As soon as the weather turns chilly, we take a close look at shoes and boots — not the sandals we’ve lived in all summer— to see what might need refurbishing by the shoemaker.  If its only a good polishing, we take the job on ourselves, using a technique that no shoemaker seems to know: how to remove the rough blims and tears that stick up on the scraped toes prevents a truly satisfying, long-lasting shine.  We figured it out by trial and error.

We sand down blims and tears using the Super Fine Contour Surface Sanding Sponges we find SO useful around our space, for dulling shiny metal, sanding off paint, shining silver…even taking an applique off a piece of china.

Sanding sponges are flexible sponges that have a very fine sanding surface. You can find them at Amazon or often at your local hardware or paint store.

We gently sand the blims on the toes of our boots and shoes. Then we apply polish with a soft old toothbrush (saved for just this kind of purpose) that allows us to rub polish deep into tiny cracks and damaged areas.

If a blim remains, we sand it with a little polish dabbed on the sponge, a hybrid technique that works well.

We let the polish “set” for 30 minutes or so, then shine, first with a big soft shoeshine brush, and then with a classic shammy. Although not perfect, the results are WAY better than we ever got from the shoemaker. You can see the results at top and below.