Aventurine

US law differs from elsewhere and is far more protective of designs as personal property, for a longer time after the death of the creator, than elsewhere. However the shape/form/construction of fashion items (basically,. anything you can wear on your body) is not protected. So anyone can mimic the style of a Prada bag or an Armani blazer. Or a gun holster. But no one can mimic the design printed on the bag or stamped on the buttons of the blazer or tooled on the holster, because designs and decorations and images applied to the surfaces of items are protected; they are owned by the original creator unless they sell those rights (or unless a lot of time has gone by...you can copy 19th century tooled leather bookbinding decoration all you want). In the US, the creator of an original image doesn't even have to explicitly apply for the copyright -- ownership is automatic. So the woman that designed the Welcome to Las Vegas sign -- unless she signed an agreement to the contrary with the city or whoever actually made the sign, she in fact still owns the design and could enforce her private use of it. That's the design itself. She can't stop anyone taking a photo of the *sign* and putting it on a tee shirt and selling the tee shirt, because the sign is an object in public life and a photo of the sign is the original art of the photographer. Registered trademarks such as stamps and signatures are, of course, specially protected from replication. If I closely copy Ralph Lauren's pattern of blanket stripes on a wool coat, it's copyright infringement, but if I put Ralph Lauren (TM) 's name on it, it's also fraud. Colors...that is a subject of increasing complexity. Some colors are limited, not in themselves, but in their use on objects that might be mistaken for objects marketed by different creator or manufacturer for whom that color is a strong consistent characteristic. So if, for example, I make a belt and color it the same yellow as a Caterpillar tractor, I'm safe. But if I make a tractor and paint it Caterpillar yellow, I'm in trouble. https://copyrightalliance.org/is-fashion-protected-by-copyright-law/ Then there is the infamous example of Anish Kapoor: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/anish-kapoor-vantablack-2391684 and the delightful response of this designer: https://www.culturehustleusa.com/products/pink-50g-powdered-paint-by-stuart-semple

Hey those particular colors are nice together as well as suiting the purpose of Pride. I wonder, did the stitching stay together okay on the final objects, seeing as so much of it had to be cut to create the multicolor strips?

In the past I used cedar oil on vegetable tanned tooled leather. Cedar oil was one ingredient in the British Museum curation formula which was used by curators and archivists from at least the 1940s to the 1970s. It later became seen as problematic, though not, as far as I know, because of the cedar oil per se. The idea is that oils of all kinds exclude water, which the leather needs in some amount in order to remain flexible. It seems to me that inclusion of some kind of inert humectant in the formula should get around that problem, but the current wisdom in museum curation is to use no dressings at all. Wikipedia article on the British Museum dressing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Museum_leather_dressing This article from the Alaska State Museum bulletin illustrates why current practice is not to use any such dressings. Though, the fact that anyone was ever dumb enough to put Wesson oil on a kayak leads me to suppose that they might be retreating a bit too much in sheer panic at how badly things might turn out. https://museums.alaska.gov/documents/bulletin/bulletin58.pdf @SUP I wonder if the cherry gum in the formula we were discussing acted as such a humectant?

@SUP, maybe, I don't know? There are different long sugars in cherry gum. Gum arabic is much more water soluble so I'd suppose it would wash out or absorb more water when the leather got wet? https://cameo.mfa.org/wiki/Cherry_gum https://cameo.mfa.org/wiki/Gum_arabic

@Sup. All I have is the boots and they're nothing much to look at but yes I'll snap them if that's helpful at all. The cherry gum is literally gum (exuded sap) from a cherry tree. I collected a lot of it from a damaged tree on a property near where I used to live.

@SUP The cedar-oiled veg tan tooling was made into small boxes and given out as travel gifts so I have no way to check on how well they aged. I might have some bits still in my older craft crates. If I find them I will assess them and post about it. The boots treated with myrrh and rosemary oil and beeswax, yes I still have them and the leather is in very good shape, having seen good use in hot dry conditions and humid tropics too. But who knows, it may simply be that they were made of excellent leather in the first place and my concoction simply did them no harm. The other things I treated with that stuff (formula long lost, though again I suppose it might be in one of my old craft bins) were shoes that I gave away after I got fat and my feet spread (bah!!) and one messenger bag that looked good and held up wonderfully for, hmm, ten years? before I started carrying a laptop computer which it could not accommodate and so it went to the thrift store. It just got better looking as it aged and obtained the mottled light-and-dark surface patina and polish of use on it. It smelled good too. I don't think I ever used anything else on it.

Yes, Tandy dyes and treatments seem just fine on the veg tan cow hide I used long ago for tooling. I won't use them anymore because I am striving for a low-toxin and low-environmental-impact lifestyle, but when I did use them they were very good. The browns, russets, burgundies, reds, oranges, and golds held up beautifully over time. The greens held up okay. A caveat, blue alters a lot as soon as it is applied and over time it doesn't stay blue because as the leather underneath darkens it turns more and more brown, which is a species of orange, which is the opposite color of blue and turns it greenish-grayish or blackish. (Navy blue is already dark so it doesn't matter much; I am speaking of true-blues/ultramarines/cobalts/sky blues.) If you want something to stay blue you must put an opaque layer under it. I imagine that purples also suffer as the leather darkens and browns, but I never used any. Chrome tanned leather is light blue-ish gray when undyed and might keep blue dyes nice for longer; I don't know.

@Sup. That's impressive.

Not immediately practical for your problem or mine, but of nerdy interest. Deterioration related to method of tanning: https://jcms-journal.com/articles/10.5334/jcms.3972 Pliantex used to stabilize Viking era shoes from a bog in England https://zero.sci-hub.st/3943/77c9d1e59c1769babb62b2a8f7fc2c62/peacock1983.pdf

I'm also interested in this problem. I have an old volume of Byron bound in gilded leather that does not appear to be rotten or moldy in any way but it is disintegrating. I have been tempted to coat it in map waterproofing (water based polyurethane) or acrylic transparency medium just to keep it consolidated. I would like to get my hands on museum quality curatorial stuff instead -- looking into Pliantex, an acrylic product which is intended as an adhesive but can be used for this problem. https://fineartsconserv.wordpress.com/tag/pliantex/

God didn't give us mushrooms ? I look at mycelial leather like the first attempts at any other commercial material -- like rubber, or light bulb filaments, or rayon. Bound to fall short at first, but that doesn't mean they won't be great in the long run. The way the current marketing of mycelial leather far exceeds its real virtues makes me roll my eyes though.

This is a very interesting thread which I hope I may be forgiven for reviving. I think surely part of people's contradictory opinions and experiences comes from the fact that modern "leather" is not just one thing -- if it isn't vegetable tanned, it's tanned with gawd knows what -- "chromium" tanning covers a lot of different processes that are never going to be labelled and are never going to be revealed by the companies that produce them. The many, many different kinds of dyes also potentially degrade or protect leather, and might be expected to react chemically or mechanically with later treatments. So it stands to reason, for me, that what works fine on one piece of leather might be destructive to another piece. Medieval and other pre-industrial tradition doesn't help us as much here as I'd like, for two reasons: 1) the leather was tanned very differently and 2) the idea of keeping leather goods intact for 20 or 10 or even 5 years is a modern and first-world problem. The average English peasant in 1400 hardly expected her child to survive 5 years, let alone her shoes. Preindustrial people used leather up by wearing it out, and nobody except the few very wealthy owned duplicates of things, so whatever the common person owned was used every day, or nearly. They worked their horses or oxen so much that destruction of the gear from sweat and strain and weathering was inevitable. They wore their shoes and belts so constantly that the minor details of which oil was used on them probably didn't matter much. Scabbards, armor straps, saddle bags, and other military gear got carried on real-life marches, used in real-life battles, and replaced as soon as it weakened because some bastard warlord's ambitions depended on keeping his army properly outfitted. And at least in medieval Europe their world was probably smelly enough that oils going rancid were pretty low on their list of concerns. When I find excellent leather goods mentioned in Western medieval literature, it's luxurious texture and appearance they're talking about -- gilt stamping, or fine calfskin, or brilliant color, or exotic origins. Not expected longevity and not treatment with some particularly desirable lipid. Finally, for the record, and with no particular claims that this is a good idea -- I used cedar oil on my tooled leather items. I chose it because it's an oil, it acts not only as a moisture barrier and fiber lubricant but also as a preservative versus bacteria and fungi, it doesn't develop a bad odor as it ages, and I enjoy the sense of connection with antiquity whether it's actually very effective or not. I never used it on anything that had to bear a lot of pressure, tension, bending, creasing, or weathering in its use. Also, years ago, I made a wind-barrier skin balm out of rosemary oil, beeswax, cherry gum, vitamin E oil (vitamin E in fractionated coconut oil), and myrrh. The idea was that it was a great natural anti-chapping protection for face and lips on the ski slopes. Those who bought it were very impressed, but very few people bought it, and after I moved from Montana I couldn't really market it. So I gave some away and used up the rest of it on leather. I rubbed it thoroughly into my nubuck hiking boots ONCE in 2009 or 2010 and never had to treat them again for about 8 years. (I still have them and the leather still seems okay, it's just that the soles wore off.) Alone, myrrh eventually polymerizes into a sort of varnish. The mixture of myrrh with the other ingredients aged into something that was itself rather leathery, perfect for protecting leather without negatively affecting its properties of flexibility and shaping to the foot. Those were Keens, made of decent enough leather, processed I know not how. If you put the same stuff on a different leather, it might degrade it. Or explode, who knows?

Maybe nobody uses Barge anymore? Do you guys mostly use Weldwood? But it has more than one formula too, now...

@Sup, does it retain transparency where it is bent, creased, seamed and pounded?

In the past I used Barge cement in the yellow can with a red triangle on it. Now it seems there are several different formulas including one without toluene solvent. Do the different kinds differ in performance for glueing leather to leather? Which one should I use for shoes?

@Aven Thank you very much, I will get that book!

@fredk That would be a great treasure. I also used to have folders of SCA stuff...long gone unfortunately.

This is a case where Tandy's not bad.

Thank you.

Thank you, MarshalWill.

Good idea, sheaths first of all. I've got 1200 grit crocus cloth...I'll get finer grit stuff for the fine work in tight spaces. Thank you, TomE and Zuludog.

Thank you.

Animal bladder can be transparent or at least translucent, too, if it's stretched and oiled, not "broken" which makes it white.

Arctic women made/make parkas from the gut of walrus, large seals, and bears as waterproof coverings for the men while hunting in a kayak or boat. They are very transparent. I was fortunate enough to see some of them years ago at a traditional craft festival in Alaska. My god, the work; the stitches were nearly microscopic. There are some at the Canadian Museum of History in Ottawa too. I think they even have a full body waterproof suit there. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1127&context=tsaconf

Follow-up...how useful has this book been to those that bought it? How much do the instructions rely upon previous skills and experience as a leathercrafter?