How to Make Shoe Polish At Home

Here are two recipes to make shoe polish at home.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. RECIPE 1: What you need is
   30 g Soap Flakes
   150 g of Bee wax
   15 g Potassium carbonate
   15 g Gum Arabic powder
   45 g Icing sugar
   280 g of finely ground charcoal powder

2. Recipe 1:
   - Boil 600 ml of water
   - While the water is boiling cut flakes of the Bee wax in it.
   - Stir in the Soap flakes and potassium carbonate.
   - Boil until a smooth paste.
   - Turn off the heart but while the mixture is still hot mix in the gum Arabic and Icing sugar.
   - Add in finely ground charcoal powder for a black shoe polish. Nowadays an aniline dye is used to make black color shoe polishes.
   - If you wish to have a neutral color dye for the light color and white leather then do not add the charcoal to it.

3. RECIPE 2: You will require,
   100 ml Nigrosene, a black dye made from oxidized aniline available for domestic use in the 1940s.
   18 g Potassium bicarbonate
   150 g Bee wax
   100 ml Turpentine

4. Recipe 2:
   - Put water to boil
   - Put flakes of bee wax into this boiling water
   - Put the potassium bicarbonate into this mixture while stirring
   - Allow this mixture to foam up
   - Now dissolve the nigrosene in little cold water
   - Then pour it into this mixture, stir it in well till you see even color
   - bring the mixture to boil
   - Let it simmer gently for a few minutes
   - Keep stirring it until it creamy layer is formed on the top
   - Take the mixture off the fire and stir in the turpentine, we take off the mixture off the fire because turpentine is inflammable, please be careful.
   - Now pour the mixture into tins before it cools and close tightly for storage.

5. There are other recipes too, which use methylated spirits, petroleum jelly and other substances to make shoe polish, but these two seemed the most easily available ingredients hence shared here.