Discolored Leather - Help Please...

[jbbailey]

Hi there, I am hoping someone might be able to help. I bought an old 1930s Tanker Desk which has had the original rubber top replaced with an interesting leather top at some point in its life. As you can hopefully see in the attached picture, the leather looks like someone has cleaned it with something and made it go white? I tried using a black cream cleaner and it hasn't restored the colour. The surface is shiny as if the white discolouring has soaked really deep. I was wondering if anyone knew what might have done this, but more importantly, any ideas on the best products to try and restore to a nice black? Thanks

[Char]

You should definitely get advice from other people on this before doing anything..

But I would try rubbing it with acetone nail polish remover. That is fantastic at removing surface coats on leather, which I'm guessing may be the problem here.. It should strip it down to the point where you can re-dye it.. it should get rid of the sheen and allow products to sink in. Then you'd want to seal it with a varnish of some sort.

Good luck!

[jbbailey]

Hi, first of all thank you for your reply (and apologies for not responding sooner, I decided to take a short trip and only just got back).

I'm going to tackle this this weekend coming but hoping to order materials for it in the next day or two. I had a few questions, if anyone had the time to respond to; I'd hugely appreciate it, being a total novice:

1.) I've read a lot on here about Acetone being bad and sometimes making re-dying patchy, but others seem to suggest it would be the best thing to remove this high sheen and white marking this leather has seem to picked up at some point in it's life. Would Oxalic Acid be any better or would this not be strong enough to remove the high shine coating?

2.) What could I re-dye the leather with after being stripped and do I need a finisher after dying? Any help hugely appreciated.

Edited June 24, 2013 by jbbailey