A fun project

One of the difficulties today in terms of footwear is that for whatever reason, many manufacturers don't have the good quality leather which will take a dye without excessive surface treatments--more or less, the lack of leather quality is quite literally covered up with a heavy polyurethane treatment, resulting in a shoe that is far less breathable and flexible.  Comfort takes a hit.  Part of this, I'm convinced, is because we don't eat much veal anymore, and some of the best hides for shoes do come from young cattle.

So for fun, I took a sanding block (sandpaper over foam) to one such pair of shoes, and was able to remove not only the grime from mowing, but also a good portion of the polyurethane (though not so much that one could see the base leather.   Putting them on was a revelation--it was a lot more like the high quality shoes I've bought in the past.

So if you've got some leather shoes where appearance is not key--don't do this with patent leather dress shoes for obvious reasons--and you'd like to get a little more comfort out of them, you can give this a try.  I used about a 120 grit sandpaper for this purpose.