Huberd's Shoe Grease - Best Ingredients and Best Price
I bought a couple of leather jackets from Fox Creek Leather. Then I purchased a pair of Wesco harness boots from Stompers in San Francisco. Both are tops in their category. And both are very expensive. With the price I paid, I don't want to buy those things again. So I am going to make sure they are preserved till I die. I started doing research on leather and leather care. If you think this should be simple, you would be wrong.
Vendors who sell leather are rarely consistent in what they recommend for leather care of their products and recommend everything you have ever heard of. Vendors who sell leather care products - like Amazon - are merely generalists and will sell ANYTHING to make a profit. Thus, they advertise every leather care product made, list them all together, and will sell them all to you on their web page. Its your choice guided by your own ignorance, research, or your favorite legend passed down to you.
In addition to this, there are lots of conflicting opinions about all those products that are used on leather. Most people seem to agree that leather conditioners and preservatives containing alcohol, waxes, silicone, tallow, animal fats, and petroleum should NOT be used. So that weeds out a lot of stuff that everybody uses and comes down from the lofty tower of ignorance. For example, a LOT of people will recommend mink oil because it softens leather. But many experts say mink oil is harmful and should be avoided because it is an animal oil and causes irreparable damage to leather fibers, plus a lot of other stuff. One web site I read was highly critical of mink oil for the following reasons:
• Mink oil clogs the pores of the leather, attracting dirt, darkening the color and rotting the stitching.
• Mink oil will absolutely rub off on your clothing. Do you really want a thick greasy substance on your new cashmere sweater? Buffing will not remove all of the oil from the purse, so don't be tempted.
• Mink oil stinks.
• Mink oil will penetrate the color of a tanned leather product and the color will come off - ONTO your clothing.
Other people out there have their favorite leather applications and give convincing testimonials for them, like Pecard's, Lexol, SnowSeal, Neatsfoot, and a host of others. But I am not going by testimonials. All products have testimonials and reviews from customers. As far as I am concerned, testimonials are based on short-term experience and a lot of misinformation and superstition passed down by other ill-informed people. I am going by ingredients based on research. However, even then, trying to find out what is in many of these products will remain a mystery. For example, try and find out just exactly what Lexol is. Yet, it is sworn upon as if it is the Bible.
So here are my conclusions. Because of the diversity of opinion and uncertainty about mink oil, I decided to look for something that had NO mink oil in it. But here is another interesting fact. The Fox Creek people from whom I bought my jackets recommend mink oil. They also sell another product called Montana Pitch-Blend. That also contains mink oil and pine pitch. So from what I have read, I am not sure that even the people who make quality leather products know for sure what they are talking about. Several of them recommend things that others say will rot leather. So one has to be very careful here.
In any case, there were two products whose names kept coming up over and over, and as far as I can determine, they are pretty similar with a couple of differences between them. AND, they contain no mink oil. One was Huberd's Shoe Grease and the other one was Obenauf's Leather Care Products. Both of them have the same ingredient as their main base - beeswax. Beeswax seems to be universally recommended as the best application for a leather conditioner and preservative. Beeswax is virtually non-controversial when it comes to leather care. But here is the mind-blower from the maker of some of the world's best boots that throws off almost everything and demonstrates just how complex this whole issue is as to which ingredient delivers the best protection for the leather I am trying to protect. WESCO, the boot-maker whose boots I now own, highly recommends BEE OIL (a bee base) AND - now get this! - mink oil! This is the maker of the boot, mind you. So whereas they affirm the bee base for leather protection, they contradict so many others by recommending the mink oil. Obenauf's denounces mink oil in their advertising as harmful. Obenauf's also contains no pine tar. They censure that also. But Huberd's does contain pine tar. I called the the Huberd people about this, and they simply disagree with the Obenauf people about the destructive nature of pine tar. I searched but was unable to find any information about the effects of pine tar on leather other than the fact that it is a natural preservative and used for water-proofing. However, Stompers - the store from which I bought my boots - specifically recommended Huberd's for oil-tanned leather like the boots I bought. Huberd's says oil-tanned leather is their specialty for their kind of shoe grease. What was really interesting is that the woman I spoke to at Fox Creek Leather had never heard of Obenauf's. In the end, I came to the conclusion that I was going to use either Obenauf's or Huberd's. I settled on a small can of Huberds that I was able to buy locally from a distributor. Since I could only find Obenauf's on the Internet, by the time it was shipped, it would be all the more expensive, which is why I went with Huberd's.
With a 7.5 oz can, I have treated two motorcycles jackets, a pair of 16" Wesco harness boots a couple of times, two sets of chaps, and another of my wife's leather coats. I still have a quarter of a can of the stuff left. I applied it with my fingers. As Obenauf's claims for its own product, Huberd's could be used for hand lotion and lip balm. When warm, it almost gets to the consistency of water. It is very easy to apply and smells pleasant also. When I bought it from the distributor and asked him if I could apply it to a leather jacket, he said, "Oh, no. I wouldn't do that. It will leave the leather real sticky." Here was another man who didn't know what he was talking about. When soaked into the naked leather out of which Fox Creek makes its jackets, there is no greasiness on the jacket. Or the boots, for that matter. It does not stick to anything, and it does not come off on your clothes. The leather absorbs Huberd's nicely and immediately.
However, when I put Huberd's on my chaps, that was a different story. That was when I discovered that I don't have as good a leather as I do with the coats and boots. Some leathers are treated with a spray coating that may not be apparent at first until something like Huberd's is applied. If the leather garment has been sprayed so that the pores of the leather are sealed, then the leather will not absorb the Huberd's readily and there will be a greasy residue left that will have to be wiped off. Other than that, I think Huberd's is probably as good as the Obenauf's product. But finding a review and comparison for these two side by side on the Internet was not possible. When I am finished with the Huberd's, I may try the Obenauf's. But at this point, Huberd's has protected my boots and jackets without any known destructive and controversial ingredients applied. The jackets are soft and water resistant, and water beads on the boots without soaking in.
The above information was written in November of 2010. The following was added in December of 2011 after I visited a boot store in the city in which I live to buy another can of Huberd's Shoe Grease. From a supplier in the western United States, I learned that this particular store in my city had Huberd's Shoe Grease in stock. Strangely, Huberd's is not easy to find in retail stores. When I went into the store, I also saw on the shelf a cache of Obenauf's products right beside the Huberd's. Now I had heard that this particular proprietor was an excellent cobbler in his own right and had been doing it for many years. So this provided me the opportunity to ask some questions from someone who probably had first hand information about shoe care and both Huberd's and Obenauf's as well.
First, I asked him which product, in his opinion, was best, Obenauf's or Huberds? He told me a lot of stuff that I already knew from my research above, but I learned a few things from him as an expert in leather care from his observation and experience. He also personally knew Marv Obenauf, the man who invented Obenauf's. For example, he said that both of the products were virtually equal. I had that part figured right. But he said that Obenauf's had been produced especially for firemen. Again, I knew that because that is clear in Obenauf's advertising. What made Obenauf's best for firemen, according to him, had something to do with the FOAM (caustic fire retardant chemicals) that firemen continually come into contact with and walk in. I don't know what is in Obenauf's that makes it so special in dealing with caustic fire retardant chemicals, but he said if I do NOT come into contact with foam that firemen face, then Huberd's is equal to Obenauf's. I accepted what he said for the time being, but even then that seemed mysterious to me because both products virtually have the same ingredients.
Then he mentioned something that I have often wondered about. Huberd's fails to mention a key element in their advertising which Obenauf's emphasizes over and over as if only their product contains this secret ingredient. Obenauf's stress this one point so much that it ALMOST made me buy it. I searched all the advertising of the other products, and NONE mentioned this one point that Obenauf's writes about so convincingly that it makes Obenauf's seem to stand apart from and above all the rest. That ingredient is BEE PROPOLIS. Let me give you an example of how Obenauf's does this from a paragraph on their web page:
"...natural oils are suspended in a Beeswax/Propolis formula. In the leather, these oils gradually seep out of the Beeswax/Propolis as a time release lubrication that restores fibers. If exposed to heat or constant flexing, the oils are released faster; so instead of getting parched, your leather gets oiled when and where it needs it most.
In addition propolis also provides a durable barrier against chemicals and resists bacteria, mold, and mildew. Propolis is an anti-bacterial resin collected by honeybees to waterproof and disinfect their hives. Propolis repels water better and longer than regular water repellants. It even reinforces the surface of your leather against scuffing while still allowing the leather to breathe!"
No other product emphasizes, mentions, or alludes to bee propolis that I recall. It gives the appearance that, indeed, Obenauf's contains the one military secret potion that makes it far superior to all others. But the cobbler told me that if a product has beeswax in it, then it has bee propolis in it. EXCEPT FOR ONE. SnoSeal. There is something in SnowSeal, he said, that cancels out bee propolis. So we are back to all things being equal between Huberd's Shoe Grease and Obenauf's with that tidbit of knowledge.
But I still had questions. I asked the cobbler if there had been any head to head comparison on a long term basis between the top leather conditioners, or was he just parroting what he had heard others say. He offered two replies. One, he said that there had been a study some time ago that compared several products against each other. He mentioned Obenauf's, Huberd's, Montana Pitch Blend (which contains beeswax AND mink oil), and some others I can't now recall. The results were that Huberd's and Obenauf's came out on top and were equal to each other. Two, he said that he has seen for years the results of what people put on their boots when they bring them in for repair. Whether he sees leather boots that are cracked and rotting or those that are still in wonderful shape, he asks his customers how they cared for and conditioned them. Based on that, he recommends Obenauf's or Huberd's. It makes no difference.
Then I asked him about mink oil. He said that he had a competitor in town who sells boots and also recommends mink oil for those boots. The cobbler also sells boots, but he recommends Huberd's or Obenauf's. Is their a difference? Yes, there is. It is called Profit. The competitor makes his money by selling shoes. The cobbler makes his money by repairing and resoling shoes. The implication was that if you use mink oil, the shoes won't last as long. You'll have to replace them by buying more shoes. If the cobbler can get people to use Huberd's or Obenauf's, he told me, then a good pair of shoes will last longer, and the owners won't want to replace them by buying another pair of expensive boots. The cobbler can make his money by resoling those shoes that do not need to be replaced. He said he does make a profit by selling Huberd's or Obenauf's, but the mark up is nothing compared to the price of his labor. So he doesn't sell mink oil.
Another useful factoid I learned from him is that Obenauf's is manufactured under other names, such as NIKWAX, which is primarily what REI recommends. REI's web page says NIKWAX is endorsed by Asolo, Burton, Merrell, Nike, Raichle, Salomon, Scarpa and other footwear-makers. Why isn't Huberd's recommended by REI? For that matter, if a beeswax base is so good and mink oil and other products are bad or not quite up to par with Obenauf's or Huberd's, why do vendors sell other inferior leather care products for their goods? The answer is because of kickbacks and special deals that come from the manufacturers or sales agents that urge people like REI and others to advertise and sell their shoe care product instead of others that will not give them as much profit. In other words, everything is about money. It always is and has always been. So be careful. Do your research. Ask questions like why is a product sold when it is regarded inferior and who is to benefit? Use only Obenauf's or Huberd's products or those like them.
Obenauf's is sold very aggressively in retail stores, I have discovered. I recently saw it in Boot Barn, for example. Look at Obenauf's web page, and you will get the idea. They are serious about sales and promotion. Look at Huberd's web page by comparison. It makes you wonder. For some reason, you have to work hard to get Huberd's. The cobbler said that at one time, Huberd's used to be found regularly in retail stores. But change of ownership has limited its distribution to more specialty stores. That was my experience.
One last thing the cobbler told me that I really like about Hubard's. This is important. Obenauf's/NIKWAX is sticky. Huberd's is not.
Vendors who sell leather are rarely consistent in what they recommend for leather care of their products and recommend everything you have ever heard of. Vendors who sell leather care products - like Amazon - are merely generalists and will sell ANYTHING to make a profit. Thus, they advertise every leather care product made, list them all together, and will sell them all to you on their web page. Its your choice guided by your own ignorance, research, or your favorite legend passed down to you.
In addition to this, there are lots of conflicting opinions about all those products that are used on leather. Most people seem to agree that leather conditioners and preservatives containing alcohol, waxes, silicone, tallow, animal fats, and petroleum should NOT be used. So that weeds out a lot of stuff that everybody uses and comes down from the lofty tower of ignorance. For example, a LOT of people will recommend mink oil because it softens leather. But many experts say mink oil is harmful and should be avoided because it is an animal oil and causes irreparable damage to leather fibers, plus a lot of other stuff. One web site I read was highly critical of mink oil for the following reasons:
• Mink oil clogs the pores of the leather, attracting dirt, darkening the color and rotting the stitching.
• Mink oil will absolutely rub off on your clothing. Do you really want a thick greasy substance on your new cashmere sweater? Buffing will not remove all of the oil from the purse, so don't be tempted.
• Mink oil stinks.
• Mink oil will penetrate the color of a tanned leather product and the color will come off - ONTO your clothing.
Other people out there have their favorite leather applications and give convincing testimonials for them, like Pecard's, Lexol, SnowSeal, Neatsfoot, and a host of others. But I am not going by testimonials. All products have testimonials and reviews from customers. As far as I am concerned, testimonials are based on short-term experience and a lot of misinformation and superstition passed down by other ill-informed people. I am going by ingredients based on research. However, even then, trying to find out what is in many of these products will remain a mystery. For example, try and find out just exactly what Lexol is. Yet, it is sworn upon as if it is the Bible.
So here are my conclusions. Because of the diversity of opinion and uncertainty about mink oil, I decided to look for something that had NO mink oil in it. But here is another interesting fact. The Fox Creek people from whom I bought my jackets recommend mink oil. They also sell another product called Montana Pitch-Blend. That also contains mink oil and pine pitch. So from what I have read, I am not sure that even the people who make quality leather products know for sure what they are talking about. Several of them recommend things that others say will rot leather. So one has to be very careful here.
In any case, there were two products whose names kept coming up over and over, and as far as I can determine, they are pretty similar with a couple of differences between them. AND, they contain no mink oil. One was Huberd's Shoe Grease and the other one was Obenauf's Leather Care Products. Both of them have the same ingredient as their main base - beeswax. Beeswax seems to be universally recommended as the best application for a leather conditioner and preservative. Beeswax is virtually non-controversial when it comes to leather care. But here is the mind-blower from the maker of some of the world's best boots that throws off almost everything and demonstrates just how complex this whole issue is as to which ingredient delivers the best protection for the leather I am trying to protect. WESCO, the boot-maker whose boots I now own, highly recommends BEE OIL (a bee base) AND - now get this! - mink oil! This is the maker of the boot, mind you. So whereas they affirm the bee base for leather protection, they contradict so many others by recommending the mink oil. Obenauf's denounces mink oil in their advertising as harmful. Obenauf's also contains no pine tar. They censure that also. But Huberd's does contain pine tar. I called the the Huberd people about this, and they simply disagree with the Obenauf people about the destructive nature of pine tar. I searched but was unable to find any information about the effects of pine tar on leather other than the fact that it is a natural preservative and used for water-proofing. However, Stompers - the store from which I bought my boots - specifically recommended Huberd's for oil-tanned leather like the boots I bought. Huberd's says oil-tanned leather is their specialty for their kind of shoe grease. What was really interesting is that the woman I spoke to at Fox Creek Leather had never heard of Obenauf's. In the end, I came to the conclusion that I was going to use either Obenauf's or Huberd's. I settled on a small can of Huberds that I was able to buy locally from a distributor. Since I could only find Obenauf's on the Internet, by the time it was shipped, it would be all the more expensive, which is why I went with Huberd's.
With a 7.5 oz can, I have treated two motorcycles jackets, a pair of 16" Wesco harness boots a couple of times, two sets of chaps, and another of my wife's leather coats. I still have a quarter of a can of the stuff left. I applied it with my fingers. As Obenauf's claims for its own product, Huberd's could be used for hand lotion and lip balm. When warm, it almost gets to the consistency of water. It is very easy to apply and smells pleasant also. When I bought it from the distributor and asked him if I could apply it to a leather jacket, he said, "Oh, no. I wouldn't do that. It will leave the leather real sticky." Here was another man who didn't know what he was talking about. When soaked into the naked leather out of which Fox Creek makes its jackets, there is no greasiness on the jacket. Or the boots, for that matter. It does not stick to anything, and it does not come off on your clothes. The leather absorbs Huberd's nicely and immediately.
However, when I put Huberd's on my chaps, that was a different story. That was when I discovered that I don't have as good a leather as I do with the coats and boots. Some leathers are treated with a spray coating that may not be apparent at first until something like Huberd's is applied. If the leather garment has been sprayed so that the pores of the leather are sealed, then the leather will not absorb the Huberd's readily and there will be a greasy residue left that will have to be wiped off. Other than that, I think Huberd's is probably as good as the Obenauf's product. But finding a review and comparison for these two side by side on the Internet was not possible. When I am finished with the Huberd's, I may try the Obenauf's. But at this point, Huberd's has protected my boots and jackets without any known destructive and controversial ingredients applied. The jackets are soft and water resistant, and water beads on the boots without soaking in.
The above information was written in November of 2010. The following was added in December of 2011 after I visited a boot store in the city in which I live to buy another can of Huberd's Shoe Grease. From a supplier in the western United States, I learned that this particular store in my city had Huberd's Shoe Grease in stock. Strangely, Huberd's is not easy to find in retail stores. When I went into the store, I also saw on the shelf a cache of Obenauf's products right beside the Huberd's. Now I had heard that this particular proprietor was an excellent cobbler in his own right and had been doing it for many years. So this provided me the opportunity to ask some questions from someone who probably had first hand information about shoe care and both Huberd's and Obenauf's as well.
First, I asked him which product, in his opinion, was best, Obenauf's or Huberds? He told me a lot of stuff that I already knew from my research above, but I learned a few things from him as an expert in leather care from his observation and experience. He also personally knew Marv Obenauf, the man who invented Obenauf's. For example, he said that both of the products were virtually equal. I had that part figured right. But he said that Obenauf's had been produced especially for firemen. Again, I knew that because that is clear in Obenauf's advertising. What made Obenauf's best for firemen, according to him, had something to do with the FOAM (caustic fire retardant chemicals) that firemen continually come into contact with and walk in. I don't know what is in Obenauf's that makes it so special in dealing with caustic fire retardant chemicals, but he said if I do NOT come into contact with foam that firemen face, then Huberd's is equal to Obenauf's. I accepted what he said for the time being, but even then that seemed mysterious to me because both products virtually have the same ingredients.
Then he mentioned something that I have often wondered about. Huberd's fails to mention a key element in their advertising which Obenauf's emphasizes over and over as if only their product contains this secret ingredient. Obenauf's stress this one point so much that it ALMOST made me buy it. I searched all the advertising of the other products, and NONE mentioned this one point that Obenauf's writes about so convincingly that it makes Obenauf's seem to stand apart from and above all the rest. That ingredient is BEE PROPOLIS. Let me give you an example of how Obenauf's does this from a paragraph on their web page:
"...natural oils are suspended in a Beeswax/Propolis formula. In the leather, these oils gradually seep out of the Beeswax/Propolis as a time release lubrication that restores fibers. If exposed to heat or constant flexing, the oils are released faster; so instead of getting parched, your leather gets oiled when and where it needs it most.
In addition propolis also provides a durable barrier against chemicals and resists bacteria, mold, and mildew. Propolis is an anti-bacterial resin collected by honeybees to waterproof and disinfect their hives. Propolis repels water better and longer than regular water repellants. It even reinforces the surface of your leather against scuffing while still allowing the leather to breathe!"
No other product emphasizes, mentions, or alludes to bee propolis that I recall. It gives the appearance that, indeed, Obenauf's contains the one military secret potion that makes it far superior to all others. But the cobbler told me that if a product has beeswax in it, then it has bee propolis in it. EXCEPT FOR ONE. SnoSeal. There is something in SnowSeal, he said, that cancels out bee propolis. So we are back to all things being equal between Huberd's Shoe Grease and Obenauf's with that tidbit of knowledge.
But I still had questions. I asked the cobbler if there had been any head to head comparison on a long term basis between the top leather conditioners, or was he just parroting what he had heard others say. He offered two replies. One, he said that there had been a study some time ago that compared several products against each other. He mentioned Obenauf's, Huberd's, Montana Pitch Blend (which contains beeswax AND mink oil), and some others I can't now recall. The results were that Huberd's and Obenauf's came out on top and were equal to each other. Two, he said that he has seen for years the results of what people put on their boots when they bring them in for repair. Whether he sees leather boots that are cracked and rotting or those that are still in wonderful shape, he asks his customers how they cared for and conditioned them. Based on that, he recommends Obenauf's or Huberd's. It makes no difference.
Then I asked him about mink oil. He said that he had a competitor in town who sells boots and also recommends mink oil for those boots. The cobbler also sells boots, but he recommends Huberd's or Obenauf's. Is their a difference? Yes, there is. It is called Profit. The competitor makes his money by selling shoes. The cobbler makes his money by repairing and resoling shoes. The implication was that if you use mink oil, the shoes won't last as long. You'll have to replace them by buying more shoes. If the cobbler can get people to use Huberd's or Obenauf's, he told me, then a good pair of shoes will last longer, and the owners won't want to replace them by buying another pair of expensive boots. The cobbler can make his money by resoling those shoes that do not need to be replaced. He said he does make a profit by selling Huberd's or Obenauf's, but the mark up is nothing compared to the price of his labor. So he doesn't sell mink oil.
Another useful factoid I learned from him is that Obenauf's is manufactured under other names, such as NIKWAX, which is primarily what REI recommends. REI's web page says NIKWAX is endorsed by Asolo, Burton, Merrell, Nike, Raichle, Salomon, Scarpa and other footwear-makers. Why isn't Huberd's recommended by REI? For that matter, if a beeswax base is so good and mink oil and other products are bad or not quite up to par with Obenauf's or Huberd's, why do vendors sell other inferior leather care products for their goods? The answer is because of kickbacks and special deals that come from the manufacturers or sales agents that urge people like REI and others to advertise and sell their shoe care product instead of others that will not give them as much profit. In other words, everything is about money. It always is and has always been. So be careful. Do your research. Ask questions like why is a product sold when it is regarded inferior and who is to benefit? Use only Obenauf's or Huberd's products or those like them.
Obenauf's is sold very aggressively in retail stores, I have discovered. I recently saw it in Boot Barn, for example. Look at Obenauf's web page, and you will get the idea. They are serious about sales and promotion. Look at Huberd's web page by comparison. It makes you wonder. For some reason, you have to work hard to get Huberd's. The cobbler said that at one time, Huberd's used to be found regularly in retail stores. But change of ownership has limited its distribution to more specialty stores. That was my experience.
One last thing the cobbler told me that I really like about Hubard's. This is important. Obenauf's/NIKWAX is sticky. Huberd's is not.