Waxing the Hide

Here is the hide before and after waxing. The uppers were cut out of this piece.

To wax, Sno-Seal was smeared on with fingers. The hide was held up to the fire, and when heated absorbed the wax. The hide wasn’t heated too much – not too hot to touch. Then another layer of Sno-Seal was applied. The hide was usually still warm at this point, and drank up the wax. Then the hide heated again, etc.

I stopped waxing when the other side of the hide started to darken – when it looked like the wax was starting to sink through. But when the patterns were cut out of the hide later, it was clear that not much wax had soaked through.

When making previous pairs of mocs, I had applied Sno-Seal after the mocs were finished. It was a little hard to get the wax into the seams, which is why this time, I decided to try waxing the hide before stitching the mocs together.