deboardp

I see two Golden Mink Oil products by Fiebing, on tandyleather.com: GMO Preserver and GMO Liquid. Since you mentioned the base being petroleum jelly, it must be the Preserver that you use. I thought I would pick up a jar of it, just in case.

Did you render it or did it come rendered?

Can somebody suggest the best order for performing the following tasks: Creasing edges Applying dye Burnishing edges of straps and soles Stitching the soles by machine Stuffing the straps and top sole with fats and wax I'm especially wondering if I should do the stuffing before I sew, because I thought the stitches might sink below the surface a little bit if the leather is stuffed, which would be more comfortable probably, for the feet. Also I was wondering if I should burnish after I sew, because maybe the leather being squeezed by the stitch would cause the burnished edge to open a crack. I've never sewn my sandals, always cobbled.

thank you for this! I was sad about the tallow smelling like a short-order cook's apron in a biker bar. Why? Because tallow is supposed to be excellent for stuffing veg tan leather after it is tanned. Tallow has excellent properties for long-lasting lubrication of leather fibers, all of which I have totally forgotten. (I can do all kinds of things really well, but remembering is not one of them.) I really wanted to use tallow. Now, it appears I can! I'll break out the spaghetti pot, throw that tallow in there and cook it like a pot of 15 bean soup. (Not spaghetti, the thin stuff takes only ten minutes.) If it is really odor free, then the formula of my recipe will be excellent. Maybe, I mean. Tallow, a little beeswax (the Abbott of the monastery gifted me a block of it), lanolin... macadamia oil, just a little. I wonder if I can do the same with the lard that's due any day now? Why not, huh? However, doesn't the question remain, the question being: Will tallow, even odorless tallow, go rancid in the leather? Or does the rendering in the pot make it immune to decomposition? At one time when I was a hippie, I worked in a hippy and biker bar. We got along, the hippies and the bikers, although the bikers kept to themselves mostly. We tolerated each other but didn't really intermingle that much. Bikers are really different. I don't mean social clubs that ride bikes, but hard-core bikers, drug-dealers, criminals, like that. It was like serving beer and burgers to vipers, I always tread carefully, not knowing if I'd get bit (never did). I cooked, and I tended bar. They tolerated me. I made a great truck burger, hard to eat the thing. A shovel would have helped. Nobody complained. I'm trying to translate that... your clients are a rough crowd who don't care about stinky grease? But why would you grease the grip on a black powder cannon? Haha. The monks are ascetics. they fast half the days of the year, I think, don't eat meat ever, they get up at 3:00 in the morning for a 3 hour church service, and they work 6 hours a day in various capacities. They also have church at 9:00 (20 minutes), 4:00 (45 minutes) and 6:15 (30 minutes). Vigils on Saturday go from 6:15PM to 10:30PM. They bathe and sleep when they can, but no showers are allowed. I've never asked how they clean up, but I've camped quite a bit, especially the 15 years I was homeless, and it's possible to more or less wash up with very little water and some soap. Some of the monks, in the summer, smell a bit ripe from time to time. I did ask the priest if it would be okay to use tallow and lard, and he said whatever works. Apparently the monks who will wear my sandals are not planning to eat them, but if one of them does, then the priest might rescind his blessing to use animal products. Thanks for jotting down all this information! I knew you were holding something, Chuck. PS What the heck is brain tanning??

How was that off topic?? It's exactly what I want to hear! Yeah, if it won't keep in a balm tin, forget about it! ScottWolf mentioned that lard turned on him, too.

Wax is only 25% of the recipe from Austin "Oz" Black, the Welsh saddle-maker, which he says is based on the traditional formula for "English saddler's grease". I think I'll use just a bit of it.

Holy Smoke! Somebody in Paris, France is making and selling a conditioner made with the same ingredients I am thinking of using! Lanolin, beeswax, and macadamia nut oil! Look at this!

I copied and will paste here a post by TinkerTailor from Nov. 26, 2015, from the thread on leatherworkers.net. It's fascinating and has a link to a 217 page digital book from the past, that has been preserved for us. From TinkerTailor: I got alot out of this book: The recipes in it obviously take ph into account based on application. Get out your bucket of spermaceti, your rape oil, and that stash of caoutchouc, Its time to make some leather dressing! Did you remember the brown sugar? I give you: "The manufacture of lubricants, shoe polishes and leather dressings" https://ia600404.us.archive.org/1/items/manufacturelubr00brungoog/manufacturelubr00brungoog.pdf All page numbers i list are pdf page numbers, not the original page numbers. Page 29 of the pdf, they talk about the ph of oils and how it changes as it rancidifys due to the presence of free fatty acids forming. It also clarifys what are called neutral oils, which are oils that do not have the free fatty acids in a fresh state which change the ph, such as rapeseed(canola) oil as well as olive oil. They imply that some oils have the free fatty acids when fresh and are unsuitable for use with metal due to corrosion issuesdue to Ph. I would imagine the same thing applys to leather. They also get into drying vs non-drying oils, linseed oil, for eg, is a drying oil and is not very suitable for a lubricant and presumably a leather dressing, while it is used in recipes for leather varnish. Page 102 is a writeup on neetsfoot oil and a comment about how many sewing machine and clock oils are bleached neetsfoot repackaged in tiny bottles and marked up. pg 119 is the recipes for the fine machine oils. They also talk about freezing neetsfoot and straining out the oil that is still liquid to purify it. Also bleaching it in the sun using violet glass.....Had they discovered uv treatment? They did notice purple glass bleached it better for some reason. Page 114 is an interesting recipe for leather belt dressing to prevent slip made from ~90% castor oil and 10% tallow. Page 142 is where the good stuff starts. The stuff relating to leather. You will notice that many of the recipes for shoe polishes etc contain sulfuric acid or soda, Presumably to make them strong enough for a man but Ph balanced for a woman.........Or is that deodorant?....rabbit holes are fun.........squirrel Page 148 talks about ant-acid boot leather varnish .....acid free....The effects of ph on leather were DEFINITELY known at this time. I have from my reading determined that as a leather treatment, tallows are the best treatment for lubricating the fibers and preserving the leather for a long time, however they are hardest to apply due to being mostly solid at room temp. Tannerys hot stuff tallows and waxes to make that expensive horween stuff. Temperature and exposure time are needed for the leather to take up the fats fully. These processes are out of the reach of the average user as they require special equipment and machinery and is better done in bigger batches of hides. The tallow lubricates, and the wax protects. Both are very long lasting before breakdown, if it even happens. We as leatherworkers try to approach this on raw leather but without the prolonged heating and tumbling. Oils are the best solution to make leather treatments that are easy to apply. In order to apply the harder waxes and tallow, we often mix then with thinner oils to make easily appliable pastes and cremes. In my opinion,Neetsfoot oil has won over many as the oil of choice for a few reasons: 1: The general availability and cheapness of neetsfoot oil as well as its suitability for leather in that it is non-drying, long lasting, and has a long shelf life 2: It is easy to apply. It can be used to make waxes and tallows thinner and possible to apply at room temp 3: The US army chose it. 4: It works in most of the situations leather is used as an adequate dressing. 5: Grampa used it, and so did his grampa......so did stohlman and some other saddler guy..

I was thinking about the recipe just now. The tallow smells of hamburger grease, and the pork lard probably smells of pork chops, and I'm thinking, why do i want to put this stuff in my leather??? OK, it's fats, but it stinks! According to old English saddler's grease recipes, the cod liver oil is supposed to restore the smell of leather. Is that because it cancels out the mIteat stink? Sheesh. So, I want to use things that don't stink or overpower the natural scent of vegetable tanned leather because that stuff smells wonderful. Therefore, I'm shelving the animal fats for now. When the Norwegian odorless cod liver oil arrives, I'll shelve it as well. Therefore, I have beeswax, lanolin, macadamia nut oil on the way. Is there another fat I could use instead of the ones from animals? I prefer to not use man-made fats, and I don't have a reason I can articulate, yet. My primitive thinking on this is to put cup portion of lanolin in the small pot over a low heat, add half a portion of beeswax, I guess by volume, and see how it melts, maybe a couple tablespoons of macadamia oil... If it all gets along with each other, then I'll put some in these tins I got from Bulk Apothecary bulkapothecary.com where I also bought the lanolin. Chuck, can you share your recipe for conditioner? You seem to know about it, and I'm interested. What kind of projects/products do you use it on? I think beeswax, lanolin, and macadamia nut oil might smell really nice, on top of the leather smell. I worry about oils going rancid, so I googled, "will macadamia nut oil go rancid in leather" and figured, ha, nobody will have an answer to that! I was surprised to see that this is the very top result of the google search: click here Fascinating. I read the OP's post and will return now to read more. The target audience is for leather workers with organic chemistry background or a scientific bent, which is us, since we're interested in making a concoction that has chemical properties.

An emulsion. That's how the water can easily evaporate. The water acts as a medium to help the fats/wax/lanolin compound get into the leather and then exits, leaving the compound in the leather. Brilliant! My tallow came. It smells like hamburger fat, is yellow like lanolin.

As a remodel contractor I occasionally installed butcher block counter tops. To protect them from food and stains I finished then with food grade mineral oil. I would put it on the wood and using microfiber cloth I would rub it into the wood until it was well absorbed. I did this the next day and the next. That wood absorbed a lot of oil. If wood will absorb it, vegetable tanned leather will inhale it, as it is way more porous than wood. To finish here, are you using liquid mineral oil. Vaseline is closely related to MO, but it is solid. If you put that on veg tan leather it won't absorb, probably. Are you using liquid or solid? Can you post a picture of what you're using, and a picture of the leather you're using, before and after applying the MO?

Nobody is rejecting you. Maybe ask Chuck if he used vegetable tanned leather. is that what you used? Leathers with finishes probably won't absorb mineral oil, but veg tan leather will. It's just a fact and has nothing to do with our personalities and characters personally. It's just science. What works, what effect does this have if we do this. I think you might be using something other than vegetable tanned leather to support your observation that MO stays on the surface. I've heard there's oil tanned leather which I know nothing about. I suppose MO might stay on the surface of that type of leather. Surely there's an explanation for the discrepancy between your observation and chuck's. I haven't poured MO on a scrap piece of leather like chuck surely did, and I'm not going to. If i poured any kind of oil on a scrap of my leather sides i know it will soak in immediately. That's the nature of veg tan. There's no oil, fat or wax anywhere in it. Everything was removed during tanning.

He was checking your statement that leather doesn't absorb MO. Take a breath Scott. It's not about you.

I don't know of wax oil mixtures. Oil is liquid by definition. Wax and fat is what I am using, both are solids, and lanolin is missing something that is required for a substance to be called a fat, but it's solid and fat-like. So, my leather conditioner does not have any oil in it. Just wax, tallow, and lanolin. I am essentially making my version of old English saddler's grease. I'm also going to follow the procedure that unicornleather (last seen here in 2020) wrote down for us in his post here at leatherworkers.net: leather conditioner.odt The procedure calls for wetting the leather with warm water and then rubbing the grease into all the surfaces of the leather, front, back, edges. I read it somewhere, that warm water causes leather to open its pores, thus the hand-rubbing and massaging of the grease is forced into these pores, is pushed into them. The rubbing creates heat, which helps the grease to get thinner and go farther into the pores and spaces between the fibers. I suppose that the grease and the water can mingle, mix, and maybe become a homogeneous compound. I'm eating homemade pea soup as I type this, and I put a chunk of butter in it, and it has joined the soup, it's not separate anymore. Would it separate if I put in the fridge? Would the butter rise to the top? I think I recall refrigerating things and finding later that the fat had risen to the top and made a cap over the food. I'm not going to put the leather in the fridge, but eventually I will stop rubbing it and it will cool off. The water will evaporate, but the grease will not evaporate. It will stay in the poors, against the fibers, surrounding them. The fibers will be packed, like wheel bearings in an axle are packed with greasThe leather industry calls this stuffing rather than packing. The industry uses huge drums, which are rotating vats, and they use hot water, and it's like a pea soup for leather. The leather sides get soaked with the stuffing, thoroughly, through and through. Later, when the sides dry out, the water evaporates, and the grease stays in the leather. Oil does evaporate. The evaporation rate depends on its viscosity. I think fats and greases and waxes don't evaporate much if at all, and they don't mix well with water, if at all. Although my butter does well in pea soup. The oil industry alters oil to make solvents, and those things evaporate really fast, you can watch them evaporate, some are so fast. I'd quote a name here, but my memory can't access it. The most common solvent in chemistry processes is... (I'll ask Google) ... water, Google says... hold on... I got a LIST of them, gee whiz, and forgot the name after reading it! ... ACETONE! It evaporates really really fast. The problem with saddler's grease and water - well it's not really a problem - the thing about water and saddler's grease is that it's not exactly a solution, where the solute (grease) and solvent (water) make a solution, where the two parts are not visible under a microscope, but it's more like a suspension, where the two mix and seem to be like a solution, but they are not. The grease is in smaller pieces because of the heat and pressure of fingers pushing on it, so the water can easily evaporate, leaving the grease. The water and grease are probably a mixture more than a solution, grease suspended in the water, or mixing with it, maybe simply floating down the stream on the surface of it, little bits of grease floating on top, the streams between the pores. Yeah, small streams. If we got a microscope we could maybe study these streams. Would we find itty bitty fishes?? Just hypothetically, about the microscopes.

Thank you! May God bless you, too!

I think we all forget that fossil fuels are decomposed trees, vegetation, animals and all things that lived and died and became goo, and eventually became oil. Humanity has developed industrial civilization by using this oil, changing it for different purposes, which is quite clever and also quite over my head. The chemical processes used to change the chemical formulas of raw fossil fuels is mind-boggling. I graduated from a pre-med curriculum, which included multiple semesters of general chemistry, biochemistry, and organic chemistry, and really, it's mind-boggling. It's difficult to argue that fossil fuels are not natural, but the products of convoluted, complex, complicated chemical processes that turn - what's the word for raw oil - it into something that could be argued is not natural. I just want to know what works best to make my leather soft to the tender bones of the feet, makes it beautiful, smell good (smell like leather) stay strong forever, and make people want to buy my sandals. If we put a small puddle of mineral oil on a piece of leather, and the leather soaks it up, the puddle disappears, then the leather obviously did that. We can't say it didn't do that. But SUP said that it doesn't affect her leather long-term. She thinks it's too thin and it either evaporates or runs out, and her leather gets stiff. She has to repeat the process frequently. I think that's what she said. So a product is needed that doesn't run out, doesn't evaporate, something that is sticky, sort of like, well, grease. I think this is why leather conditioner for leather saddles is called saddler's grease. Some heat is used, warm water is used to open the pores, the grease is rubbed into all exposed surfaces of the leather, and human elbow grease is required. It's not a quick rub on to the surface and we're done. It's worked in, created heat from the rubbing, the leather is already warm from the water, and as the water evaporates during this process, the grease takes its place. The fibers don't absorb the grease, as far as I have heard, but they are become packed in it, surrounded by it, coated entirely on the surfaces of their structure, so that when the human exerts forces on the leather, the leather fibers can slide easily against each other, which we call being flexible, pliant, soft, etc. So, I am convinced that the centuries old formula of saddler's grease is basically correct. Fats and waxes are the right things for leather conditioner. Leather is not alive, it's simply the skeleton of skin (totally incorrect A&P term, haha). It's the structure of what used to be cow skin, or whatever animal it's from. It won't decompose further when wet. At least not quickly. I think certainly it will decompose if left on the ground. Won't it? I don't know. Therefore, I am happy to report that my lanolin arrived today, and my tallow is supposed to arrive this evening, and I have enough wax to make a small sample in my small pot. Plus, I am good friends with the monk who runs the candle shop that uses genuine beeswax at my church's monastery where I go to church (Greek Orthodox, Genuine Orthodox Christians of America). I know he will lay some wax on me if I ask nice. the lanolin has a nice smell!

You SEEM , not sermons...

I like your rant. It's blunt, factual, and informative. This is what I was hoping to read from you. There's a lot of confusing information "out there", but you sermons to have the basics well-understood, which is why I wanted you to write it out. Thanks! Clarity!

No, but this place uses a thorough ten step filtration process that removes heavy metals and even the fish smell, which seems to be quite a feat.

I don't want to use petrolatum. If rather use something that comes from things that were more recently alive. Don't ask me why, because i don't actually know.

PS I also bought some Norwegian cod liver oil, and it's on the way, from the fjords of Norway!

PS Lanolin is produced by sheep - I have forgotten exactly - by (I think) their sebaceous glands of the skin, to coat and protect their wool from the elements. The industry extracts from sheared wool in centrifuges, and bottles it - or jars it? - for use in cosmetics? I don't remember. Wikipedia probably has a description. It's called wool wax and another name starting with wool. It's used in lip balm and nursing mothers used to use it for cracked nipples during nursing months. However, there are some problems - the baby can be allergic, and a significant portion of mothers who use it develop some kind of problem. Infection? So it's probably not used as much for that, unless someone has used it without problems, hears about the problem with it, but knows she's not affected so keeps using it. I bought 6.5 pounds of it in anhydrous form. It's like a gel, I guess. It's not here yet. I bought tallow, it's not here yet. I also bought pork lard, organic, and it's not here yet, but Scott Wolf said he used some and it develop a stinky smell, so I'm not planning to use it. I'll use lanolin instead. Hope this helps.

It's okay to be a bumbling idiot, it's not a sin or a crime. In fact it's a bit fun. It's a natural part of life, getting old, falling apart, walking into walls, forgetting why you walked into a room - well, even younger people do that. Being able to laugh at one's self is also being humble, which is probably the greatest virtue. So when I call myself names, I'm just being virtuous. See? There's a plus side to being challenged. I can't give myself credit for being where I am. If it were up to me, I'd still be homeless. St. Xenia answered my many sincere if not fervent prayers, asking her to influence the US government, specifically the VA, to honor my service and find in my favor. She has granted my things in the past. When I worked that four years, I was getting nowhere fast in my third year, and I asked her to help me. Within one week I was booked solid for the rest of the year and all of the next year. She's known world-wide to Orthodox Christians as the saint who answers prayers concerning work. D-limonene sounds like something I could use. I had been thinking about adding some kind of subtle scent. I'll consider it. Is it readily available somewhere? Are you going to share your leather conditioner recipe on my thread? It's hardly mine, actually. It's for leather workers of planet earth. Or at least of leatherworker.net. My memory doesn't work well, so I'll say that from what I've read here and there, vegetable tanning removes everything from cow skin that could could cause it to rot when wet. The result is that all the fat (cows tend to be fat) which is embedded in the skin, is removed. So I understand (from the readings) that each craftsman has to dress his leather, or treat it with conditioners, which means to put back what the fibers need to keep them from tearing each other apart. If they are dry, they will rub, fray, and come apart. So the craftsman stuffs the leather with things to do that. I don't remember the specifics, but I think those things are fats and waxes. Maybe oils, too, I'm not sure. But tallow is simply cow fat that has been rendered, so that it won't go rancid. I think rendered means melted. There's a fellow by the name of Austin "Oz" Black who used to be a member here, under the name unicornleather. I mention him in my thread, and i think I mentioned him in ScottWolf's thread in "Dyes, Glues and such". He talks about mineral oils in that thread, but I can't tell you what he said, sorry. Anyway, I'll attach one of Oz's comments here, in which he explains how he conditions, or dresses, his leather. I thought he did it by the project, but he does mention dressing whole sides or hides and that they are still pristine 25 years later, which I thought might mean he didn't use them? Business was bad? Anyway, the way he describes how to stuff leather with fats and oils will answer your question how to do it. That's how I plan to do it, bare hands, work the grease into both sides of the warm, wet leather. He explains why warm and wet, something about opening the pores of the leather and when the water evaporates, the grease works its way deep along the fibers. The hand rubbing adds heat, which thins the grease. I think when the leather is cool the grease is thicker than when it's warm, but it still lubricates the fibers, for when they bend. Makes sense to me...leather conditioner.odt

I'm a disabled Vietnam combat vet, have had 2 strokes and 2 heart attacks and have heart failure so sometimes I'm a bumbling idiot. I don't know how I got involved with this thread. I'm just trying to make my own leather conditioner and somehow thought this thread was about that. Traditional English saddler's grease uses fats and waxes so i was wondering why everyone was checking out all these different oils and how they affect leather. I was just in the wrong thread. I have only about five years of experience in leather work, predominantly in making sandals, and that was in the 70's, after I left the military. I was disabled by exposure to herbicide in the Vietnam War. It started affecting me in the 2000's. I became disabled in 2004, became homeless a couple years later and was chronically homeless except for a four year period when I was able to work half time in my profession of residential remodel/ repair contracting. The VA kept denying my claims for durability compensation until the Pact Act of 2022 came into law. That law removed the obstacle to disability compensation that the government had been using to deny claims of herbicide exposure. I hadn't been able to work even part time since 2021, figured the VA would never help me, so I had the brainstorm to return to making sandals, which I had always enjoyed and with which I had some ability. Recently the VA found in my favor with my last claim and I now have enough money to pay all my bills. I started my first pair of sandals today but no longer need more income to stay off the street. I was homeless from age 59 to age 77 (this year) except for that four year period. It's really hard on an older person to be homeless. I was always a very good worker, so it was a heart breaker for me. But I will continue with the shop, just no longer with the quiet desperation. I've spent the last 15 months buying what I need on credit and designing what I call a monastic sandal, which I think has a chance to be something. Socks can be worn, there's nothing between the toes. I've also been studying professional leather techniques because my first sandals were accurate but not well finished. I used Edge Kote! And I cobbled! Quick and rough. Today i have a burnishing machine and a Cobra Class 26 and the one design (about 15 before). I'll be able to make other designs, but i want to do this one. It's fully adjustable, has gum rubber full bottom. You'll see soon. I don't care if mineral oil is good or bad. I'll use a little Norwegian cod liver oil on my veg tan leather after I stuff it with fats and wax and lanolin. It brings out the natural smell of the leather. Too bad technology hasn't come up with an olfactory app yet. I could post a link. I tried finding 100% mink oil but it's a precious commodity and everybody is using just a little bit of it and filling the bottle with fossil fuel derivatives, which may or may not hurt leather, and which cost next to nothing. I think maybe that's partly what this thread is about? I did find an alleged bottle of 100% mink fat, from Ukraine, and I thought, "Sure, they'll send it after getting my money." Haha.

you say the basics of conditioning are straight forward. Please, humor me, and write them down for me. I'm just not a smart as I used to be, and I'm not so sure about how smart I was then! I did some reality checking, asked my priest if I could use tallow (Scott said he had used lard and it started to stink, so I won't use lard), and the priest said use whatever is best. I should have asked him what THAT might be, haha. So I'm back to using Oz's version of saddler's grease: 50% tallow, 25% beeswax, 25% anhydrous lanolin (instead of lard). I might toss in a little macadamia nut oil so the compound is like butter rather than mortar mix. After wetting the leather with warm water I'll work that stuff into both sides of the straps with my hands, plus the topsole (top side only, by this time it will have been glued and stitched). After it all dries in my shop I'll do the cod liver oil treatment. How exciting! Tell me, Chuck, after that, are the sandals conditioned, waterproofed, or both? Haha. I just want to know what I'm doing.