RFrolic

Thanks all! Awesome, I'll pick up some Tokonole. I've seen in neatsfoot reviews that it can have an intense odor (and from what I read, neatsfoot oil compound is even more likely to be pungent than pure neatsfoot oil). The funny thing is that "charnel house smell" isn't an automatic no - I'm a taxidermist and the odor of death doesn't phase me at all. (I have to leave the chemical stages of tanning to the other people in my company, since I can't handle those chemicals. But I do plenty of skinning, dissection, helping to prep pelts/skins for tanning, and making mounts.) There's a big difference in my body's reactions to natural pungent smells (decay, skunk, BO, feces, etc are fine brain-wise) and synthetic smells or altered natural smells (essential oils are just concentrated natural odors but they'll still take me out). I suspect neatsfoot would fall under "altered natural" and I should steer clear. I'll look up the Uniters edge paint. (Does anyone know if the Angelus acrylics be used for edging? I didn't seem to react to that within my few-minute trial.)

Hello all, This is likely to be a more unusual question, but I'm disabled and products with strong scents send me into days of migraines and/or vertigo. (I wear a chlorine-gas respirator and work outside in the open air, but they'll still take me down even with those precautions.) Buying a lot of products it turns out I can't use is cost-prohibitive, so I'm hoping to get some thoughts on the topic. I'm looking for opinions on dyes, conditioning oils, and similar leather products. Which products do you find have pungent smells? Are there ones you've found that don't really have much noticeable smell? Do the water-based dyes have less smell than the oil- or alcohol-based dyes? Opinions on neatsfoot vs mink oil vs other easily accessible oils in terms of their smells? Does Resolene have a smell, and are there less-smelly sealer alternatives if it's pungent? Do antiquing finishes have a strong smell? What I've already figured out: Fiebing's Leathercraft Cement and LePage Low-VOC contact cement have next-to-no smell and are fine for me, so I'm probably covered for the adhesives category (I do understand that unfortunately the Low VOC won't be as effective as a pungent, heavy-duty cement like Barge). In regards to dyes, paints, and edge treatments, the only exposure I've had so far is Edge-Kote (noticeable smell, caused a headache after a few minutes of exposure; it would get worse with longer exposure) and Angelus acrylic leather paint (noticeable smell but didn't seem to upset my system, though I only risked a few minutes so far). Anyone have any thoughts? I know I'll still need to test things that folks think might be safe, and I know people's sense of smell varies. I'm just hoping to figure out products to definitely steer clear of and things that *might* be okay. (Even if all I get is "product X has a strong smell, I have no clue what might smell less" replies, that still helps a lot. Knowing what to avoid is half the battle! And if it turns out that every product for a particular technique smells strong, I'll avoid projects that would require using that technique.)