Boots Shine, Care & Maintenance

There are countless types of skins, designs, colours and qualities. Taking good care of your cowboy boots, you might keep them for at least 10-30 years

Your new Sendra – the Rolls Royce of Cowboy Boots - are made of genuine and premium leather. Leather is a very durable material if its premium quality and will keep its fit and shape for many years - and Sendra IS top quality. Your new Sendra’s are mostly constructed by hand, which tells that every single piece will be thoroughly controlled before using. To be a hundred percent sure to give you the very top quality, Sendra is even certified by the ISO 9000 standards. It’s not unusual to be using and keeping a pair of Sendra for at least 15 -20 years or longer – still shiny and good looking. A lot of Bikers are using Sendra Cowboy Boots, Biker Boots or other Sendra boots as well. This can be really rough for boots because they’ll be used for many days in a row even soaking wet. Sendra endures this – if they’re properly maintained. Using the money buying you a genuine pair of Sendra; we do recommend you to take very good care of them, having them for many years.

Ordinary maintenance

Most important is to clean your Sendra’s thoroughly and to avoid keeping them soaking wet over time. If you’re using your boots soaking wet for days, it might damage their fit, shape and looks, and they’ll look old sooner than predicted. Put your wet boots at a warm and dry place to dry out properly. A good advice is to put them onto some old newspapers for the soles to be dry too. It’s also very important to fill the boots with some paper or other material to absorb the humidity, to keep the right shape and avoiding getting wrinkled.

There are a lot of both bad and good quality products to be used. If you doubt how to take care of you Sendra’s, after using a lot of money for boots, please ask you Sendra dealer or your cobbler. Still we’ll give you some examples how to take care of your boots:

Leather oil

Leather oil is very good for boots, but if you’re having boots with a matt or dull leather (Nobuck), the leather oil will make the leather darker. This can take away the real looks of the boots. Boots in pale or light colours might even get wrong colours using leather oil. Leather oil is very good to be used at the soles, because it’s easy to put on and is being well absorbed.

Leather dressing

Please do not buy cheap leather dressing/grease/fat. It gives a very bad protection and only works for a very short time. If you can’t get Sendra’s leather dressing, please ask your boots dealer or your cobbler for quality products. Good products gives the best results and are even prolonging the lifetime of your boots. Especially boots with matt or dull surface (Nobuck) requires the right maintenance and care. Notice: There is even leather dressing with colour, but usually you wouldn’t need to use it. If you want to change the colours of your boots, please ask a professional cobbler and don’t use leather dressing with colour as it will only give patches of discolouration. This is a job for a professional.

Leather wax

Leather wax can give excellent results to some boots as well, if you’re using a good quality. But remember leather wax gives a greasier surface than leather dressing; dust and similar will stick to the leather. Please consult your shoe dealer or your cobbler before buying.

Leather Balm

Leather balm is very often a mixture of leather dressing and wax. There are a lot of different products on the market. If you use it on a Nobuck or suede model, you have to make sure the product is intended for Nobuck; otherwise you’ll risk your Nobuck or suede boots to be shiny instead.

Ordinary Shoe Polish

This is what you can spend on boots with smooth/shiny surface. Still be careful with boots with leather in several colors and shades. Also make sure you won’t get shoe polish into the pattern of a boot with leather Nobuck below. This will make Nobuck skin shiny and it's not intended.

Preparing before maintenance

Boots should first be thoroughly cleaned with mild soap water. It’s very important that the boots are dry before starting any treatment, please put them into a warm and dry place, preferably one day in advance.

The Sole

Many Sendra boots have soles made by leather. Many are afraid that leather soles don’t last as long as a rubber soles, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be the case. It depends on how you use and maintain your boots.

Leather soles has to be maintained properly. Unfortunately many are leapfrogging this task. The result is an ugly sole and a significantly shorter life span. Even boots having rubber soles needs to be maintained. The exception is the Engineer models, which have a compact rubber sole. Look at your boots and see if not the part between the front sole and the heel, and even the lower part of the side’s are made of leather? This leather is very vulnerable to moisture, salt and pollution - especially in the winter time.

When the sole is properly cleaned and completely dry, you rub it in with the leather dressing or the oil. Let the boots be standing in a warm place for a few hours and then repeat the process. The sole should be lubricated as often as you clean the upper leather. Also ensure that the leather under the boot and even the heel sides are greased. In between we might see the upper leather cracking from the sole. This is due to dehydration and lack of maintenance.

NB - Having weather conditions like in Norway, it’s often advisable to wear boots with leather soles for a short time, getting a good cobbler putting on a thin rubber sole. A lot of boots users do that to keep them looking good long as possible.

Upper Leather or the upper side of the boots

Rub the leather dressing thoroughly onto the clean and dry boots. It may be necessary to brush them even the next day to remove excess fat which hasn’t penetrated to get a nice result. If it’s a pair of very special boots, you can substitute using shoe impregnation spray instead. But do remember; such sprays contain silicone and can, over time, and when it dries out, make small invisible cracks in the impregnation. This will often be seen if one uses his boots in the winter time when the road is being salted. To avoid this, the impregnation has to be maintained often, or you must refrain from using boots with sensitive skin in places where it’s especially wet and salted. The latter boots are in a minority (typically women's models), but most Sendra’s can withstand almost anything, if they’re properly maintained.

An important final remark

If it’s not possible buying real Sendra leather dressing or any other Sendra products where you’re living, it’s very important checking with a competent person what’s best for your boots. Ask for advice at your cobbler, or where you’ve bought your boots. If you ask in a regular shoe store, you must be sure the person speaking, knows what he or she is talking about. The staff in a shoe store isn’t trained in leather works, and they don’t work physically with leather, but still there are many people who have an impressive acknowledge of leather and its treatment.