Decided to try my luck with wax staining some Natural Essex Wescos that I picked up a while ago and I figured someone here might be interested in how it worked out. Below is the Before pictures after approximately one month of steady wear back and forth from the office. I had heard amazing things about the patina that natural veg tanned boots would pick up over time, but given the blue collar roots of my job the boots were attracting a lot of negative attention when compared to my normal black jobmasters. I decided that I needed to speed things up

As you can see, they look great but at this rate it is going to take a year to really weather these into a more mellow color. Since Essex leather is Aniline finished I decided that it would be interesting to do a beeswax stain to see if that would darken the leather naturally without adding a tint to the finished product- the goal was still boots that had the natural veg tan leather look. To be sure the wax was applied evenly and absorbed by the aniline surface I heated the boots in a 120 degree oven and applied a thin layer by hand. I am pretty happy with the results.