Patent leather shoes have a mirror like reflectivity, but no depth to the shine - much like Zaino on a car. Spit shined shoes have the same mirror like reflectivity, but in addition have an unmatched richness of depth - much like a synthetic topped with a carnauba on your car. Additional spit...

It's how guys in the military get that mirror like finish on their shoe... Man, that's some fun work right there

During my army days I wasa lways proud of the sucessful spitshing I accomplished on not only my low quaters and booots but also the bill on my dress uniform hat.
However, this spit shine always faded in less than a day when exposed to mid supper sun and heat in Fort Knox,KY.
So before I'd devote hours and hours doing this to a full car I'd definately do a duration test of one patch.
One last thougth on spit shining, a n old trick was to wite a feshly polished shoe with a five day deodorant pad. It achieven the very same results as hours with a cotton ball and Kiwi.
Prehaps the pink wax +5 day migh be a short cut. Who would dare to say it stank ?

I’ve posted my review of Pink Carnauba Wax here.

CHScholl - - - I served for 20 years, at times in some pretty hot climates, and never had a problem with the shine fading due to the heat.

Food for thought!

I think many carnauba manufacturers specify not to use h2o in conjunction in the wax application due to carnaubas allergy to water. Maybe i'm explaining it wrong. QD may be a different story.

Any add ons to this.

rd

I always did this with Zymol since that is what they tell you to do on the bottle. Always came out better after the water.

Hmm, this is very interesting... Now that I have another car to drive, I can do more weird stuff on the Aurora. I'll have to give something like this a try (though it's such a big car). Your review of Pink wax was interesting, especially the part about the mirror test, very inventive.

I don't know that I'll go buy another tin of wax just to try spit-shining my car, but I think I might give your technique a try with some #16.

Quote: My grandfather sold shoes for more years than the ages of everyone in this post combined!

~One man’s opinion / observations ~

Spilchy not quite so sure of the validity of your claim with this post though. LOL

Spit-shine shoes (as I remember, and its been a long, long time, we used to heat the shoe polish before applying it) newspaper and vinegar to clean glass and coke to clean chrome, feels like I’m a kid again….

~Hope this helps~

Experience unshared; is knowledge wasted…/ Jon
justadumbarchitect *so I question everything*

I might have to give this technique a try this weekend when I detail the MG with some Natty Wax.

You know when you read something and it immediately sparks a memory? Well Nick's spit shine story and shoes immediately made me think of my grandfather and his decades of shoe experience. I still have all his brushes, gadgets and leather shoe shine bag. I don't know, it just popped in to my head and flowed to the keyboard like that!

Sorry about the ramble, back to the thread at hand

I had an old marine tell me to "fire" my boots. More of less apply a coat of wax to the boots, then use a cigarette lighter to melt the wax on/into the leather, buff like crazy, then repeat until you got the look you wanted...worked great...I don't thnk I'll do that to my car though

~One man’s opinion / observations ~
Spilchy- my comment was only made because if you combine all the ages of the posts before my 0.02c and then add my age you’d reach high treble figures in a hurry…LOL

I talked with some of the USMC guys here at the base they still clean their boots with spit-shine and hot polish. My grandfather was in the Royal Irish Guards and taught me (RAF) how to clean and press my uniform; I think to this day he’s the one who got me started on this AR cleaning thing.

OK enough of this reminiscing… I have a mini (US version not the ‘real’ thing) to detail this week-end and I’m going to try this Wax on, wax on, wax on, wax off thing. Thanks for the insight Nick T

~Hope this helps~

Experience unshared; is knowledge wasted…/ Jon
justadumbarchitect *so I question everything*

You can also use lighter fluid instead of water with the wax, which gives a lot of shine. I wouldn't try that with a car either.