Mineral oil bad for leather? Or good? Or neutral?

[fredk]

@Sheilajeanne a local Lord has in his tack room a most bootiful saddle made in Italy in 1812. Its still in use but not daily. He also has carriage tack from about 1780s -1820s. I can only get to see this Lord once a year, when my car club play within his estate, and we did that at the end of August. Now I'd shure like to find who looks after his tack and have a talk with that person

[fredk]

3 hours ago, SUP said:

I will be using coconut oil, food grade mineral oil, probably sesame seed oil and  whatever else I have inside.

Good choices

3 hours ago, SUP said:

 I  have veg tanned scraps, oil-tanned scraps and other chrome tanned scraps. I am trying to get some information on what oils and waxes are used to finish oil-tanned leather.  The oils and waxes used in finishing oil-tanned leathers, might affect the results of additional oils.

Do you know anything about it?

last first; No

You lot in the US have a greater range of funny types of leather than I can get.  I'll not be using chrome tan, just veg. I don't have any oil tanned as far as I know. I reckon Ill try some standard veg from Tandy, some from Italy and some from Argy/South America I got from Le Prevo

[SUP]

2 minutes ago, fredk said:

You lot in the US have a greater range of funny types of leather than I can get.  I'll not be using chrome tan, just veg. I don't have any oil tanned as far as I know. I reckon Ill try some standard veg from Tandy, some from Italy and some from Argy/South America I got from Le Prevo

I did not know we had a greater range. Hmm. I usually stick to veg tanned or oil-tanned. Both actually feel like leather. Oil-tanned is chrome tanned as well, with extensive oil or wax treatment and the results are pretty nice. Other chrome tanned, some do too but others are so plasticky, might as well use faux leather.

I plan to only use leather which feels like leather.  I doubt that any leather that is so coated with synthetic material that it feels plasticky needs much conditioning.

Incidentally, I have some fractionated coconut oil - it is supposed to have less of an aroma than cold pressed. Could have fooled me! I applied a drop on my the back of my hand and it is already smelling strongly. Got it from Costco too. I wonder if the smell disappears after a while.

[Northmount]

6 hours ago, SUP said:

he suggests saving the files that people provide as pdf files.  I am not sure how to do that here.

Same procedure as uploading a picture, just select the PDF file on your device.  Has same size requirements for all uploads.  So don't try to attach more than one file.  You'll see a little further back that I edited and uploaded a file from his dropbox.  The second file would have been accepted if the total hadn't gone over the size limit.  (And for larger files, send me a message and I will give you an address to send the file to and will upload it.  I have no file size restriction, at least not any that I have tried to see what it was.  20 or 30 MB.)

[Northmount]

Moved this thread to Dyes, Antiques, Stains, Glues, Waxes, Finishes and Conditioners.   Thinking about pinning it to the top.

[fredk]

Thank you

Just a remembrance; I used to make hand-cream using beeswax, olive oil and lavender oil. Sometimes I have used this on my leather items. I don't think the olive oil ever did any harm to the leather

[Sheilajeanne]

5 hours ago, fredk said:

@Sheilajeanne a local Lord has in his tack room a most bootiful saddle made in Italy in 1812. Its still in use but not daily. He also has carriage tack from about 1780s -1820s. I can only get to see this Lord once a year, when my car club play within his estate, and we did that at the end of August. Now I'd shure like to find who looks after his tack and have a talk with that person

Hoping you do, and please report back afterwards!

[ScottWolf]

1 hour ago, Northmount said:

Moved this thread to Dyes, Antiques, Stains, Glues, Waxes, Finishes and Conditioners.   Thinking about pinning it to the top.

Might I also suggest that you pin my leather conditioner post recipe to the top as well? As it is the only thread that actually has step by step instructions on how to make your own leather conditioner in the sub forum.

[Burkhardt]

11 hours ago, chuck123wapati said:

its not for leather either it will dry out and stink,its for cooking only and only if you have decent health care coverage.

So you have tested and found all these things out by experience yourself?

[chuck123wapati]

5 hours ago, Burkhardt said:

So you have tested and found all these things out by experience yourself?

did you read what i wrote? 

[chuck123wapati]

15 hours ago, fredk said:

@SUP Remember to keep one piece of each leather free of any oils. Its your base reference

I reckon I'll be using; rapeseed oil, vaseline, Johnson's baby oil and 3-in-1 oil

I too buy my threads for their colours and/or thickness. 

I think polyester thread can 'rot'. Long story short; we have about 350 BMW steering wheels. Sewn with polyester thread. About 2/3 or more of them the thread is or has 'rotted' and is breaking down

so are you going to submit the test pieces to any form of natural variables such as the sun, the rain, wear, flexing? i have seen a half dozen discussions over this subject on the forum  usually we end up talking apples and oranges. One person using such and such on a belt he uses only on Sunday going to church and it lasted forever and another saying he full of because he tried it on his motorcycle seat that he's rides out in the Arizona sun every day or some such.

We are talking about a lot of variables in what, why and who owns and uses that particular piece of animal hide.  its not a simple conversation IMO and no one is absolutely right and one oil or conditioner isn't going to work for every application. I apply a heavy water proofing type of product on my outdoor gear to keep the leather in proper order but not on my wallet.

[fredk]

Its a very imperfect experiment. Its just see what happens, first in the short term and secondly in the longer term, but not the forever range. Its just to see, are certain oils really bad for leather? We all have our own stories. This is just a few simple tests, maybe to help dispel myths or even to prove the stories correct

Myth Busters Beware! We're a commin!

1 hour ago, chuck123wapati said:

so are you going to submit the test pieces to any form of natural variables such as the sun, the rain, wear, flexing? 

yes, I'm still thinking on them. Earlier I said we should put each oil/product on about 3 pieces from different hides So at least 9 test pieces, plus a control piece of each. Ech test piece will have to be at least the size of a postcard, about 6 x 4 inches

Lets say test pieces from 3 different veg tan hides

So, I'm thinking

A. 1 of 3 will go in my 'drying' car. Its front screen points almost direct due south, about 176*. It gets the full sun on it all day. Even on cloudy days it gets hot inside. Not as hot as you would get there, but hot enough to almost fry an egg. During the night it gets colder, not until winter will it get to near or below freezing, but only down to about -1 or -2 inside the car at the lowest, about late January time

B. 1 of 3 will be hung outside my flat. It will be subjected to wind, rain sunshine and damp (coldish) night air, 24/7

C. 1 of 3 will be carried in my pockets. I'll rotated them into different pockets so they each get time in different pocket, getting different amounts of wear and body temperature

As I type this I'm reckoning each of those needs a plain control piece with them

And I'm now thinking of maybe cutting some test pieces just so they can be slipped on my belt, to see how they fare on there

I'm gonna skip having threads on the test pieces. Eliminate one uncontrollable variable

I might add in Neets Foot Oil Compound to the tests

Any results I get will of course just be for my environment and any results SUP gets will be for her (?) area

And the thickness of the test pieces will affect results as well

You got any suggestions or comments? 

I hope to get organised on this soon

[SUP]

@fredk my area is rather warmer than yours. I'm in Georgia. 

I think you have a good plan. I should be able to do more or less the same. it's getting cooler here now.

I plan to keep one set in the boot of my  car; the 2nd in the garage which is always either very warm or very cold and dark, and the third set will be outside, exposed to the elements. My only concern is mold. I can take care of it if it appears but that will affect the outcome.

I wonder if we even need to include thread. We know natural fibres break down naturally over time, regardless of treatment.

@chuck123wapati there are, of course, plenty of variables that can affect the leathers. and we cannot include everything. But this is  an effort to determine if the oils are, by themselves good, bad or neutral on the leathers. This very simple experiment will at least give an idea of whether the oils directly affect the leathers in any way.

 

[SUP]

@Northmount, thank you. I will follow those directions on saving articles. I do hope we get more of them!

@fredk About the hand-cream, I am increasingly starting to suspect that most oils do, not harm leather, per se, 'if judiciously used' - those are the operative words..  But then, there is oil tanned leather and how the oils in those leathers are affected by added oils. I am looking into that, a bit pressed for time though.

[fredk]

1 hour ago, SUP said:

My only concern is mold. I can take care of it if it appears but that will affect the outcome.

If mold happens it happens. Its part of the experiment. To see if any oils encourage or discourage the growth of mold 

PS. been thinking thunks about cars in my motor club. Some of the cars, especially the larger ones have leather gaiters around their leaf springs. My car should have them around the rear springs as well. Servicing of the gaiters, other than inspecting and repair of rips, the gaiters should regularly get a good dosing of used engine oil to water-proof them

 

Edited September 21, 2023 by fredk

[chuck123wapati]

1 hour ago, fredk said:

Its a very imperfect experiment. Its just see what happens, first in the short term and secondly in the longer term, but not the forever range. Its just to see, are certain oils really bad for leather? We all have our own stories. This is just a few simple tests, maybe to help dispel myths or even to prove the stories correct

Myth Busters Beware! We're a commin!

yes, I'm still thinking on them. Earlier I said we should put each oil/product on about 3 pieces from different hides So at least 9 test pieces, plus a control piece of each. Ech test piece will have to be at least the size of a postcard, about 6 x 4 inches

Lets say test pieces from 3 different veg tan hides

So, I'm thinking

A. 1 of 3 will go in my 'drying' car. Its front screen points almost direct due south, about 176*. It gets the full sun on it all day. Even on cloudy days it gets hot inside. Not as hot as you would get there, but hot enough to almost fry an egg. During the night it gets colder, not until winter will it get to near or below freezing, but only down to about -1 or -2 inside the car at the lowest, about late January time

B. 1 of 3 will be hung outside my flat. It will be subjected to wind, rain sunshine and damp (coldish) night air, 24/7

C. 1 of 3 will be carried in my pockets. I'll rotated them into different pockets so they each get time in different pocket, getting different amounts of wear and body temperature

As I type this I'm reckoning each of those needs a plain control piece with them

And I'm now thinking of maybe cutting some test pieces just so they can be slipped on my belt, to see how they fare on there

I'm gonna skip having threads on the test pieces. Eliminate one uncontrollable variable

I might add in Neets Foot Oil Compound to the tests

Any results I get will of course just be for my environment and any results SUP gets will be for her (?) area

And the thickness of the test pieces will affect results as well

You got any suggestions or comments? 

I hope to get organised on this soon

 

1 hour ago, SUP said:

@Northmount, thank you. I will follow those directions on saving articles. I do hope we get more of them!

@fredk About the hand-cream, I am increasingly starting to suspect that most oils do, not harm leather, per se, 'if judiciously used' - those are the operative words..  But then, there is oil tanned leather and how the oils in those leathers are affected by added oils. I am looking into that, a bit pressed for time though.

Its going to be an interesting experiment. 

[SUP]

@fredk, good to hear about the leather in your car and other older cars. . It appears more and more likely that it is not the type of oil, per se, that damages leather. Engine oil, being non-organic, should last forever, like mineral oil. Organic oils are fine as long as they are not exposed to air over long periods. Even the olive oils that  I hear were fine over 1000s of years, were in airtight containers.  So air is the villain, it appears, specifically Oxygen. Wonder what the products of oxidative damage of oils are? Do they damage leathers?

 Lots of more research needed.

@chuck123wapati yes it is.

I wish more people would join in, with the oils and leathers they have and in their locale. 

[Northmount]

12 hours ago, ScottWolf said:

Might I also suggest that you pin my leather conditioner post recipe

Pinned

14 hours ago, Northmount said:

Thinking about pinning it to the top.

Pinned

[Burkhardt]

8 hours ago, chuck123wapati said:

did you read what i wrote? 

The meat slicer one or the rest(that one yes I read). Didn't read the actual article you linked, but read everything else you wrote.

[fredk]

I want to share/discuss some reasoning for why I/we should do this. Its long winded, so look away now

This is THE foremost site for leather working information. We should become a Primary source of information on the use of these common oils

I've been studying history for over 50 years and early on I learnt to use primary sources first, then secondary and then tertiary

Primary info is; Me, if I tell you I was in Castle Street, Belfast when a terrorist bomb blew a local bar apart and I was slightly injured and I helped the injured

Secondary info is; my friend who tells you my story to you

Tertiary is; my friend's sister, who tells you my story as she heard it from her brother

After tertiary we just call it anecdotal and more-or-less ignore it

All this in practical use;

Some years ago I was a beekeeper. Due to disease and invasive pests there was a shortage of honey bees in the UK. A real shortage. A friend and I got together and we imported queen bees from parts of Europe and cross-bred them to get disease and pest resistant lines of bees.

There was a large bee keeping conference in Belfast one year. And one of the points to be discussed was the banning of us doing this because we were  damaging the lineage of the natural Irish honey bee.

A very eminent bee keeper of outstanding character gave his written reasoning in a 30 minute lecture.

It took me 10 minutes to refute his claims using 4 Primary sources and 3 secondary ones; I had obtained copies of ancient letters, one from a monk who was asking the pope for permission to import honey bees, from his home monastery in North Eastern France, because there were none in Ireland so he could not make bees wax candles for his church. Another letter was from 150 years later, a viking businessman's letter to one of his partners in Denmark ordering several hundred bee hives with bees because there were no honey bees in Ireland so they were unable to make mead and had to import the mead. Thats 2 primary. The third was a copy of a letter from a UK government inspector who reported in 1917 that the recent 'Isle of Wight' disease had wiped out every bee colony in Ireland, He could not find a single one. The 4th primary was a UK letter back to the inspector telling him that he would be getting so many hundreds of new bee colonies from the 10, 000 the UK were importing from Denmark to replace all the colonies wiped out by the disease

So we have 3 x primary over a period of about 1400 years telling us that at certain times there were no honey bees in Ireland and 3 x primary telling us bees were imported from other countries 

Another, maybe a primary source, or maybe secondary, was another bee keeper. A top scientist who lectured at Queens University and did work for the our local government. One of his specialties was looking at the DNA of plants and insects. When he first heard me say about the monk and viking importing bees he had run DNA tests on  honey bees. He and his students had got several hundreds of bees from all over Ireland, Their results were; the bees in the West and South-West were the same as Icelandic bees, bees in the South-East, the East were a mix of Norwegian and Danish, and the bees in the North were Danish. There was no separate lineage to indicate a separate Irish honey bee

The second secondary source was the report from an eminent entomologist, made in the 1960s, that after years of research that the 'native Irish 'Black' honey bee' was a myth and that honey bees were not indigenous to the island of Ireland

A third secondary was a research paper which listed the ancient Irish laws. Giving the penalties and compensation to be paid for certain offences and within those, which changed only slightly over 1000 year period, the mention of honey bees only shows up 10 years after the monk's letter and never before.

So let us become that primary source. Our experiment may be imperfect but at least our information will not be, I read it in a book published in 1974 and they got it from such-a-such book published in 1929 sort of thing

Sorry for the long ramble

 

[SUP]

@fredk you hit the nail on the head. 

Incidentally, oxidation of oils produces peroxides as well as  alcohols, aldehydes and ketones, among other things. Not what we expect to put on our leathers. 

Oils oxidize on contact with the oxygen in the air - they smell unpleasant, or not, based on the exact type of chemical produced. But just because there is no smell, it does not mean there is no oxidation happening; it just means that the products are of a type that do not have a strong smell; longer chain versus short chain fatty acids but that is going too technical..

It suggests that oils should be stored in air tight containers to prolong their lives. And maybe used lightly on leathers, except dry leathers which needs lubrication.

Maybe some sort of anti-oxidant could be used as well. Need to look that up.

 

[dikman]

An interesting read, Fred. When I first got interested in leatherwork I did lots of reading about it (still do) and I was adamant I would only use natural products to treat it - pure neatsfoot oil, beeswax, olive oil, lanolin  - no petrochemical products. My thinking has now changed slightly in that perhaps pharmaceutical/food grade mineral oil might not be the evil product that I originally thought. It's use certainly makes it easier to concoct the thin pastes that are commercially available (I tried using pure gum turpentine as a thinning agent once, but over time it left a black residue in the tin I had the wax in so I won't use that again).

[fredk]

8 hours ago, chuck123wapati said:

Its going to be an interesting experiment. 

yes, and a long one too. I hope I'll still be around long enuf 

[fredk]

I won't start the oiling just yet. I don't have enuf 3-in-1 and I'm out of olive. I'll not be shopping until Monday or Tuesday next week

 @SUP, I might be teaching 'granny to suck eggs'  - remember to measure the quantity of the oil you'll be putting on your leather so each piece getting that oil gets the same amount. You don't need anything special to measure, a soup spoon, an egg cup, an aluminum or waxed paper bun case

We are on page 3 now. This is gonna end up a loooong thread  

PS; I'm going to keep a note book. I'll divide it onto sections so each test piece can get its own report

Edited September 22, 2023 by fredk

[chuck123wapati]

17 hours ago, SUP said:

@fredk, good to hear about the leather in your car and other older cars. . It appears more and more likely that it is not the type of oil, per se, that damages leather. Engine oil, being non-organic, should last forever, like mineral oil. Organic oils are fine as long as they are not exposed to air over long periods. Even the olive oils that  I hear were fine over 1000s of years, were in airtight containers.  So air is the villain, it appears, specifically Oxygen. Wonder what the products of oxidative damage of oils are? Do they damage leathers?

 Lots of more research needed.

@chuck123wapati yes it is.

I wish more people would join in, with the oils and leathers they have and in their locale. 

 

I may do that my area of the world is very dry humidity wise, so dry in fact i have found leather shoe pieces out in the old homestead dump's that have been laying on the ground for at least a100 years. Another thing to think about is viscosity of the oils used and its relation ship to the process. oils will at some point migrate out of the leather just due to gravity, lighter oils moving easier through the leather fibers may be lost sooner, its another reason we have to add oils over time. You may want to think about what your pieces are going to be laying on or in as they also could wick the oils away from the leather.

I do have some rendered elk tallow I could try, as well as the manufactured product i use. wish i had some bear grease it was traditionally used as well.