[David Dunlop]

I have been experimenting with the red shoe cream I bought to get a better idea of its capabilities and limitations.

First thing I noticed was the VERY floral potpourri scent it gives off. Great for a pair of high end designer shoes, but not so much for a military wireless set approaching 80 years of age. Second important finding was it is a translucent colour, not solid. This means that the background colour it is applied to will show through to some degree and influence/bias the final colour you see. For example, if you rub some on a piece of white cotton, the colour shifts from its reddish orange original to a more pink tone. The closest sample to the current colour of my CONNECTORS, Twin No. 17 was an old piece of American issue 19-Set headgear harness – chocolate brown with the red/white/blue tracer. In tone, it is about one half brighter than the CONNECTORS, Twin No. 17 cotton loom in its current state. This brown has the effect of pushing the shoe cream colour back from the orange hue to a more basic light red. A big plus here is that any staining on the base material will show through, so these products of use and aging will not be lost when the overall colour of the cable is refurbished. The history of the cable will still be there.

After letting it dry for 20 minutes and then buffing with a shoe brush and some cotton waste, it shed a lot of red dust, but the overall colour on the piece of harness did not change too much. I then remembered I had a large tin of Kiwi Brand Neutral Shoe Polish on hand for doing my work boots. It is a denser, waxier polish than Dubbin. So I dug it out and rubbed an overcoat of it on the red shoe cream. That had two, immediate, positive effects. First, the potpourri disappeared and was replaced with a nice waxy petroleum distillates smell that stayed, and the colour tone of the red darkened to one that better matched what the original cable probably looked like early in its aging process. That latter point fits well with my goal for this set to look used but well maintained and gracefully aged.

Of lesser note after applying the Neutral Polish was reduction in further red colour rubbing off the test piece. I think I should be able to stop that completely by giving the cable a topcoat of a silicon based, spray-on footwear waterproofing.

After a chat last evening with Bruce Parker, I have now sorted out disassembly of the Bakelite socket assembly head on the CONNECTORS, Twin No. 17. I need to be able to remove one of the cables from this head to get full and easy access to both of them for this step in the project. Love that MLU knowledge!


David