zeroflight

This is an old thread but not very far down so I'm bringing it up to add another option for future reference. A sheet of bag stiffener. They're ultra cheap, sold at Tandy (and other places), and are intended for this soft of thing. I believe you typically sandwich them between your regular leather and a thin lining layer. Consistency kind of reminds me of a VERY thin rawhide.

I have a friend with hard-shell leather saddle bags. They're fairly typical in that they're that factory black leather against a plastic shell kind but they are real leather. Apparently they've warped a little so I'm planning to help him out with getting them squared away. That said, I'm planning on softening them up a bit, probably with some neatsfoot, then see if we can restretch it to fit properly. After that though, I figure it will need to be re-waterproofed as well but I don't know the best way to go about it for this factory leather stuff. Aussie Wax? 50/50 Resolene? Skip the neatsfoot and go straight to Aussie for both?

I'm getting ready to start a fork/tool bag for my motorcycle. It'll be fairly simple, maybe a little tooling but doubtful, no carving, no painting. If I can find a shade of oil-tan leather I like I'll get it, otherwise I'll get veg-tan and dye it with Fiebing's oil base, possibly some gel antiquing instead. Since this will be exposed to the elements and I'll be in & out of it on a regular basis, I can't decide which route to take on finishing/protecting it. On hand I have resolene, Bic4, straight up liquid mink oil, and I made some mink oil/beeswax awhile back that I've used on other projects. I have a Tandy nearby and I'm always ordering something from Amazon for some reason so getting other chems wouldn't be a problem. Mainly I just can't decide what direction to go. I had been leaning toward multiple coats of just the mink/wax and have been pouring over the posts here so now I'm wondering if I should also be doing some coats of 50/50 resolene over the mink/wax layers. And if I end up dying it myself, should I be mixing the color with some Bic4? Some imperfections in color are fine with me as I figure it gives unique character but I'd like to avoid things like water spots. What are your thoughts & suggestions?

I was leaning towards neatsfoot for the boar. Sounds like that's what I'll take. For the straps, I'm thinking screw the dye and stick with the concoction from http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=31680&hl=strap#entry198582 I'm still a few days away from starting the chemicals so I'll still keep an eye out for thoughts.

My head is spinning after going through pages & pages of various finishing options and just can't figure out where I need to take this so here goes. I'm making a daypack for myself out of a couple of kinds of leather. The shoulder straps are 4-5oz shoulder (2 layers stitched w/ padding), the bag lining is 2(ish)oz pigskin and the body is roughly 3-4oz wild boar. I only bring up the lining to give you an idea of thickness/stiffness on this thing since it will be a little flexible. I want to leave the boar hide color and texture alone as much as I can but would still like to protect it. I want it to gain character over time so water stains don't bother me but obviously don't want to ruin the thing outright. I've been reading up on mink oil, neatsfoot, resolene and a few others but just don't know what direction to go since most here seem to be dying, tanning, or whatnot. Thoughts, suggestions? How about the shoulder straps? It's pretty much your standard tooling/dying pale hide so I figure I'll end up dying it to at least somewhat match colors but what finishing do you recommend for it? The bag is designed so the straps can be swapped out any time so it doesn't really need to match up with the bag for wear.

Great advice here, thanks. I'm not going for a truly professional look. It's for my personal use and I intend it to pick up character (read as lots of road-wear) along the way so less than perfect edges are ok. The first one may I put together may not have the long-term durability I want so I'll probably end up making another I'd love to do my stitching by machine but the one I have can't really handle leather anymore. It's slowly on its way out & has started to give me trouble just on some of the fabrics like cordura but not enough to replace yet. So it's LOTS of hand stitching for me! Oh well, at least I have plenty of time to kill at one of my jobs. Besides, then I have bragging rights about making the entire thing by hand and hope everybody ooh's & ahh's rather than smacking me upside the head, lol. Sounds like my plan is to go ahead and give at least a basic burnishing for sure. I'll mock up some scraps and see just how far I want to take it. There's a Tandy store nearby so I'll also pick up some Edge Kote and try it on some those edges & see how it works out. Who knows, maybe I can get them to machine stitch the lining, leaving just the seams to me.

I'm almost at the end of the planning stages for kind of backpack/messenger bag with shoulder straps. The straps will be layered around a CC foam strip. Though I haven't decided on the final layer variations, I'll probably end up with 2-4 layers and a final thickness of around 1/8" - 1/4" thickness along the edge. Among the finishing methods, which do you suggest? I've debated on thong lacing, basic saddle soap burnishing, burning and probably some other bad ideas but can't really decide what direction to take. Sturdiness is my primary concern with comfort a close second and appearance in third. If it makes a difference, I'm planning on doing all of the stitching on the rest of the bag with (probably) saddle-stitched artificial sinew. If you have a different suggestion on the type of stitch though, I'm all ears. You can see the bag I'm using as a base design at http://leatherworker...891#entry317335