fredk

If mold happens it happens. Its part of the experiment. To see if any oils encourage or discourage the growth of mold PS. been thinking thunks about cars in my motor club. Some of the cars, especially the larger ones have leather gaiters around their leaf springs. My car should have them around the rear springs as well. Servicing of the gaiters, other than inspecting and repair of rips, the gaiters should regularly get a good dosing of used engine oil to water-proof them

Its a very imperfect experiment. Its just see what happens, first in the short term and secondly in the longer term, but not the forever range. Its just to see, are certain oils really bad for leather? We all have our own stories. This is just a few simple tests, maybe to help dispel myths or even to prove the stories correct Myth Busters Beware! We're a commin! yes, I'm still thinking on them. Earlier I said we should put each oil/product on about 3 pieces from different hides So at least 9 test pieces, plus a control piece of each. Ech test piece will have to be at least the size of a postcard, about 6 x 4 inches Lets say test pieces from 3 different veg tan hides So, I'm thinking A. 1 of 3 will go in my 'drying' car. Its front screen points almost direct due south, about 176*. It gets the full sun on it all day. Even on cloudy days it gets hot inside. Not as hot as you would get there, but hot enough to almost fry an egg. During the night it gets colder, not until winter will it get to near or below freezing, but only down to about -1 or -2 inside the car at the lowest, about late January time B. 1 of 3 will be hung outside my flat. It will be subjected to wind, rain sunshine and damp (coldish) night air, 24/7 C. 1 of 3 will be carried in my pockets. I'll rotated them into different pockets so they each get time in different pocket, getting different amounts of wear and body temperature As I type this I'm reckoning each of those needs a plain control piece with them And I'm now thinking of maybe cutting some test pieces just so they can be slipped on my belt, to see how they fare on there I'm gonna skip having threads on the test pieces. Eliminate one uncontrollable variable I might add in Neets Foot Oil Compound to the tests Any results I get will of course just be for my environment and any results SUP gets will be for her (?) area And the thickness of the test pieces will affect results as well You got any suggestions or comments? I hope to get organised on this soon

Thank you Just a remembrance; I used to make hand-cream using beeswax, olive oil and lavender oil. Sometimes I have used this on my leather items. I don't think the olive oil ever did any harm to the leather

I'm surprised by the contents of this thread In over 23 years of leather working I have never ever had any bleed from any type of pre-dyed leather

This is not about paypal itself but your payments to others using paypal Hidden in the 'agreement' that a lot of sellers use is a clause for automatic payments via paypal Who reads that 'agreement'? We just click the box that says we have then we proceed to make the payment Recently I noticed that two payments each of 16p was taken by Royal Mail from my paypal balance. Not much, but I had not authorised these payments ~ but yet I had No explanation from RM why or what for I tracked the payments through to the 'automatic' payments in my paypal account settings It appears that on two occasions when I bought parcel postage on line I had allowed automatic payments to be taken. Probably by just clicking on the wee box that I'd read the T&Cs I was able to disable these as well any future ones One night recently I bought two lots of RM postage so in the morning after I went to my paypal account settings to check the automatic payments There were no RM ones but there was one for Jadlam ( a plastic model retailer I buy from) and one for KOBO (an ebook seller I use for my KOBO ) They are now disabled There was also two for ebay but I left them active as I use ebay a lot and if I disable them it would, allegedly, cause problems with my buying & paying on ebay Therefore; I suggest, if you have a paypal account, go check for automatic payments To get to see them you go through to your account settings using the wee gear wheel at the top of the main page Log in to your paypal account. On the home screen, click on the settings cogwheel to open a new page. Click on payments Scroll down to Automatic Payments Disable the ones you want, then check the active payments button to ensure it is disabled. Repeat above step as required Log Out.

Good choices last first; No You lot in the US have a greater range of funny types of leather than I can get. I'll not be using chrome tan, just veg. I don't have any oil tanned as far as I know. I reckon Ill try some standard veg from Tandy, some from Italy and some from Argy/South America I got from Le Prevo

@Sheilajeanne a local Lord has in his tack room a most bootiful saddle made in Italy in 1812. Its still in use but not daily. He also has carriage tack from about 1780s -1820s. I can only get to see this Lord once a year, when my car club play within his estate, and we did that at the end of August. Now I'd shure like to find who looks after his tack and have a talk with that person

@SUP Remember to keep one piece of each leather free of any oils. Its your base reference I reckon I'll be using; rapeseed oil, vaseline, Johnson's baby oil and 3-in-1 oil I too buy my threads for their colours and/or thickness. I think polyester thread can 'rot'. Long story short; we have about 350 BMW steering wheels. Sewn with polyester thread. About 2/3 or more of them the thread is or has 'rotted' and is breaking down

Not dog but a goat collar. Needed NFO'd once a month

Good plan. I'll sew some of my usual threads into the leather. But most of my thread is bonded nylon which resists most chemicals and lasts a long time. About 10 years ago I cleared out my father's fishing tackle box. One reel was still full of bonded nylon line. It was from about 1956 (supporting evidence) and was soaking in some sort of oily mixture. After cleaning the nylon line was still usable. Test strength was about 50lb. I used it as leader for beach casting for several years yes. recently I found in the back and bottom of my spare threads drawer several, 8 iirc, wenzels of linen thread from when I started leather working 23 years ago. Each card had about 10m of thread, black, brown and white. I'd bought them from Le Prevo. Some of each had deteriorated. As I unwound the thread off the cards the thread came apart in short sections, and the ends of those sections were separating into individual tiny fibres

I had a big roll of leathers damaged by meeces. They got into the very centre of the roll and chewed through several layers for to make their nests. Holes the size of a woman's fist right through each hide. None of that leather had any treatment at all. And they'd pee'd on it as well

Okee-doakly. I'll use some scrap as well and put it out in my spare 'drying' car Now, both of us should try our choice of oils on some different pieces of leather. i.e. use oils 1, 2, 3 on leather A, and on B, and on C,, that would be 9 test pieces. Keep notes Lets keep to just a few common oils. Keeps it all simpler Conditions here are very wet and getting cold.In my spare car it will be warmer, and variable. I expect conditions for you are quite different

Ok, I'll be first to be cruel, in a kind-hearted sort of way, I hope The edges look rough, they look uneven. The letters look cramped and not aligned. The background is too dark and looks uneven. That makes it harder to distinguish the porker Now, here is the way I would do this. 1. Make a cardboard template of the top. 2. Use coloured chrome tan to totally cover the top and side edges of the brush.. A nice bright colour, contact glued in place. 3. Draw around the card template on to the front/grain side of a thick piece of veg tan. 4. Cut that out but leave a big border around the shape. 5. Do the tooling on it. Move the initials further towards the centre of the length, just a bit, space them out a bit more and make sure they're aligned, Draw in your animal, a bit of tooling on its edge. 6. Apply a 'resist' on the letters and animal. Carefully dye the piece with a bright colour. 7. Paint the initials and animal, and anything else 8. Cut the extra border away from the piece, bit by bit, offering it up to check it conforms to the shape of the brush. When it does, dye and slick (smooth) its edges. Almost there. 9. Cut a piece of thinner leather, from the chrome tan maybe. Make it the same shape as the tooled piece but smaller, maybe 1/2 inch/1cm all round smaller. Glue this to the back of the tooled piece, in the centre 10. Now glue this combo onto the brush. I need to scratch the top of the chrome tan piece on the brush for the glue to work. 11. As I stick it down with strong contact adhesive, on one end of the rush I insert the ends of a length of thong or lace. The lace is about 16 inches long. 2 inches of each end are under the tooled piece leaving 12 inches loose, but doubled over giving a loop of about 6 inches, for hanging the brush 12. As I glue I use a small rubber head mallet to tap down the glued edges of the tooled piece onto the chrome tan covering the brush 13. Apply a finish to the tooled piece, polish it up 14. present fancy brush to new owner mm, I think thats it

Oim a fergittin ma maners; your cases/holsters/sheaths shore do look good and robust, ready for plenty of outdoor (ab)use

I doubt it very much. Research is money led. Only when something is affecting a big company's profits do they research & develop. No one is fussed about leather - just use the same ole thing we've used for centuries, it works, it will work, don't change it. Its not just in the leather industry but in other fields as well Jars of olive oil from about & over 3000 years ago exist and the oil is/was still good, In good airtight sealed containers veggie oils will last a very long time, hundreds of years. Once opened their life is in months. But NFO can go bad in time as well. Petroleum based mineral oils do not go rancid Just, do NOT use chicken fat or grease, without refining it maybe - in my history presentation group a chap brought me his belt pouch. It was well dried out and needed NFO. But he insisted I use fresh chicken fat/grease as 'thats what they would have used in medieval times' (uh, no, they used a version of NFO) about 3 months later he brought the pouch back to me, in a sealed plastic bag. Could I clean it? The chicken fat had gone rancid and was rotting the leather. I tried to clean it but it was too far gone. Ever smell rotting chicken? its F**king awful and sickening. That pouch was burnt by the owner We'll start. When I'm out shopping next I'll get some 'Baby oil' and vaseline. I have virgin olive oil. I'm not currently working on anything that needs oiled but soon I will be One other myth which is perpetuated on the internet is that 'ready rivets' are not strong. In my experience it is the opposite. Years ago when I was on facebooky, I asked a few of these peeps who said the rivets were not strong. None of them had used them. General answer was; 'I won't use them because I read they aren't strong.. . .'

also, when you have enuf savings to survive for 3 to 5 years without having any income

When I did a lot of camping, what is now called 'wild camping' in the UK I used a small, 6 inch, crows foot wrecking/pry bar. Multitude of uses. The hook end, or the eye on these, for pulling up the rope stakes, the flat end for splitting small logs, by putting the flat in a crack and either hitting the bar or twisting it. And for bashing that tin of beans because you forgot the tin opener! When I was a beek we used a tool called a scraper, a kind of flat pry bar. Sure wish no I had a belt sheath for carrying that, I lost quite a few in long grass, even when painted fluorescent yellow! Might be a market for someone to make belt sheaths for these

Maybe This is THE forum for US to experiment and check these things out. To get to the truth. Even the tanneries will only repeat what is said by the greater un-washed There is a discussion type which I call a circular-argument. It goes like this; I read it in a book, I put it up on an internet forum, someone else reads the forum and puts it in a magazine, I read the magazine and I know I'm right because I read it in a book and a magazine. Thats how a lot of these myths become perpetual I've thought of something. My Austin 7 car was built in December 1930. In its drive system is an item we call 'the donut', aka a fabric coupling (rear wheel drive BMW cars use something similar in looks) I have an original one from 1929. Originals are made of laminations of heavy fabric/canvas and leather, all tightly compressed and held together by those triangular plates. I know its from 1929 as the date on manufacture is stamped on one of those plates, That was retired as the rivets on one plate set ripped out during a race. Anyway, servicing of this item was to take it off at regular mileage intervals and apply some light engine oil to it to keep it supple. Not to soak it in oil, just a small amount I can say that when it came off a few years ago it was 87 years old and neither the leather nor canvas showed any signs of rot or deterioration. Another; the Austin engine was fully overhauled in 1984. I did it again in 2004. Inside the engine are some oil seal gaskets made of oil impregnated leather. They are in constant saturation with the engine oil. None of those gaskets were being destroyed by the engine oil. They were changed because they were too compressed to re-use

In my vintage car world leather straps are used to hold bonnets and boots closed, to keep spare tyres in their carriers, a lot of other places as well. Our cars spray hot and cold engine and gear box oils pretty much all over the place, over parts of the cars and passengers too. This makes it sound like we're an environmental hazard on the road but its an accumulation over time. We only use high quality mineral oil. Our engines and gearboxes cannot use the alternatives, they weren't built to do so Since I took up leather working I looked at the car straps. The straps which get the worst of the oil are the first to rot through. In places where the oil can be washed out the straps last longer but still rot. I had to replace all the straps on my car and when I did I gave them a good feeding of NFO, and used to do it regularly. My straps have lasted 24 years now. I've noticed that others in my club are replacing their straps every 3 to 5 years I think, the difference of using mineral oil on us is it is very highly refined and we are living. Our skin is a living organ and deals with it whereas leather is dead and just absorbs the oil and does nothing with it. Putting even highly refined engine oils on us can give us serious skin complaints - I know, I used to work on my cars without wearing gloves. Eventually I got serious dermatitis because of it Don't take other's words as gospel truth. Try it, experiment. If something works for you, thumb your nose at the nay-sayers

Don't dye, use shoe/boot polish to colour the parts after they are assembled. Just sponge case the leather for stamping/tooling. Then it will dry faster. In fact you (the scouts) may have to keep sponge wetting the leather as it will dry as they work on it I sometimes use coloured shoe polish just for an alternative finish. Apply with a cloth, work into the seams and tooling, buff with a clean soft cloth or shoe brush. Takes just minutes, 10 or 15 minutes at most. How long does it take you to polish up one shoe?

Interesting I just use thick thread for heavy duty, thin thread for light duty. I've never even thought about the thread strength Considering that tent and tilt and truck curtain makers use a double run of stitching and their thread doesn't look overly thick I reckon you could use two stitching runs. Spaced well apart and maybe with the sewing holes staggered, and maybe threads of different colours?

Here is a pixie of some of my stock. You reminded me that I have them and I had started to paint the pink ones and I think I actually paid slightly more for per 6 than you did for 10 The ebay seller I got them from has about 6 or 8 trading names on ebay and even tho I bought about 50 or so of these and the deal was fine he has me blocked from buying again. But my ex buys for me and gets them sent to her address and forwards them on to moi

I used to get them from a chinaman seller on ebay. Last lot I bought were about the same price you paid

Fast drying; I have three things which I use, a, as others a hairdryer, b. a small air-blow room heater, usually used either on cold or only the lowest of warm heat, c. I have a spare car in my driveway. I put items in it. Even on a cloudy day it gets very warm inside it and really speeds up drying Average humidity here runs at 88 - 90% all year round so I often need that car

Can you still buy the books which list brands? A copy would be handy for when we add some brands to our leather for that 'unique' look, I mean, like, one brand per hide ain't enuf, we need more