Hello, I am new here, my first post, so I thank everyone in advance.
No experience with leather work here, (except what I have learned from my grandma regarding book binding)
This jacket is about 20 something years old, I wore it everyday for years and years, now it belongs to my wife (lucky she is tall)
The leather is not soft, not motorcycle hard either.
We love making tinctures and varnish so decided to restore it before it went bad.
Washed it twice in a washing machine, than cleaned with alcohol (some stuff removed) than with Kremer's Larch oil of turpentine (even more removed), tests showed that leather was very very porous.
Cooked a cochineal tincture for leather, turkish recipe, translated to italian, from the wonderful book Dell' Arte di Tingere in Filo in Seta in Cotone, in Lana, ed in Pelle, Angelo Natal Talier, Venice, 1793.
To simplify the recipe goes like this: (old Italian measures)
Basically it is to cook in a copper pot (did not have one so used copper coated coins - pot-as-mordant)
2 liters of water and 7 ounces of Shenan - Kali geniculatum - Salicornia = 175.7 g — inside a linen bag, boil for 15 minutes, remove. than added: 2 drachms of alum = 6.5 g (Kremer’s Potash Alum) 2 drachms of pomegranade peel = 6.5 g ¾ ounces of curcuma = 18.82 g 3 ounces ground cochineal = 75.3 g 2 ounces sugar from a loaf (used german refined sugar) = 50.02 g Add it all and cook for 6 minutes.
Brushed it 4 coats, always lukewarm, perhaps will do another, waited for drying in between coats.
Next step is Oak gall, quickly and delicately cooked, now infusing until tomorrow, will apply next, according to recipe. (tests show that improves color also). Now here is where I am in doubt.
It says next step to oil, with olive oil, another italian book of the time, mentioning another cochinea lturkish recipe, quite similar, actually, says that for oiling to be good it needs heat.
Now lots of people say that oiling is not good.
I also have some quite flexible varnish (I already tested it on leather and seems good) it is made of : Boiled Linseed, Mastic, Canada Balsam, Limed Rosin. Could cook some lard &/or some beeswax into it.
Something tells me that after Gall I should apply a very dilute coat of the varnish, to encapsulate the stuff I applied. And than a semi diluted coat.
Than after varnish I should apply the conditioner I made, first very dilute than the thick stuff, rubbed in with a cloth.
Lanolin, Lard, Beeswax, Turpentine (all from Kremer) to go first.
And another without the turpentine to go afterwards.
Than a very light coat of olive oil.
And finish it with Collonil Nanopro, that I have. Now some say lard goes rancid, some say it does not as it is purified at high temperatures, some say olive oil will go rancid, others say it will not if applied thin...
I am almost confused, please help!!!