Zanshin

It didn't take too much skill, but some effort and time. I purchased a 4mm vegetable-tanned half-hide and an Ikea desktop. I soaked and cleaned the half-hide and then put it onto the desktop, bending the edges around to the bottom using line and glue and clamps. Then I let it dry and contract to a tight surface on the top. Once dry after a couple of days, I cleaned up the bottom by skiving excess and adding additional glue. Then I cleaned with saddle-soap and applied beeswax compound to the top in several steps. The detailed story is here.

I neglected to add a recent picture, sorry.

It is now two years in, and I spend 8 hours a day during the week using this desk. I do have a leather mousepad that I made to prevent scuffing the surface too much, but with a quarterly application of Resolene this surface just gets better and better over time.

I'm sorry for not giving feedback to this thread for so long! I've been using this desk for home-office work and for private stuff for over a year now. Each time I sit down for a day of work I admire the lustre and patina of vegetable tanned leather. I took the advice given here and haven't done anything to smooth the surface any further. I use a leather writing pad I made from a quality cut for writing, and a larger piece of lower-quality leather as a placemat when I eat at the table. Apart from light cleaning, all I've done is occasionally apply a very fine layer of Resolene to the surface to make it glide a bit better and to protect it from the oils in my forearms and hands. I don't use a mouse pad, the area where the mouse glides is quite smooth and the Resolene helps there as well.

Thanks for the suggestions. I see that the MSDS for the "leather hardeners" out there all contain mainly alcohol, I think I'll give the top a saddle-soap cleaning and then apply some isopropyl. I wetted the tabletop and used a kitchen roller on the surface to both stretch it out and compress it when I constructed it, so I think a repeated wetting with water won't do much. Some of the leather surface products out there have acrylic or varnish components, those might give me what I'm looking for as well. Thanks for the help!

I've got a vegetable tanned leather desktop whose surface I'd like to harden. It was not treated before being wetted and stretched onto a desk, then rolled with a pin while wet, waxed with beeswax (melted in with a hairdyer) and finally covered with Fiebing's Leather Balsam. While I like the covering, I would like to harden the surface a bit and also see if I can make it a bit more slippery as well. I've thought about mixing together some carnauba wax with a solvent and applying that, as that would seem to be the hardest wax covering, but perhaps someone here might have a better recommendation for this application. Would removing the Fiebing's layer with saddle soap and applying an alcohol-based hardener work? I've attached a picture of the desktop surface below:

I've always wanted a leather desktop rather than just a leather desktop pad. A year ago I made a complete 180x80cm desktop from a single vegetable tanned hide and I really enjoy the look and feel of it. It has developed a nice patina over time and I've only used moist cloths with water and occasionally added a thin layer of Fiebing's Leather Balm with Atom wax and buffed it out. But I'd like to improve on this a bit by smoothing out the top surface and am not sure how best to go about this task. I would love a smoother surface but don't want to lose the color or natural feel of the desktop. While some areas of the hide are smooth, others have wrinkles that can be felt (when writing using just a single piece of paper, for instance). What can be used to fill those ridges and uneven areas? Here's a closeup of what the uneven areas look like: I do have more pictures of the leather desktop and the building process at Zanshin leather desktop