I’ve had my parade shoes for about 3 months and I polish them literally every day for 15 minutes with cherry blossom polish and it’s not making them any shinier they’re literally getting more and more dull every time I polish them. Has anyone got any advice?
First thing I would suggest is stripping all the Cherry Blossom off and starting again with Saphir.
Plenty of info on how to polish shoes on here (and on Insta - look for Mr Bull & Shine) but Cherry Blossom isn’t ideal.
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Yeah bin off cherry blossom, use saphir pate de luxe
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Thank you!
There are possible some brands of shoes that don’t take a good shine - I found that for a few of our cadets, some Grafters(?) were very hard to polish up.
I can normally get a highly pushed shine on any shoes (“military” or civvie) within 20-30 mins. Had to give up on the Grafters.
Go patent, it’s the future!
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Absolutely. How much more uniform would we be if we were all issued patent leather shoes, like the Aussies?
I believe that RMA Sandhurst now issue patent shoes to female officer cadets.
Yeah I have grafters, thank you for your help!
According to a clip I saw on Mr Bull & Shine, Gren Gds officers are issued brown shoes and dye them black. 
Thats a faff
One word: WHY? What a waste of time and money!
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Will be tradition probably
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No doubt because they can, and entirely speculation and guessing that because on one occaision in the dim and distant, they could only get brown shoes but wanted black… That’s the sort of stupid reason for some of these traditions…
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Depending on how new they are, ask for a return / refund?
If you have a military surplus store near you, they are worth a look.
It’s worth noting that you don’t need a mirror shine on your shoes. ACP1358 just states “highly polished”. That doesn’t mean you can’t keep working on improving them, just don’t wear yourself out trying to get them “perfect”.
It might also be worth speaking to someone about your technique to make sure that’s not working against you. You could find another cadet or NCO with good shoes and ask what they do.
Amazing, thank you!