DIY leather conditioner

[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

[deboardp]

3 hours ago, dikman said:

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?

Why would I want to store it at room temperature?? And why are you asking me to do this instead of answering my valid observation and question to you, that stuffed leather doesn't have air inside it? That stored fat in the fridge or freezer is different from fats inside leather due to the absence of air? What do you think of that?

I'm planning to render the pork leaf fat in the oven but I need to buy a crock pot. I guess I will try the recipe that Oz Black posted here years ago, which includes beef tallow, Beeswax, pork lard, and lanolin. When my skinny knives arrive, for cutting out the corners of my strap slots, I'll finish the sandals for my feet and stuff the leathers with the concoction. I'll see what all the fuss is about. Neither the tallow nor the lard now smell, but the wax and the Lanolin definitely smell positively nice. I'll add just a bit of macadamia nut oil, so it's a softer paste. 

@fredk ten years! It should be noted that both tallow and lard can be made from either leaf fat, which is the white fat that surrounds the kidneys of cow and pig, or from the fat attached to skeletal muscle and skin. 

With the advances in chemistry of fossil fuels, maybe it's time for me to consider possibly using some of those fossil fuel byproducts. How is it even possible that in 2023 leather workers don't have definitive answers to the question of what is the best leather conditioner for sandals??? 

Edited January 9, 2024 by deboardp
My phone is stupid

[ScottWolf]

On 1/6/2024 at 3:01 PM, AlZilla said:

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.

Some information that may be of  interest on this product, seeing how it also applies to the topic of this thread. As with a good deal of commercially available leather conditioning products that people use/swear by, it has mineral oil in it. However, its not used for its solvent properties, as it is in some products. In this one, it is actually 12-16% Mineral Oil with 45% of the product being water and the remaining percentages of ingredients as listed below.It's also worth noting that this product has a strong chemical smell to it, similar to what Simply Green smells like.  But the real eye opener ingredient is the Ethylene Glycol (anti freeze).

It's pretty safe to say that if one is making their own leather conditioners with tallows, beeswax, Lanolin, oils, etc, that it's going to have higher percentages of actual conditioning ingredients than most commercially available products that aren't sold as all natural.

The MSDS for it can be found here. https://www.springfieldleather.com/sds-sheets/Blackrock Conditioner/Blackrock.pdf

 

SECTION 2 - Composition/Information on Ingredients
Ingredients (Specific)              %               CAS#
Carnauba Wax                         6.96          8015-86-9
Mineral Oil                                 12.8-16      64741-44-2
Ethylene Glycol                         11.6            107-21-1
Fatty Acids                                6.4-9.6       68604-75-1
Water                                         45.38          7732-18-5
Hydrogentated tallow alkyl    4.06            68201-30-9
Butoxyethanol 2-                     2.24-3.2       111-76-2
Propanol 2                                 1.6-3.2        67-63-0
Poly(oxy-1,2-ethanediyl)          <1                 34398-01-1

[deboardp]

14 minutes ago, ScottWolf said:

it is actually 12-16% Mineral Oil with 45% of the product being water

I won't use mineral oil in my conditioner because it is occlusive - it traps water in leather, which makes the leather rot. 

[fredk]

Many, many oils are 'occlusive'; Lanolin, bees wax, NFO . . . 

Rather than 'locking in' the water and causing leather to rot an 'occlusive' limits the airflow allowing moisture to be released slowly, keeping the leather from completely drying out

[SUP]

@fredk, true. A good leather conditioner therefore does not really require a host of ingredients. A couple will do the job, since most are multi-functional.