How To Get Wax Off Leather

Candle wax is a problematic stain to become on clothes and shoes, as information technology tends to stick to the surface and can be a real pain to remove completely. With the right methods you should be able to solve it though, at to the lowest degree on regular leather shoes. Here'due south a guide on how to rescue shoes from stearin.

The shoes showed in this article are a pair of bespoke Maftei seamless wholecuts, which I had a few years agone. During an evening outcome, I accidentally kicked a pitch torch, and both shoes had gotten quite a bit of candle wax on them (likewise the trousers had a lot of stains). When I got home later that evening, of course, it had solidified and was looking rather nasty.

Covered with candle wax on the insides and toes of both shoes, and the heel of the right shoe was also soaked.

For shoes and leather, it'south not easy to find information on how to remove candle wax, but there are enough of tips and information on how to remove it from apparel and textiles. Most of them bargain in different ways with either freezing the garment and breaking off the stearin, or heating it with an fe with, for example, a coffee filter in betwixt that absorbs the melting candle wax (the method I used with practiced results on the trousers). Equally most people will empathise, neither of these are recommended for leather shoes.

What you should use, however, is the same technique as the last mentioned with estrus to melt the candle wax, merely with a different tool: a hair dryer. You put it on medium heat (if y'all observe that information technology doesn't melt the wax, you tin can turn it upwardly) and oestrus a small area of the candle wax on the shoe until information technology softens, then wipe information technology off with newspaper towels. So you move on to the side by side role of the shoe, methodically working your style over the entire footwear until you've removed all of the stearin. As most people know, heat is not a very skilful matter for leather, but if you're careful, it'southward not a trouble, as y'all're heating for such a brusque fourth dimension and the heat is not that high. You will notice after a while how much heat is needed for the candle wax to melt, it can be good to be on the cautious side in the showtime as it's easy to simply heat a scrap more if it doesn't come off when you go over with the paper towel. As well remember to change the newspaper for each new surface you wipe clean, so you're not just rubbing around the stearin. The heat will likewise dissolve the shoe cream and smooth, so be prepared for a lot of that to go too.

Here I have heated a surface of the shoes (the heel cake was already stock-still), and in the movie you tin can almost see how the candle wax has softened.

Here I have wiped with paper towels straight after the hair dryer, and removed most of the candle wax on the heated surface.

Afterward I'm done with the pilus dryer and the paper, the shoes look like this. Not very visible in the picture, but at that place were some grease stains left from the stearin. It was removed past carefully going over information technology with pure heptane.

However, there will usually be some grease stains left from the candle wax, as it is basically fatty acid. Most candles today are fabricated from a mixture of stearin and paraffin, and one agent that dissolves both is pure heptane (tin exist bought in hardware stores or fifty-fifty larger grocery stores). Therefore, it's a good idea to wipe surfaces that have had candle wax on them gently with a cloth dampened with pure heptane. The shoe should then be completely make clean. Then information technology's important to care for and moisturise it properly (I ran steps 2-4 in my shoe care guide). The shoes were and then completely restored, non a trace of the candle wax was visible. Worth noting is that one of the reasons that these shoes survived this accident without whatever issues, is that they were properly cared for with shoe cream and wax polish. This did a lot to protect the leather from the harsh ingredients of the candle wax, probable less treated shoes would have permanent spots from the fat acid going into the grain of the leather, not possible to get rid off. So it's ever worth caring for your shoes in a good style, also as a preventive measure.

Should the same mishap occur with suede, I really don't know how ane best would go about it. I accept no experience with this, likely it can be difficult to become all the stearin out of the suede fibers after yous oestrus information technology. But possible that the aforementioned method works fine there too. Anyone who has personal experience with candle wax on suede please feel gratuitous to share.
Worth saying also is that if you feel unsure virtually doing a treatment equally above, information technology's improve to manus them in to a skillful cobbler and let them take it from in that location.

Afterward the shoes were polished up, they looked like this over again. Some of the colour from the toes and heels came off and made the divergence in shade a bit bigger, so I had to work a bit more with pigmented foam and polish before information technology was back to the original land.

Another view to go a ameliorate wait at the insides

Source: https://shoegazing.com/2022/05/22/guide-how-to-remove-candle-wax-from-leather-shoes/

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