DIY leather conditioner

[deboardp]

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.

[Handstitched]

A bit off topic, in amongst some  leather stuff I was given,  was a jar of home made  'leather dressing' , mostly made out of pig fat a bit of wax ,  I opened it up , OMG  the smell  was putrid, I threw it out 

HS

[deboardp]

4 minutes ago, Handstitched said:

A bit off topic, in amongst some  leather stuff I was given,  was a jar of home made  'leather dressing' , mostly made out of pig fat a bit of wax ,  I opened it up , OMG  the smell  was putrid, I threw it out 

HS

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. 

Edited January 1 by deboardp

[bladegrinder]

Lard definitely goes rancid.I have a corn feeder out in the woods for deer and squirrel's were climbing up and nawing at the feeder, first I smeared the legs with bearing grease, that worked for the coons but not the squirrels. then I top coated that with vasoline, they still managed to get up there. then I smeared lard on them, that didn't work either. then I put bird spike ribbons on them, that slowed them down but a few use them like a stairway. now, two weeks later when I walk up to it I can smell the lard. it's gone rancid for sure.

[chuck123wapati]

12 hours ago, deboardp said:

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! 

Thanks for the link i look forward to reading it. 

lol in the last 50,000 years or so of people using leather I'll bet almost every thing has been tried once or twice times a hundred thousand. Conditioning leather isn't a new science, its a forgotten science maybe for sake of a better definition. Done by every race and society on earth each with their own ways of tanning, their own oils and their own greases and their own environments that the leather has to survive.

Here is how you reduce the smell of your tallow, its good for making soap also so dont just throw it out.https://www.faithfulcarnivore.com/post/howtorenderandpurifyodorlessbeeftallow

I don't usually make my own conditioners for the above reason unless it for my black powder grip which I use fats and greases that a fur trapper may have access to. There is nothing I could make any better or unique enough to waste the time and most of my clients don't care either. I don't use it as an advertising ploy which seems to be the norm lately after all its gotta have those "new age" buzz words to sell to some groups. I really don't think Monks would be that petty would they? lol.  

 I apply neets foot oil then use a product from feibings called golden mink oil. I can tell it has a base of petroleum jelly, smells great and works great i have no idea what ratios it is made from. then a sealer if needed a good deal of the time I use clear shoe polish. It is highly used and has been around for many many years, used personally by me so I know it works, pretty well for at least 30 years. If were to make my own i would do just as you are doing and find an old recipe to start with.

Now that is for veg tanned leather. I also brain tan my deer and Elk hides and i use an emulsion of ivory hand soap neets foot oil and water to help tan and condition the hides before smoking them.

 

[deboardp]

4 hours ago, chuck123wapati said:

Here is how you reduce the smell of your tallow, its good for making soap also so dont just throw it out.

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.

 

4 hours ago, chuck123wapati said:

don't usually make my own conditioners for the above reason unless it for my black powder grip which I use fats and greases that a fur trapper may have access to. There is nothing I could make any better or unique enough to waste the time and most of my clients don't care either.

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?

4 hours ago, chuck123wapati said:

I really don't think Monks would be that petty would they? lol.  

 

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??

Edited January 1 by deboardp

[chuck123wapati]

40 minutes ago, deboardp said:

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??

lol i worked with both too but in a prison setting, they were all sober and clean by then but some were still vipers.

By grip i meant stuff or belongings, lol, like the leather bags and pouches and such that folks of that era would have used.

Brain tanning is a different way of tanning leather using the brains of the animal as the tanning agent. Native Americans used the process. The leather is much softer and flexible  than veg tanned leather.

[dikman]

My tallow, rendered from suet from sheep, doesn't smell and so far has survived many years of stinking hot summers and cold winters stored in an uninsulated small shed. I've used it in various concoctions, mixed with beeswax, linseed oil, neatsfoot oil, olive oil, baby oil etc and so far it has remained stable.

Just sayin'.......

[deboardp]

1 hour ago, dikman said:

My tallow, rendered from suet from sheep, doesn't smell and so far has survived many years of stinking hot summers and cold winters stored in an uninsulated small shed. I've used it in various concoctions, mixed with beeswax, linseed oil, neatsfoot oil, olive oil, baby oil etc and so far it has remained stable.

Just sayin'.......

Did you render it or did it come rendered?

[dikman]

Made it myself. A butcher gave me some suet and I chopped it up and cooked it (slowly) in a crockpot/slow cooker for a few hours. At the end I had a clear liquid and lots of hard crispy bits, I filtered the bits out and when it cooled I had this lovely milky-coloured block.

[deboardp]

On 1/1/2024 at 10:04 AM, chuck123wapati said:

Thanks for the link i look forward to reading it. 

lol in the last 50,000 years or so of people using leather I'll bet almost every thing has been tried once or twice times a hundred thousand. Conditioning leather isn't a new science, its a forgotten science maybe for sake of a better definition. Done by every race and society on earth each with their own ways of tanning, their own oils and their own greases and their own environments that the leather has to survive.

Here is how you reduce the smell of your tallow, its good for making soap also so dont just throw it out.https://www.faithfulcarnivore.com/post/howtorenderandpurifyodorlessbeeftallow

I don't usually make my own conditioners for the above reason unless it for my black powder grip which I use fats and greases that a fur trapper may have access to. There is nothing I could make any better or unique enough to waste the time and most of my clients don't care either. I don't use it as an advertising ploy which seems to be the norm lately after all its gotta have those "new age" buzz words to sell to some groups. I really don't think Monks would be that petty would they? lol.  

 I apply neets foot oil then use a product from feibings called golden mink oil. I can tell it has a base of petroleum jelly, smells great and works great i have no idea what ratios it is made from. then a sealer if needed a good deal of the time I use clear shoe polish. It is highly used and has been around for many many years, used personally by me so I know it works, pretty well for at least 30 years. If were to make my own i would do just as you are doing and find an old recipe to start with.

Now that is for veg tanned leather. I also brain tan my deer and Elk hides and i use an emulsion of ivory hand soap neets foot oil and water to help tan and condition the hides before smoking them.

 

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.

[chuck123wapati]

16 hours ago, deboardp said:

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.

https://www.amazon.com/Fiebings-Golden-Mink-Leather-Preserver/dp/B000HHQ42Y

[deboardp]

47 minutes ago, chuck123wapati said:

https://www.amazon.com/Fiebings-Golden-Mink-Leather-Preserver/dp/B000HHQ42Y

Yeah, that one.

 

[deboardp]

On 12/31/2023 at 10:07 PM, bladegrinder said:

Lard definitely goes rancid.I have a corn feeder out in the woods for deer and squirrel's were climbing up and nawing at the feeder, first I smeared the legs with bearing grease, that worked for the coons but not the squirrels. then I top coated that with vasoline, they still managed to get up there. then I smeared lard on them, that didn't work either. then I put bird spike ribbons on them, that slowed them down but a few use them like a stairway. now, two weeks later when I walk up to it I can smell the lard. it's gone rancid for sure.

I read somewhere that oils and fats go rancid when they are exposed to air. But if they are inside a piece of leather, there's no air in there. Also historically, FOR CENTURIES, fats in the form of tallow and lard have been stuffed into leather used by saddlers. If their saddles stank of dead meat, for sure the ladies would have said something, if the men didn't. One saddler said that cod liver oil rubbed onto fat- stuffed leather restores the smell of leather. 

I had quoted that a fellow said his leather stank after he used lard, but he had made a false statement about something else, so I no longer believe anything he has to say, about anything. Therfore I'm inclined to use the pork leaf fat that was delivered just now. I think I have to render it myself. I'll investigate that situation later, while it thaws. 

Edited January 5 by deboardp
Correcting my phone's typing errors

[SUP]

@deboardp That is why people wax eloquent about olive oil being discovered from thousands(?) of years ago, not gone rancid. Of course not, they were in air tight bottles! 

I also wonder at the personal hygiene of the people centuries ago.  No running water, toilet paper or equivalents being used, no air conditioners in the heat...   where did BO end and smelly leather begin or vice versa? Would the ladies even notice, since they would be in the same boat? Must have been a smelly world -Just saying...

[chuck123wapati]

i have elk tallow that is over ten years old and still not rancid.

leather shoes wo socks/ sandals will smell like the feet that wear them in just a few weeks more or less. They take up human oil s from the body as well

[deboardp]

I've been thawing the pork leaf fat and smelled it. It has almost no smell at all, maybe only a couple molecules that remind me of smoked pig hocks. It's pure white, rough textured. The plastic 2 lb  container says it is "pork leaf fat, refined", whatever that means. I think it needs to be melted in order to be rendered, but that's a guess. 

The second delivery is Wagyu Beef Tallow from South Chicago Packing. It is white and looks super saturated, dense looking. Like the pork leaf fat it has maybe one molecule per inhalation that suggests beef source, but neuter of these very slight smells was unpleasant. In fact I had to inhale deep and concentrate and think, is that a smell? This particular tallow reminds me of Crisco. The first one I bought, in a14 oz glass jar is Fatworks  Pure Tallow, Organic Cooking Oil, a yellow solid that smells like hamburger run off. I question whether this one is derived from leaf fat of the animal. I don't plan to use it. 

I'm making progress on a pair of sandals for myself. I'm using some processes I didn't use 50 years ago, so despite having a list of ten people who want a pair, I'm making mine first, to make sure I've got a handle on those processes. Burnishing, 45 degree slots rather than straight through at 90, middle with channels cut out, machine stitching, stuffing with fats, lanolin and wax, gluing the gum rubber on the bottom without stitches or tacks...

The third product that came is the Norwegian cod liver oil, processes to remind impurities and the smell. It has maybe one molecule of fish smell, and that's debatable. Essentially free of smell. The three of them actually. I had to be really nosey to smell anything. Just stick my nose in it, practically. 

OK, I'm off to update my sandal progress in that other thread in the Show Off forum. Check it out!

I'll make a list of who sells these odor free products when I find one of the three invoices. 

[dikman]

To my thinking if it's called tallow then that means it has been rendered down, if they call it "refined" then who knows what that means? Personally, I would render that pork fat before I'd consider using it on leather, I wouldn't use any animal fat unless it was rendered to make tallow.

[deboardp]

2 hours ago, dikman said:

To my thinking if it's called tallow then that means it has been rendered down, if they call it "refined" then who knows what that means? Personally, I would render that pork fat before I'd consider using it on leather, I wouldn't use any animal fat unless it was rendered to make tallow.

I read somewhere that leaf fat is the fat surrounding the kidneys, and it's creamier and smoother than fats found on other parts of the body. I do intend to render it. It's not in a usable form. Here's a procedure how to do it, With amounts to use and equipment. Here

[deboardp]

2 hours ago, dikman said:

To my thinking if it's called tallow then that means it has been rendered down, if they call it "refined" then who knows what that means? Personally, I would render that pork fat before I'd consider using it on leather, I wouldn't use any animal fat unless it was rendered to make tallow.

I read somewhere that leaf fat is the fat surrounding the kidneys, and it's creamier and smoother than fats found on other parts of the body. 

[dikman]

"Once rendered it keeps basically forever in the freezer and for months in the fridge." That suggests that it has a limited lifespan and  is not stable indefinitely at room temperature , not what you want to use on leather.

[deboardp]

34 minutes ago, dikman said:

"Once rendered it keeps basically forever in the freezer and for months in the fridge." That suggests that it has a limited lifespan and  is not stable indefinitely at room temperature , not what you want to use on leather.

Both the fridge and the freezer have something in them that leather does not have in it, and that something is what causes fats to go rancid. Air. 

Isn't that what causes fats to "go bad"?

I mean, the old saddler's formulas used this stuff, and the people who had saddles were people of at least some substance, probably with some degree of intelligence. Would they buy saddles that smelled rotten?

[AlZilla]

I quit trying to follow this lengthy back and forth but I'll suggest looking at Blackrock's Leather N' Rich rather than DIYing it:

https://www.amazon.com/BLACKROCK-LEATHER-CLEANER-WITH-COND/dp/B008NB5QC0/ref=psdc_15718541_t1_B0846TH772

I don't know exactly what's in it and I'm not interested in defending it. It just works for me. YMMV.

[dikman]

So far everything I've read about rendering pork fat to make lard has referred to a shelf life of maybe a year in a fridge but it eventually goes rancid even in the fridge. Outside the fridge it will likely have a shorter lifespan. As you already have some of this pork leaf fat might I suggest you render it down and store it at room temperature to see how long it lasts? It may be a long term experiment but I'm sure quite a few on here would be interested in the results.

I'll stick with my sheep tallow, I know it's stable at a wide range of room temperatures, has a fairly high melting point (significantly higher than pork fat) and stores indefinitely without turning rancid.

[fredk]

I had a block of pork fat based lard in my fridge for at least 10 years. It never went rancid. I only threw it out because of a change in my diet.

I bought a new fresh block for to do our oils & fats tests. That was 3 months ago