ScottWolf

Glad to hear it's working out for you. The whole reason I make it is for baseball gloves, as I got tired of the other commercially available "baseball glove" conditioners out there not really doing much for the leather and costing a premium for a few ozs.

Tallow does wonders for bringing things back. Are you talking about something like dog bone rawhide hard and wanting to make it soft/pliable? Take a look at Colorado Leather balm if you don't want to make it yourself.

The flesh side of leather will readily soak up anything you get on that side quicker than compared to the grain side. Which is why you want to be careful when dyeing, ask me how I know. The ingredient in Vaseline that some find to be useful is mineral oil. The other ingredients in vaseline really are of no use for leather, but vaseline is cheap and you can get it in big tubs. The mineral oil in it can bring color back out of leather that has lightened up/faded and give leather a nice sheen, which is why it can be used as a "finishing" product more than a conditioning product. It's like using Armor all on your tires. They look shiny and new but it really doesnt do anything else useful for the tire. Some popular commercial leather conditioners use mineral oil in their product for this reason, it brings color back and makes things shiny. Lanolin: if you're using the good stuff, its yellowish goo, it's pricey and has a strong sheep odor. Works great and restoring and softening leather but it takes several applications and if you use too much, you get that smell and some tackiness until the leather can fully absorb it. For what you are doing, its the better choice for accomplishing your goal.

I've used both methods and each will work. However, keep in mind that if you use the balm, you need to buff/rub the piece down quite well to remove any excess dye, otherwise, you will get some rub off. You can get away with not rubbing/buffing a piece down as much when using resolene as you are applying a acrylic "shell" over the piece, essentially sealing in any excess dye that you may have not buffed all the way off.

If you look at the MSDS, section 3 gives you a clue as to what the ingredients are. Lexol is 80% water 5-10% NFO and the remaining ingredients are emulsifiers and preservatives/fragrance. Since oil and water dont mix, you need an emulsifier to hold the two together. In this case it is an oil suspended in water. You can buy an emulsifier to do this for you off of Amazon, etc. A quick Duck search will tell you which ones you can use. They come in wax flakes, which will give you a whitish creamy paste or you can get it in a liquid form for an all liquid product. Polysorbate 20 (wax or liquid) is a good emulsifier to start your DIY project with to make whichever form you want it in. If you don't want to go down the DIY path, you can buy a similar liquid ( or cream) version of lexol from a company called Griffin leather conditioner. It's primarily a NFO product and will accomplish the same end. The MSDS for their products can be seen here: https://gbcontents.com/

Here is a post I made that addresses your needs and explains on how to make it yourself.

It's not about the eating of it as much as it is about how it reacts with other ingredients. There is a reason why there is a preponderance of leather care and conditioner products that use beeswax and its by products in its formulation among the other ingredients that are mentioned in previous posts in this thread.

Tom, here is a good paper that discusses beeswax, section 7 specifically. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7827872/

I am assuming that this is a paste or similar to a grease/creamy paste and not a solid given that it only has tallow and NFO in it? If so, how are you keeping the two substances from separating? Beeswax is a good ingredient to use with NFO , as it retards the NFO from oxidizing ( some people erroneously use the word rancid to describe oxidization). It has been my experience that leather will squeak when it is unable to slide smoothly. If your product is too tacky, it is because the ratios are off and you could have too much beeswax in it. When the ratios are done correctly, the beeswax doesnt create a sticky/tacky feel when it is applied and it won't cause squeaking. I would suggest trying some beeswax as it will give you a semi solid product that is less messy than a grease/creme and it'll keep your ingredients mixed and slow oxidization.

By all means, go ahead and make some and sell it. Let us know how it goes over at the fair.

Glad you found the information useful to you. By all means, make as many variations as you want and see how they perform on your leather. I don't think the tallow version will soften the seat too much. It would take an excessive amount to do that IMO. As for cleaning, a pH balanced soap is preferred, as leather is acidic and most soaps are alkaline. Something like Dawn , which is low on the pH scale, can be used safely. I am not a fan of glycerine soap, but I know some people use it religiously on veg tan/horse tack.

Glad to hear this post helped you out. Olive and coconut oil will darken leather significantly. Its great for old dark colored pieces, as it brings it back nicely. But if you put it on a beige/camel or veg tan piece of leather, it darkens it a lot. If you use the ingredients I listed in the recipe post, you'll find that it doesnt darken the piece too much. Any conditioner will initially darken a piece but after its absorbed in the color usually lightens up. Tallow is great for dry pieces or to just to keep a soft supple piece going. The batch I made using tallow has become my go to tin for general conditioning. The batch I made with mineral oil in it is more of a finishing product, as the mineral oil adds a bit of sheen and makes the leather pop. I only see water being used in liquid and or lotion types of conditioner, such as Lexol as an example. 80% is water, 5-10% is neatsfoot oil and the rest is emulsifiers,preservatives and or stabilizers. If you want a semi solid balm, there is no need to add water, as then you'd need to add an emulsifier to keep the water and your oils from separating.

Take a look at Colorado leather balm or Smith's leather balm, as each is an all natural product and are both made in the USA. If you want even more control of what you use, check out the DIY recipe I posted on how to make your own leather conditioner using all natural products.

If you do a small test batch in a 2 or 4 oz tin and mix in the ingredients,you will get a visual reference as to how much of either Vitamin E or citronella is intermixed with the other ingredients. You dont need a lot of either for it to be effective when the ratio you are working against is 1 part beeswax. By starting at .5 for each just as a test, which is half of the ratio you are working against, you will get a good idea as to whether it is enough or too much. If it is too much you will end up with a final product that is more like a cream and or so soft that it will never be firm/hard . I think you are over thinking this, as it's not exact, as your ingredients might differ from mine in how they interact with one another and or from batch to batch. This can become more apparent if you decide to add essential oils in it for smell, as 5 drops might be enough in one batch to get the desired smell and when you open a new/different bottle of essential oil, 5 drops may not be enough. To put this in perspective, look at a commercially available products MSDS and you will see a percentage of the ingredients. Very often you will see ingredients like you listed and more, and they will typically say +/- 5 percent, sometime +/- 10% but typically for only one of those ingredients. Meaning very little of those ingredients is actually used in the make up of that product. In most cases of liquid conditioners its typical to see 50-80% is water, followed by a small percentage of chemical stabilizers/preservatives and or emulsifiers and then lower percentages of the actual conditioning ingredient(s).

From my initial post, here are the general ratios to start with: There is no way to tell you specifically how many drops of an ingredient or how much vitamin E, etc to put in there. You can put in as much or as little as you want to get the desired end product. The thing you do need to keep in mind is that the more "oils" you add to the recipe, the softer the end product is going to be. So it will go from a solid/balm to a cream unless you increase the ingredients that give it it's firmness, like beeswax.Carnauba,etc, proportionality as you add more ingredients that are oils. So if you increase the number of parts of oils by say 50%, you need to increase the amount of beeswax by at least 50% or more depending on what you want the end product to be (solid/soft/balm) just for starters and see what it produces in a small batch. if it comes out the way you want it, make it in a larger batch, using the newly adjusted ratios.