How to Grease Your Boots

In this how to, I walk you through how to grease your leather footwear. This method can be used to grease leather gloves, hats, workwear, etc. I do not recommend this to be done on exotic leathers and/or luxury products, this is intended for work wear.

You are going to need you leather boots or shoes, your choice of leather dressing (I recommend Bear grease or Mink oil), heat gun or hair dryer (Not needed but makes the job easier) Shoe/boot dryer (not needed but makes the job easier) Something to apply the grease and a brush to clean the foot wear beforehand.

Supplies

Brush

Leather dressing

Heat gun/hair dryer

Shoe/boot dryer

Something to apply the grease

Remove the laces from the footwear if it has them.

Take the brush, such as a small hand broom, clean all the dust and debris from the footwear. The cleaner the footwear the better the outcome.

Hold footwear in one hand and with the other hand take the heat gun or hair dryer and heat the footwear, this is so the grease soaks in easier. You do not need to do this step; you can apply grease to the leather without heating it up. Heating up the leather allows you to apply more grease in shorter amount of time.

Once the leather is heated up (should be almost hot to the touch), take the rag that has the grease on it and apply it to the footwear. You should see the grease “melt” into the leather if it has been heated up. If no heat source is available keep rubbing the greased rag over the footwear and the grease will soak in through the heat of friction. In both cases, keep applying grease until entire footwear is covered.

Place footwear by or on a heat source overnight. This allows the grease to settle into the leather. A shoe/boot dryer works great if you don’t have a wood stove or heat source to place them by.

Leather that is dry tends to crack and soak up water. This severely cuts down on the life of the boot, regularly greasing your boots will extend the lifetime of them.