Donald Gillies <gillies@cs.ubc.ca> wrote: Well, Kiwi sells two kinds of shoe-polish leather conditioner. One is a saddle soap and the other is neutral shoe polish without cleaning agents.
I bought some of the clear neutral shoe polish at Target ($2.29 for 28g) and tried it out on my brooks saddles. Compared to Proofide, the neutral polish leaves a dull (not shiny) lustre on the saddle but it seems to work just fine. Now that they've jacked up the price of Proofide, watered down that stuff, and they've shrank the tin size ($10 for 40g), it's at least 3x cheaper than Proofide and the leather seems just as happy with Kiwi neutral polish as it does with Proofide.
- Don Gillies San Diego, CA
An even cheaper option might be to just smear leftover bacon grease on the saddle - but there might be unwanted side effects in the "canine interest" department! ;-) Proofide (who sells it for ten bucks?) isn't shoe polish. It's a leather dressing containing: Tallow, Cod oil, Vegetable oil, Paraffin wax, Beeswax, and citronella oil. Greg Parker Ann Arbor, Michigan