$50 eBay Air Jordan 3 Tinker Restoration

Intro

For this weeks restoration the iconic Vick almighty is restoring a pair of Jordan 3 Tinkers that he found on ebay. He got them for only $50 because of how cooked they where. Uppers are covered in years of dirt and grime along with paint peeling off of the midsole and uppers of the shoe. These shoes need a lot of love and some hard work from Vick, so lets see if he can once again make these sneakers look brand new. 

Clean

To start off the restoration Vick cleans the entire shoe. He uses an air compressor all over the shoer to get off all the surface level dirt before scrubbing. He then uses the Reshoevn8r soft brush on the uppers, insole, laces, and inside of the shoe giving the top half of the shoe a complete clean. He then moves onto the midsoles using the medium bristle brush and to finish the scrubbing he uses a brass brush on the outsole to give it a dep clean without rubbing off any of the old paint. The next step is to put these in the washing machine using the Reshoevn8r patented laundry system. The laundry bag and pod allows you to clean your shoes in the shing mashine without damaging any of the materials. Vick then puts the Tinkers in the laundry bag and into the washing machine on a cold cycle. Now that they are clean it is time for the details.

Signature Shoe Laundry Cleaning Kit $49.88

Reglue

On both sides of these 3’s the uppers are beginning to separate from the midsole because the glue is starting to lose its hold. In order to ensure that these shoes stand the test of time Vick needs to reglue these parts. When doing this he covered the parts of the shoe where he didn’t want glue with tape ands then applied glue to the areas of the shoe that are falling apart. He then used a heat gun on the glue to make sure it keeps the uppers and midsole together.

Unyellowing

One of the biggest and hardest to solve problems with this shoe is the yellowing along the midsole and outsole especially near the toe box. In order to get rid of this yellowing Vick uses the Reshoevn8r Sole Revive. To get the best results possible you want to apply the sole revive to the yellowed part of the shoe and put it under an indoor UV light set up for a few hours and continue to reapply coats of sole revive until it is back to pearly white. There was also a little bit of creasing left even after using the washing machine, so Vick used one of his old tricks to get the rest out. You stuff the shoe with a towel and put a wet rag over the toe box and use an iron to get out all of the creasing. Now it is time for the finishing touches

Painting

Before beginning to paint any part of a shoe it is important to prep that way the paint stays instead of wearing off after a few uses. To do this Vick uses acetone and cotton balls on the areas he is going to paint. Hen then proceeds to repaint parts of the upper white that were missing paint along with repainting the bottom half of the midsole. Then he moved onto the top half of the midsole which is black and repainted. This section was definitely the work looking before starting the restoration but now it is back to deadstock form.

Video Link

If you want to learn how to restore your very own pair of Jordan 3’s click the video link below as Vick gives you a step by step!