is perfect for adding a high shine. And here we have a new yak hair brush, and we just brush off. By just using the brush, we can get quite a neat shine. You can use it on the sole edge. You can use it on the whole upper. I would recommend focusing a lot on the creases here because this is where you want the thinnest layer possible.
Raphael: Like the vamp here? Yeah. Because if it’s too thick, as you’re rolling or walking with your foot, you’ll get creases there.
Anders: Exactly.
Raphael: And with a lot of wax buildup, you’ll see that it’ll crack.
Anders: So, first off, remember that just doing this—
Raphael: How much pressure are you applying?
Anders: The pressure doesn’t come from downward—it’s from this, or—
Raphael: Hitting it on the side.
Anders: So the tech—
Raphael: Ah, got it. Okay.
Anders: That’s why we want this angle. So, we want to hit it and then compress. Because when it’s up here, there’s no pressure, and here is compression. So what happens is it forces the wax to lay in a perfect, solid, thin layer with a high shine. This is why yak is far superior to any hair I’ve seen so far. Even though it’s soft, it’s not only a matter of softness—it’s a matter of density and how compact the whole brush bristle is in the end.
Raphael: Yeah, so you want a really tightly packed set of hairs, not something that’s very loose.
Anders: So obviously, what you have now—and this is sort of—even though we had a pleasant conversation and put a lot of time into the shoes, you can do this in 5 to 10 minutes with just a polish to get really nice results.
You don’t have to put a lot of energy into shoe shining. I know it’s a hassle for most people, but it doesn’t have to take a lot of time. Shoe shining is actually one of the easiest and least time-consuming routines if you want it to be that way.
So now they’re clean. Now they’re slightly shiny. What we’re going to do now is start to polish with the wax polish. You can use the Sublime Wax. You can use a hard or soft wax. It doesn’t really matter, but if you use a harder one, it will be faster to build layers, and you can get more shine. That’s why we want to use the spit shine.
Raphael: Because the goal is to have multiple layers. The more layers you have, the deeper the shine will appear, and then you can do a spit polish. Is that right?
Anders: Spit shine, which is an old word for adding wax layers to create a really high shine. Not only do you need to build—the problem with waxes is that if you have wax and put a wax polish on top of it, it’s just going to start to dissolve the wax underneath. That’s why we want to build, first off, thin layers on top of each other. This way, these will solidify faster. If you apply a thick layer—
Raphael: The solvent can’t escape.
Anders: Exactly.
Raphael: Where is it gonna go? I mean, it doesn’t go anywhere in the tin can, so it obviously— And that’s why you want the solvent to evaporate quickly.
Anders: Yes.
Raphael: So you don’t have to wait too much between the layers. I get it.
Anders: Not only for speed, but as it evaporates—when anything evaporates, it’s going to need energy. And it’s going to draw energy from the wax, decrease the temperature slightly, and make the wax solidify faster by evaporating faster. This is why we want to have specific kinds of solvents, like turpentine, that work fast and dissolve the wax efficiently.
And for those new to spit shining, never apply a wax, spit shine, or anything hard wax on the creases. I know you know this, but for some that don’t—if you apply a hard wax on the creases, you’re going to run into issues like cracking.
Raphael: And it can also, like I found, dry out that area, and then the leather is more likely to be compromised.
Anders: It’s really interesting. When you apply the wax, if you have a thin layer, we start off with a thin layer. You can easily apply multiple new layers without it penetrating into the leather. So, it’s sort of a safety barrier when you work with waxes. This is why I always recommend starting with a thin layer. And we just add like this. You can use a cloth—it’s not a problem to use a cloth to apply. I would recommend using fingers because it’s faster.
Raphael: How hard are you pushing?
Anders: I’d say quite hard when I apply the initial stages because it’s hard. I mean, the harder you push, the more—more it softens. Now, you can’t apply hard. Because as soon as the solvents evaporate, what’s going to happen is it’s going to be, first of all, dull, and second of all, the friction is going to be super high. So, if you apply pressure here, you’re going to tear it off. As soon as you feel any friction, you either apply water or a new wax. Oops, sorry.
Raphael: Yeah, I definitely felt that resistance there.
Anders: Yeah.
Raphael: So as soon as you feel it’s sticky and grippy, that’s when you need to add more wax, so to speak.
Anders: Yes.
Raphael: Because you want it to be—then the solvent has already worked, and you don’t want to take off what you already put on.
Anders: Exactly. What you can do, mistake-wise, is that you apply wax, and you’re too slow. Even if you build up a spit shine, if you’re too slow to add water or additional wax, you could tear it all off. It’s going to look really terrible. Obviously, you can redo it, but it’s a matter of, like I said, speed. So, you’d like to avoid that typical mistake. And so, now we’ve applied wax here on the sole edge as well because we want to polish that up as well. This is going to look even better by using the polishing.
Then, by polishing with wax, it’s going to look much better than using a dye—if you do it properly. You could also add it to the heel. It’s a bit tricky to spit shine from here. Real shoeshiner pros know how to do it well.
Raphael: Yeah. I mean, basically, when you have a shoe, the hard wax works well in areas that are hard on your shoe. So, if you have a shoe that has no heel cap and no toe cap, it’s going to be a little harder. Now, with bespoke shoes or custom shoes, oftentimes there’s a lot of reinforcement throughout the entire shoe. Like if you touch here or here, there’s reinforcements in there. So, you could even apply it there if you wanted to because it’s quite hard.
Anders: Definitely, it’s hard, but there’s still—so there’s also a gradient to it. So, for the toe, I would spit shine, high shine here, and then gradiently decrease it as you come to the vamp.
Raphael: So, you don’t have that all-or-nothing.
Anders: Exactly. Because, again, it’s all about balance. You want a high shine, but you can’t shine everything, so you need to balance it.
Raphael: Yeah. So, you have the most extreme shine here, and then it tapers off. It’s like a fade when you get a haircut, right?
Anders: Exactly.
Raphael: You could have a Peaky Blinders haircut where it’s, like, same-nothing, and then long hair—or you can fade it.
Anders: A good tool for this is actually to use the yak hair brush. So, when you’re finished, I’m going to show you that, even if we spit shine the toe, we’re going to use the yak hair brush here, and just slightly over the edge, so you still get that perfect gradient of high shine to a—still a shine, but less so.
It’s a bit detail-y. As you’ve seen, I so far haven’t used any water, which is intentional. So, initially, we would like to avoid using too much water because we want to avoid water stains. Water—if you get water into the fiber structure, you will never be able to spit-shine it. There’s no way. It needs to be dry.
A typical issue you could run into with a pair of shoes that you run around with in the rain is that you can get a wet spot, which is a spot where you can’t spit shine, typically. So now we’ve applied the wax, and what I would do if I had the time is just put them here, wait till the next day or two, and then apply additional layers.
Raphael: Or, could I put it in the freezer at this stage?
Anders: I’ve tried this, and it actually works, yes. But, I mean, you’re going to have to sleep on the sofa because your wife is going to literally kill you.
Raphael: Maybe you just get a separate freezer for your shoes.
Anders: “Oh, honey, I’m going to go buy a freezer.” “Ah, we have one.” “No, it’s for my shoes.” Now, it’s going to be important that we don’t over-apply. We put on the cloth and then rub it slightly so we don’t have too much. Then I’m going to start to polish. Since this is a hatch grain or a specific grain type, you’ve got to be a bit careful.
Raphael: Because you have valleys and you have peaks.
Anders: So that could cause a potential problem. I—
Raphael: Because the peaks would basically—you rub it off there, and then in the valley there’s too much wax, right?
Anders: There’s the indifference between the different parts of the leather. And you can also see me jumping from toe to toe. This is also intentional because time, when it comes to spit shining, it’s all about time. I’m allowing the wax to settle in between the jumps. So, that means that it’s going to be faster in the end. Obviously, I have to do both shoes, so the pair is going to take faster, but the single shoe is going to take slightly longer.
The best spit shine is made two to three days after you actually start spit shining. You’ve got to give it some time. So now I feel okay. I would like to add a bit of cold water. Then I just dab a bit of wax, and as soon as I feel a bit of friction, I just add a drip of water and continue to polish.
Raphael: Yeah, really just one little drip.
Anders: You can always just apply a bit of breath.
Raphael: Yes.
Anders: It’s always good. And breath is hot. Breath is hot. Hot, we mean, for finishing off. At this stage—
Raphael: I always did that. Yeah, the breath was always—even, right? And it’s not too much, you know that for sure.
Anders: Never too much. So, typically, the issue you’re going to run into is that you have to be a bit more careful when spit-shining a grainy structure. So, I would say apply slightly less pressure because it’s valid in its ups and downs. So, you’ve got to be slightly more careful and also definitely be more careful with water. You want to apply as little as possible to avoid any issues that you can run into.
And you’re starting to get a release when the wax starts to get a shine. It usually comes quite fast—when it goes from dull to shiny. Now, we’re only using water and wax. So, now you can see that we’re starting to get that shine. This is because the spit shine that we made is specifically fast for spit shining without using high contents of Montan waxes, for example, which makes it brittle and, I would say, slightly tricky to work with.
Raphael: You can already see, you know, the peaks of the leather are shinier than the valleys, but it’s also a cool contrast.
Anders: Yeah, but if you look at the toe where you stretch—because when you last them, the toe kind of removes, you know, the valleys.
Raphael: Because it’s a really steep angle—it’s like more than 90 degrees. And so, there’s a lot of pressure when you pull those uppers over the leather. And, for example, you can also see—if you look at these diamonds, for example, right? On the uppers, they all have the same shape. But as you stretch them, you can see they get different in shape depending on how the last is pulled. They become, like, you know—they just get stretched.
Anders: Well, that’s the thing about leather. That’s the beauty of leather. It’s a living material. It’s still—
Raphael: And it adapts to its shape, right? Because when you get it from the tannery, it’s two-dimensional, and then you make it remember the shape of the last. Either through wet lasting—you can do dry lasting—but it’s a pretty cool material, if you think about it.
Anders: Proper quality leather is beautiful. That’s why I do love leather shoes.
Raphael: But with fabric, you need multiple layers and sew it together to get that same effect.
Anders: So, what we can do now is jump to the other shoe, which is all dull because we haven’t really polished it. A thin layer just to—what’s important now is this has allowed to dry for a longer time.
Now, we just apply wax to start dissolving a bit so it’s smooth. And then we start to use the water. So far, we’ve only used cold water. This isn’t ideal for a high shine. It’s perfect for building layers. So far, our goal is only to build layers.
The super neat finish—that’s where we want to use the hot. A common mistake is to use the same water bottle or water glass for the whole procedure. Try to use different temperatures and see the beautiful effect of it.
Raphael: So, if I use hot water—
Anders: It’s not going to be cooking hot. I mean, it’s not going to be boiling hot.
Raphael: I mean, you have to be able to touch it, right? But warm to the touch.
Anders: Definitely warm to the touch. I try to use something like 40 to 50 degrees. 50 is quite hot, but as soon as you take a drop and move it, you’ve lost a lot of temperature.
Raphael: So, 40 degrees to 50 is Celsius.
Anders: Oh, yeah.
Raphael: That is 104 to 122 Fahrenheit.
Anders: So, also try to get close to the sole edge as well. The whole area there—since this is quality leather—you can get a really nice shine quite fast, which is awesome.
Raphael: Oh, really? So, when you say quality, do you mean, you know, aniline-dyed? No pigmentation?
Anders: No, when it comes to leather and shining, the leather quality makes a big difference. It’s about grain size, it’s about structure, and how well the leather absorbs the waxes.
Raphael: I see. So yeah, pigmentation would not absorb the waxes and therefore not be as good. Or, I mean, you could have a little bit of pigmentation, maybe. Or, like… yeah.
Anders: It’s about the type of leather and how it’s tanned. That’s a whole different story. Tanning is a very complicated procedure, obviously, since you’re creating—
Raphael: So now you’re adding the water in the sole edge, too.
Anders: Exactly. This is because we want to avoid using dyes and still get a really high shine on the sole edge. Even though, like I said, it’s not super necessary. This is more of the fun perks that I do like to do. And now we can’t use the sole edge anymore—that’s going to remove the shine. But by using it in the beginning, we get a really smooth surface, and then the polishing is really fast and gets a high shine.
Raphael: Yeah, and the fabric you use here—it’s cotton, right? You want 100% cotton.
Anders: I want to use 100% cotton.
Raphael: And you don’t want a fabric, like a shirt fabric, because that is only flexible in one dimension. You want something that is like a knit.
Anders: When it comes to polishing cloths, people have different views on it. I can’t say that there’s one truth to it, but I do recommend using a slightly flexible textile because one of the most important parts when you spit shine is no creases on the fingers. If you have small creases like this, you’re going to ruin the spit shine. So, it needs to be neat. And thus, a slight bit of stretch is important.
Raphael: So, you have full control of the pressure over your fingers. If you have creases, you have pressure differences, and that’s why—
Anders: Yes. So, that’s one aspect of it. The other aspect is, obviously, the breathability—that’s also one of the most important parts about the cloth. Because, like I said, the solvents need to evaporate, the wax needs to penetrate into the leather, and also be able to be stable in the fabric fiber structure of the cloth.
So, you kind of need to find the balance there to get the right quality. Some people do prefer shirt fabrics—I know that. Personally, I don’t. Some people do. So, you need to find your way—what works for you, in a way. So now I’m using the polishing brush—the yak hair brush—slightly. I’m a bit more careful now because if I do too much on the toe, I’m going to sort of ruin it. But then you just apply like so, just to clean it up a bit, especially since you have that specific structure.
So, you’re going to reach into the fiber structure. Then we’re going to apply additional layers, but then we’re going to start using hot water. You don’t need much—I mean, super, super little—but now we’re going to use the spit shining technique. Same technique, but using warm water.
There’s one more complicated way to do it, and that’s by adding isopropanol alcohol. It’s slightly more complicated, but let’s just do the warm water. And then we use much less wax. At this stage, very little. You start by adding a bit—like a breath—and then super thin.
Raphael: So, you’re reducing the amount of wax.
Anders: Yes. It’s just one dab, really. At this stage, we actually don’t want to build layers. What we only want to do is get it super clean. So, we use very little wax. The problem with little wax is you need to be quite quick with water because the solidification comes quite fast.
And again, now I’m—the most dangerous part at this stage is friction. So, I’m very, very careful. I apply much less force with my finger. Like so—
Raphael: You just touch gently.
Anders: Yes. And by using the warm water, we can get a much, much neater shine. The shine is sharper.
Raphael: Do you have to adjust your polishing technique for grain leathers or things like alligator?
Anders: Yes. So, when it comes to grain leathers, like I said, you need to apply slightly less pressure. I would say what you could end up with is—if you add too much water, it goes into the valleys and gets into the leather. And then you have the water spots, and then it’s ruined. You kind of have to redo everything.
When it comes to alligator, it’s slightly different because the leather isn’t as breathable as, for example, a box calf. Which means you have to wait slightly longer, I would say, for the solvent to evaporate. It’s the same with the creams. You kind of let it penetrate into the leather—it takes a bit more time.
Raphael: Yeah. Ostrich is probably also hard.
Anders: Yeah. But a lot of the reptile and exotics are a bit tricky. Not impossible in any way. You just need to adjust the technique slightly.
Raphael: What about fish leather?
Anders: I can honestly say I’ve never polished fish leather. I’ve polished a lot of different things—kangaroo, that’s fun. I’ve polished—but never fish.
Raphael: Yeah. I mean, there’s salmon. There’s—you can do, I think, you know, things like stingray.
Anders: Stingray, but that’s not really something you polish because it’s more skeleton than—
Raphael: Yes, it is. It is. But in fact, the skeleton is so hard that when you sew it, you can’t sew it in a straight line.
Anders: No, exactly. So, one trick could be balancing between left and right. Because when you start, you usually start on one side and jump to the next. One problem is that one shoe could be left to set and dry for a longer time, which means it’s going to be—
Raphael: Look different.
Anders: Slightly different because it’s going to have a much better shine on it. So, you kind of need to balance that off in the end and make sure that you try to use the same amount. It’s going to feel like you apply less on the later shoe or the later part because this goes much better. Since I started with this, it’s been allowed a bit of time to rest, which just gives it a much faster application and much better shine.
Raphael: Do you use a timer sometimes?
Anders: I never use a timer. I always use visual things like sight, smell. I use finger friction. Sense. I try to use all the senses—the ears. The ears are perfect for knowing, “Oh, I need water,” or, “Oh, I need wax,” because you can hear a shine.
Raphael: So, what do you hear?
Anders: Scratches.
Raphael: Scratches. So, as soon as you hear scratches, you add water.
Anders: So, when I polish now, you can’t hear anything of the movement. But if I’m too early with polishing and I haven’t built enough layers, you’re going to hear almost like a coarse structure. You can hear the coarse structure, which ripples and destroys the wax polish.
So now we’re just finishing it off to get a high, neat shine. What you can do now is just apply more if you want to, or leave it as it is. Don’t forget to fix the sole edge as well.
So you get that neat shine as well on the sole edge. It’s going to look new. It’s going to look like you used dyes, but you actually haven’t used dyes. So, it’s much more stable, longevity-wise. Fantastic.
Raphael: So, when, you know, sometimes you spit polish and you go out at a party, driving your car, and you step outside and see—oh, it’s a big ga. What do you do?
Anders: I’m sorry. If you get a scratch—
Raphael: You have a big gouge, you know. You can see it’s like you have all the shine, and then you have one area where—no wax. You just touched something.
Anders: That’s the beauty of a proper spit shine. It goes really fast. You just restore it.
Raphael: Do you have to take it off?
Anders: Nope.
Raphael: And you can just—
Anders: You can restore it. You just have to use slightly more solvents or isopropanol, I would say. Then apply continuously. So, when I’m done, I always take the yak hair brush again to make sure I have a gradient of shine—between the high shine to the lesser shine. And then we do like this around the whole shoe. It’s okay. So now it’s a whole new shoe.
Raphael: Voila! Excellent!
Anders: I could add one thing, though. If you remove a shoe, I can show you one thing that I generally do. So, this is a fiddleback. Fantastic craftsmanship. What you can do, just for the fun of it, is spit shine the waist. This creates a really nice feature that, obviously, no one is going to see it. But you’re going to know that it’s perfected.
Raphael: And you see, like, this is called a fiddleback waist. And I had Amara told her, “Can you make it so it looks like an old violin?” I think she did a good job, you know—like, you see violins that look like that.
Anders: Yes, it’s a fantastic piece of craftsmanship. And just to respect the craftsmanship of the fiddleback, I apply a bit of polish.
Raphael: Do you ever polish this part at all, or never?
Anders: No. You could do it, but the problem is that you’re going to need to get into it. So, I would use an application brush with wax and just get in there. This is definitely a part that you can’t see. This is definitely a part where you might just be a bit more… lazy, let’s say. But this is actually, I would recommend just adding a bit of wax here.
Raphael: All right.
Anders: Because it still extends the beautiful part of the craftsmanship.
Raphael: Show us how it’s done.
Anders: Okay, so we would just—one important part is applying thin layers of wax.
Raphael: Slightly lighter in color, or is this darker?
Anders: It’s slightly darker. It’s a dose of dark brown now. It’s because I want to add a bit of pigment. I want to add it just around here, just to get a definition. You have some water stains, and they can be managed with a cleaner. So, this part is mainly because I want to add a bit of extra pigmentation. Then we use—we can use a lighter color. We have a medium brown, so it’s slightly lighter.
At this stage, you can be lazy and just use the yak hair brush, and that would look something like this. You take the yak hair brush and polish, and then you get a really nice shine just by using it because this leather is so compact. So, it gets really nice.
Raphael: Yeah, it’s high-density. It’s sole leather, right?
Anders: Exactly.
Raphael: But look at that—it was really quick, and it’s like, yeah, the violin is very shiny typically because of the varnish. In this area—you could probably actually use a varnish.
Anders: You could. So, what I would do is, for example, I would add a bit of extra shine by just dabbing here.
Raphael: Do you ever—you know, I used to sometimes put in the final layers—no matter what the color was, I would use a clear wax. Neutral in the latest layers. Because I always liked—I felt like that “look into the shoe” was nice. Is that something you ever do?
Anders: The thing is, if you add a very thin, like—the layers I added in the end—it’s so thin, I mean, the pigmentation doesn’t really give any effect.
Raphael: Yeah.
Anders: So, it doesn’t really matter if you do it neutral or with pigmentation.
Raphael: And if you would just do neutral all along for the toe, for example?
Anders: I used a dark brown for this shoe. Usually, I want to add a bit of pigment because it adds a bit of depth to the shine. You could use a neutral, of course, or you could use black—it’s very common. So, what you see now goes really fast, and it’s super shiny. It’s literally like someone put a lacquer on there. This is the beauty of quality soles—you can actually make it look fantastic.
Raphael: It’s nicer than edge-painted or just painted in one color with a dye.
Anders: There we go. Super shiny. Let’s just—if you compare, this is just super-fast work. You can see.
Raphael: Very nice. Very visible.
Anders: Let me fix this one as well.
Raphael: I’ll leave them like this and see by the end of the day which one’s better. Thank you so much, Anders.
Anders: Thank you very much.
Raphael: It was awesome.
Anders: Yeah, hope you enjoy the shine.
Raphael: I will. I will. Look at that. Beautiful.
Have you ever experimented with shoe shine techniques at home? Tell us about your results or challenges in the comments below!