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How to Use Saphir Reno'Mat

Saphir Reno'Mat provides an in-depth cleaning of smooth leather to remove build-up of silicons, resins, and dirt that accumulate over use, thereby preparing leather to receive the full nourishment offered by Saphir's Medaille d'Or products. It can also be used to remove darker polishes that may have mistakenly been applied.

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Transcription

Hi I'm Kirby Allison, founder of The Hanger Project. The Saphir Reno'Mat is Saphir's strongest leather cleaner. The purpose of the Reno’Mat is to pull off any accumulated polish, resins, waxes, or silicones that have accumulated on top of the original leather. We recommend this for occasional use. It's really strong but it won't damage the leather. Now one of the special things about the Reno'Mat is that you can use it to also pull off any of the pigmented polish. So say for instance you polished a pair of shoes with a color of polish that you're not happy with, you can use the Reno'Mat to pull that off of the shoe and restore the original leather finish. It's safe to use on the highest-quality leathers. These are a pair of Bespoke George Cleverley shoes and it would be perfectly safe to use the Reno'Mat to pull this accumulated polish and wax off of these shoes without affecting the original finish. One of the other reasons that we recommend using the Saphir Reno'Mat is, for instance, if you're transitioning to an all Saphir shoe care routine, because the Saphir shoe polish uses such a high-quality, all-natural kind of pigments and waxes and other nutrients, any type of silicones or resins that have been placed on top of the leather can actually prevent the leather from absorbing those nutrients. We recommend using the Saphir Reno'Mat to clean and clear all of those accumulations from the leather prior to switching to an all Saphir shoe care routine.

First start off by basically just applying the Reno'Mat on a cotton chamois. I have one of our Saphir chamois here. I prefer using one of our plusher chamois just because it takes more of the Reno'Mat. And as with anything, we always recommend that you first test this on a hidden area of the shoe just to make sure that it doesn't react in any unintended ways. Now this Saphir Reno'Mat was designed to be used on the highest-quality leathers. So you really shouldn't experience any problem with high-quality expensive shoes. Really where we see problems are on lower quality shoes that might have used different types of dyeing techniques, sometimes the Reno’Mat can’t remove that. So, if you feel that it's actually affecting the original finish the shoes stop using the Reno'Mat. But after you've tested it and it's fine, basically what you're going to use is the cotton chamois to basically just pull the wax finish off of the shoe. You're going to use moderate to firm pressure and small circular motions and you're going to see that the Reno'Mat is actually pulling the wax, and even some of the pigment from prior polishes off of the leather.

It does require a little bit of elbow grease. Feel free to apply more Reno'Mat, and get to work. So the Reno'Mat really does require a little bit of elbow grease here especially in the areas of the shoe where you have a lot of buildup of hard waxes, particularly the toe box. I've been going at the toe box probably for three or five minutes, just switching to a clean part of the chamois, applying some more Reno'Mat, and then really trying to massage and rub that hard wax off. You can tell that you're done whenever you look at the shoe and you just don't see the build up of hard waxes anymore. I'm pretty satisfied with having pulled off all the waxes off of the shoe, I've got it where I want it to be.

So the last step that I like to do is, you know, just spray a little bit of water on the shoe and then rub it with a clean chamois. Now the purpose of this, as you can see, is removing any of the residual buildup of the Reno'Mat that's left in the leather. Just be careful. I like to pull as much of that off as possible. You can even run your shoes under some water, but the point is, after the leather has absorbed some of this Reno'Mat, is to try to get as much of that off the leather as possible. You can see now whenever I spray the shoe with water and I use this clean chamois I'm not getting any white suds, so basically that's telling me that pulled all of that off the shoe.