Shoe polish: thoughts, fun facts, questions

[Tobus]

Regrettably, that area is notorious for 'rejecting' polish, due to ghd creasing. You could try adding an additional sole to the shoe to reduce the creasing (but may be cost prohibitive). Alternatively, try bees wax as a base. A little more flexible as a base, but again, not perfect.
I suffer the same problem with my mil issue brogues.

Keeping polish in the crease area is a problem on all shoes, sure, but those brown brogues seem to have an extra polish-rejecting quality. They don't just crease in one line. The vamp area is very thin, soft, and supple, so the whole thing flexes and just pushes the wax right off. There may also be something about the finish on the leather that's causing the polish not to adhere. I like the suggestion of stepping back to a softer beeswax there, or possibly a cream polish. I guess I just need to keep that area looking soft and satiny and clean, since it will never be able to take a hard glossy bulled shine.

Have done this whilst serving the general rule was one layer of brown to five of black, allegedly better because the brown contained more wax. These are thin layers applied before the buffing stage, although I have tried during the shining stage and it seemed successful. The advent of parade gloss shoe polish killed this practice off as it seemed to contain more wax.

Interesting! I'd like to try that. Will I need to take the existing black polish off first and start over, or can I do this over what's already on there?

On the subject of mixing wax colours in different layers, I'm seriously considering taking my brown Corcoran jump boots down to the original finish and starting over with a black cream polish first, then layers of brown over it. There's a YouTube video that shows how a black cream polish can really add some visual interest to brown boots. He's trying to make cheap boots look more expensive, and maybe he did, but to me it comes across more like an "antiqued" look, very similar to the leather antiquing products I've used before. In the video, he just did black polish over the brown boot and that was it. I'm wanting to do the black first, then layers of brown for a deep, dark character to the leather.

Back on the subject of challenges to achieving a nice mirror-like bulled finish, this is my other problem child: pebble-grain brogues. These are my Sanders uniform brogues that I cleaned up last night to wear to work today. I like the pebble-grain texture and don't want to smooth it down, but it does make it tough to get a glossy finish. Bulling takes forever, since it keeps pulling wax out of the texture (and stitching, and broguing). So I've gone to using a softer cream wax on most of the shoe, with bulling only done at the heel and toe.