hardening leather writing pad surface

[Zanshin]

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:

 

[dikman]

In my (limited) experience with holsters I've found that the wetting, for wet-molding, tends to harden the leather, and using dyes does like-wise. I believe Medieval leather armour was hardened by soaking in water? The fact that you've worked beeswax into the leather is going to make it difficult to do anything as beeswax helps to keep leather soft (and will be almost impossible to get out). Using carnauba wax, with a polishing buffing wheel, may be about the only thing you can do.

[TomE]

Might look at stearic acid added to beeswax as a hardener, and working the hot wax mixture into the pre-warmed leather.  I read about this in the current issue of the Leather Crafters and Saddlers Journal.  There's an article on "Custom Hardened Leather Arch Supports" by Jason Timmermans, and I see  a fair amount online about using stearic acid as a wax hardener.  

[Zanshin]

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!