"There is more involved in the process of cleaning than at first meets the eye. Though it is a slight exaggeration to say, as has been said, that the process takes two months, none the less a pair of shoes may be polished for half-an-hour a day for quite long periods - a month of boning and polishing would not be exceptional. This has an added, and incidental, advantage: like wine, calfskin improves with keeping and, in fact, hunting boots may well be kept in the shop for six months or a year to mature.
It is the boning with a deer bone that takes the grease out of the leather - especially out of waxed calf which would not otherwise take the polish. Because of the time needed to clean and polish waxed calf this has lost much of the old popularity it enjoyed when a man had a lot of servants; now that he may perhaps have no more than one - and probably has to clean his own shoes in the bargain - boxcalf has largely taken its place. But this is by no means an unworthy makeshift: it may be so highly polished that to an uninstructed eye, gazing from a distance, boxcalf is hard to distinguish from patent leather."
It is the boning with a deer bone that takes the grease out of the leather - especially out of waxed calf which would not otherwise take the polish. Because of the time needed to clean and polish waxed calf this has lost much of the old popularity it enjoyed when a man had a lot of servants; now that he may perhaps have no more than one - and probably has to clean his own shoes in the bargain - boxcalf has largely taken its place. But this is by no means an unworthy makeshift: it may be so highly polished that to an uninstructed eye, gazing from a distance, boxcalf is hard to distinguish from patent leather."
- Makers of Distinction, by Thomas Girtin
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6 comments:
i'm not sure of the relation between the boot-polishing recruits and the boxcalf besides the fact that it's about polishing leather shoes?
That's not enough? :-)
Connection sufficient. Secret for best military shine: a flame. After application of the wax on the leather, light a candle and hold several inches from the leather. This dries the wax slightly, evens the application, and enables the "spit shine" to have a mirror image reflection that is otherwise not possible with wax and water alone. Of course, flame only on black shoes and boots.
+1 Bill. We also used to do the final spit part of the shine with ice water to close the pores of the leather.
Flames, ice water, cotton balls... myths, all of them. Kiwi + spit + old t-shirt + time = mirror shine.
i thought army boots are made of box calf... arent they?
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