Bulling Leather Army Boots

[MBOGO]

I understand now, thanks guys. From cotton balls to a sheet form. I've never seen the sheet form, but used cotton balls at different times, for different things for shining boots.

[newfiebackflip]

I am in the Canadian Forces and I have been in for 10 years now.

The best way without totally screwing your boots up and getting in major crap by the Regimental Sergeant Major is a long boring and sometimes painful process of using spit, cold water, kiwi boot polish, kiwi cloth, elbow grease and a whole lot of free time.

There is no real way to cheat it, I have tried the majority of them and I have gone through a lot of boots. It will take hours and hours to even get a good base coat, but you keep to keep at it. The only good little cheat I can offer is when you store your boots, put each boot in pantyhose. This way its harder to scratch your mirror finish and the micro fibres actually kinda help the shine a bit.

This is the steps I use.

1) Put cold water in the lid of your Kiwi Polish

2) Wrap kiwi cloth around your trigger finger

3) Saturate your finger/cloth with water

4) Get a small bit of polish on the wet cloth

5) Small circular motions with the polish ( make sure when you start to feel some friction re-wet the cloth)

As the boot starts to to shine a bit don't be affraid to let a little spit drip from your mouth onto the surface. You don't need a lot!

Also as it starts to get a nice gloss go over it again with the wet cloth and more polish but this time you can make the circular motion bigger and bigger.

Your going to be going over the same spots over and over and over.

Hope this helps

[BillB]

One trick we used at the Academy to keep the shine on the toe from getting buckled when you walked and to allow you to walk normally was to take a razor blade and very carefully cut a line from one side of the toe to the other side just in front of the buckling. This cut has to be deep enough to create a "fracture line" or "expansion joint" but not deep enough to penetrate the leather and ruin the shoe/boot. In some version of boots this cut line was not needed since the toe leather was a separate piece of leather sewn on and this seam created the expansion zone.

BillB