Alex C Jones

Hi everyone., Letting you all know how this turned out. I actually read all of the replies. Several mentioned cornstarch, and one, by Northmount mention "Floor-dry". So in addition to getting more cornstarch at the grocery store, I went to the hardware store and got something called "Oil-Dri", which comes in a 10lb bag for $4, and look a lot like kitty litter. I put half of the straps in cornstarch and the other half were buried in a container of the Oil-Dri, for almost a week. All of them came out less oily that when they started, but the ones in the Oil-Dry were noticeably lighter. So, I put the ones that had been in the cornstarch in the Oil-Dri for a week That might have been too much. I had to compare them with a scrap of the original to make sure that I had not completely dried them out. I re-oiled them a little, but this time NOT by immersion. I just put a few drops on a rag and wiped down just the shiny side. I could see the new layer of oil quickly get absorbed into the leather. I did that few times. So here is what they looked like then. Lying across is a sample scrap of untreated leather for comparison. Not shown are some smaller pieces that I put only in cornstarch and never in the oil-dri. Here is the final product after assembling them and fastening the rivets: Thanks everyone! For anyone else with the same issue, remember that cornstarch works okay, but oil-absorbent such as Oil-Dri works much faster.

Thanks everyone! Cornstarch might work better than newspaper, which is what I have been using until now. Okay, I have just grabbed a can of cornstarch from the shelf and am using all of it for a few straps now. Maybe tomorrow, I will get a larger can and take care of the rest.

What kind of leather? The raw pink kind. Here is a scrap showing what it kind of looked like before applying the oil: The type of mink oil is Fiebing's Mink Oil Liquid. The instructions say: "Apply Mink Oil freely and work into leather." So, I put the cut and punched untreated leather strips into a plastic zip-lock bag, covered them with the liquid mink oil, closed the bag, and rolled it around until I had immersed every part of every piece, and they all became a nice uniform brown. This is what they look like now: (There are actually 3 types of pieces) Maybe the way I applied it was too "freely", but I don't want to start over again. They look nice now, and a lot less oil appears on the newspaper after 12 hours each time, so I am making progress. But I'd like to do something that just gets them dry soon, so I can finish assembling them this weekend. Thanks

Hello, I am kind of a new amateur. I am making some straps for some squeezeboxes. This is the first time I have worked with mink oil. After cutting and punching holes in the pieces of leather, I treated all of the pieces with mink oil, and they don't seem to dry. I have been placing them on newspaper, and changing the newspaper twice a day for several weeks now, and still whenever I change the newspaper, there are still blotches of oil on the paper. Once I assemble these straps and start using them, I do not want to end up getting oil spots on my shirts. So, I want to get these straps dry enough so they won't do that. They no longer get my hands oiling when I handle them, but they still get the paper oily after lying on the paper for hours. Is there some way to get the oil to dry faster? Like maybe baking the pieces in the oven for a certain amount of time at a certain temperature? Thanks.