Oils In Leather (Chemistry)

[spectre6000]

Thanks!

I've put together the start of the above mentioned lipid chart. With all the health claims (imagined and otherwise) surrounding so many oils, I'm having a hard time finding complete information on a lot of them. I also need to track down the decomposition byproducts for the various fatty acids to see where I can get my vanilla notes and what's going to make things smell like formaldehyde.... In the meantime though, I picked up some walnut and flax oils, and I have a steady supply of olive oil on hand at any given time. I'm not even going to bother with neatsfoot oil out of boredom. I've used it (so has everyone else), I know what it does, and I really don't need to see it again. That said, I think I'm going to try to track down some beeswax to round out my lipid collection (sorta)...

Flax/linseed oil: This, combined with pigments and polishing, is what was traditionally used to make patent leather before the advent and mass availability of petrochemicals. Leaving out the pigments and polishing should make for an excellent protective polymer coating at the surface of the leather penetrating down as deep as oxygen is able to penetrate the fiber matrix/polymerized fatty acids. Flax oil is ~53% a-linoleic acid (which is why it's so popular as a dietary supplement) with only ~10% saturated fat and ~21% monounsaturated (compared to ~28/60/2 for neet/neatsfoot and 16/71/10 for olive), so it won't necessarily be the best lubricant for the leather fibers after the polyunsaturated content has broken down and migrated. Mixed in some proportion with some heavier oils, reasonable levels of lubrication should still easily be achievable. Mixed with beeswax might be interesting as well, but the polymerization of the a-linoleics in the flaxseed oil might just be unnecessarily duplicative in the surface finish/darkening effects of the beeswax and I'm not sure it would really be a worthwhile result for anything save thoroughness. I know flax goes rancid in the traditional sense (with the foul odor from whatever aromatic byproducts) very quickly and easily (which is why it's sold in small quantities, in opaque bottles, and refrigerated), so the flax-only sample will be a great stress test for the way the leather deals with unpleasant aromatic compounds. The unsaturated:saturated fat ratio is pretty high at roughly 9.0:1. There are more extremely polyunsaturated oils (i.e. almond, safflower, and canola oils), but with the exception of almond (a potential allergy concern for some), these aren't especially interesting beyond a cost perspective. I might have some canola in the pantry, and if I do I'll give it a shot just out of convenience.

Walnut oil: This has a fairly high concentration of polyunsaturated acids (similar to the flax), but the double bond is in a different place and the resulting decomposition byproducts are not the same. That said, it's still a traditional wood finish, and there is still some polymerization of the fatty acid byproducts from decomposition. It also has a pleasant earthy smell, so this will be a nice test of that part of the puzzle. It has slightly less polyunsaturated content on the whole compared to the flax oil, but it's what I was able to find at the grocery store when I was looking for the flax oil that I could (incorrectly, it turns out) remember the rough fatty acid composition off the top of my head. I meant for it to be a better middle ground between the olive and flax oils, but it's still one of the oils I had in mind initially, and worst case scenario I can always cook with it or take it out to the wood shop. Where it does mix things up is the unsaturated:saturated fat ratio, which is very close to that of olive oil at 5.3:1, swapping monounsaturated content for polyunsaturated.

Olive oil: This can sort of be thought of as the control. It's been used many times by many people for many centuries with great success, and its preferable in my book on a number of levels to neet/neatsfoot oil. It shifts the fatty acid profile up the molecular weight classes predominantly to the monounsaturated range, but is otherwise on par with the walnut oil for saturated fatty acid content. The unsaturated:saturated ratio is about 5.1:1.

Beeswax: This is sort of a ringer... I think it might be the best way to get the color I'm after provided I can get the oil to wax ratios right. It's an awfully large molecule, and it might balance out well with some lighter oils... According to some of the literature I've read, a big part of the darker colors come from essentially slicking/flattening/smoothing the surface fibers to change the amount of surface area available to reflect light. Beeswax is about the most effective thing you can do to get this done quickly, though at the expense of flexibility if used exclusively. Cutting it with some lighter oil(s) may prove an excellent way to have/eat cake. I talked to another leatherworker on the phone last night who uses a beeswax/neet/neatsfoot oil mix regularly, and he says it's the bees knees (pun intended, all blame for tasteless puns lies with me though). Beeswax is another traditional leather treatment, though it results in very hard leathers. While it does have triglyceride content, it is far more complex than simply an oil. It seemed to me given the wide variety of products made with the stuff, that it should be able to be mixed with some oils to make a hybrid treatment similar to some of the other oil blends I read about. Unlike lard (straight up saturated fatty acids), beeswax doesn't have much that actually CAN go rancid... No risk of spue/spew, no risk of foul odors (on the contrary, it might impart a honey-like scent), etc. etc. Mixing lighter and (much) heavier oils to treat leather is (was) an extremely common practice and I can't for the life of me think of a reason this would be bad UNLESS it prevents mobility of the free fatty acids from the decomposition of the lighter oils to the surface... The challenge here will be temperature control... According to the literature, high quality vegetable tanned leathers start to go bad around 160°, and the lesser stuff as low as 140°. Beeswax has a melting temperature of 145°-150°, so unless the leather I have is reasonably high quality, it could be a completely incompatible finish. I honestly don't remember where it came from or what it is beyond a plain veg tanned side, but I'm using the best of the lot in actuality... Experimentally I'm using some belly scrap that would otherwise be destined for tool facings. Additionally, flax oil does NOT like high temperatures and will break down very quickly (same story with the walnut oil). Fortunately, the byproducts of the breakdown of these oils with heat are exactly the sort of chemicals that are desirable in the end product from a finish perspective... I called a local apiarist up, and I'll be headed out sometime tomorrow to pick up some raw beeswax (bee bits and all) to round out the collection.

It's possible I get itchy for something a shade more saturated, and if so I'll pick something up and share that information here. I also need to figure out exactly how I'm going to manage the temperature control for the waxed samples. I may check with my physicist friend/neighbor to see if he has any good temperature sensors in an appropriate range, and maybe we'll hook something up with a controller (arduino, raspberry, something like that) to keep it right in the sweet spot. If not, I'll use a meat/candy thermometer and wing it for the experiment phase.

[spectre6000]

Met up with the apiarist today, and when I said 'raw beeswax' I had something in mind along the lines of a block, solo cup-shaped, or bowl-shaped body of wax peppered with whatever little bits here and there... The apiarist, obviously closer to the situation and more familiar with the goings on of an apiarist, had something entirely different in mind. I brought a clean gallon ziplock bag with me in case the beeswax was prone to leaving residues (maybe still had traces of honey in it or something?), and it's a good thing I did because his definition of 'raw beeswax' required such a container! I have a gallon of loose and fluffy little flakes, chunks, fully formed honeycomb, grass, dirt, and desiccated bee corpses. Not what I had in mind, but I guess it only adds to the experience! "Authentic", I think they call it. Anyway, I picked up some cheese cloth on the way back for obvious reasons. This will be fun!

Next step is designing the experiment in terms of mixtures, vessels, temperature control, etc. According to the literature, vegetable tanned leather starts to 'go bad' between 140-160° depending on the quality. I'm not sure exactly what that means in 1916 terms, but I'm going to hope the majority of the leather a century on is from the higher quality end of the spectrum... It had better be, because beeswax melts between 145-150, and that's hot enough to ruin about half the spectrum of leather qualities. I'm trying to figure out what vessels I can get my hands on that will either be easily cleaned of the beeswax/oil residues or are recyclable and can handle the temperatures. I'm using boiling water as my testing fluid/temperature (upper limit on temperature while melting/mixing wax), and I've already ruled out the bulk food containers from whole foods (too bad too, because the smallest ones are an excellent size and shape for my needs). I'd hate to waste some small canning jars in the event I can't get them clean... Dropping room temperature leather into hot wax will result in a wax shell around the leather instead of the desired penetration, and according to the literature, getting it as close to the temperature of the wax as possible will lead to the best results, as you can just drop it in and let it soak until it stops bubbling (assuming the wax isn't too hot), then pull it out, put it back in the oven and let the excess drip off or soak out into some absorbent cloth or something (I don't remember exactly what, if anything, was referenced in the industrial application being described).

The samples that are simply intended to be oiled will be about as straight forward as you can get. The bellies I'm using to test are about as dry as you can get having been in storage for as long as they must have been in a dry climate, so I'm entertaining the idea of introducing a moisture element to the mix. One set of samples is dry as a bone (maybe even another set dried further in the oven while tempering the leather destined for wax treatment), one set cased a day before, and a last set cased shortly before oiling. Moisture is said to be instrumental to proper oil penetration. The mechanism described is as the water evaporates, it draws the oil into the leather, and if the leather is too dry, by the time you get full penetration to the inner parts of the leather, the outside is too saturated... Might as well give it a shot while I'm making a mess.

I do have some canola oil in the pantry, so that'll end up in the mix. I thought I had some coconut oil as well, but that seems to have ended up in a cake... Oh well. Canola is the most extreme unsaturated:saturated oil I have on my chart at 15.7:1 (62% mono, 32% polyunsaturated). Coconut is on the other extreme of my chart at 0.1:1 for reference. I also have some ghee (rendered butter) in case I want to tref (de-kosher-ize) things up a bit...

Does anyone have any ideas for temperature control in the desired range and mode? Modern ovens don't go below 170° due to food safety concerns, so that would be a very touchy way to go. I have a slow cooker, and the 'warm' setting on that might be in the range, but I fear the fear of litigation might make that not suitable in the same way. It's possible I could construct an insulated box, rig up a temperature probe, a heating element, and some sort of controller, but that's a lot of work for what could easily be nothing more than a goof off experiment... I need to hit and hold steady within +/-5° of 150°... Oh... and I need to do it X2... Once in a device to bring the leather up to temp and hold it there, and another to bring the wax up to temp and hold it there across multiple small jars/samples. I have an IR thermometer that I could use to monitor things on the fly if need be, but that could end up requiring quite a bit of juggling for one person.

[TinkerTailor]

1st, get a muffin tin from the thrift store to pour the wax into. You can just pop out the pucks after. Removing wax from fabric and wood is a bitch, however any hard surface can get wax on it, and it is not hard to remove. Sometimes i rub oil into it to loosen it and then use dish soap to get it off. I have also boiled dishes in water to get the wax off, beeswax wax floats.

Btw, this property can be used to purify, boil the raw wax in water and let it cool, the solids should sink and the oils will separate. You can just lift off the wax cake once cool. This is the stage you remelt and run it through your cheesecloth. If you try to strain the raw wax you have already, it is going to be difficult. Make sure the wax is dry before you heat it, you don't want steam bubbles coming up through the wax melted wax. I wait a few days between steps just to be sure. It can make a big mess, and burn skin off if water boils under wax. It can even explode if the wax has a crust and hasnt melted yet, allowing pressure to build.

One good thing about the completely unrefined wax, it has the propolis in it still.

Double boilers work just fine for beeswax. A candy thermometer from the grocery store is sufficient. A crock pot will also work, many now have sous vide settings at 130-140f.

You can also just rub the wax on and hit it with a heat gun until the wax just liquifies and soaks in, then stop. This can be repeated over and over.

If you have an ir gun, a clothes iron at the silk setting is between 140-160. Use the ir to fine tune temp. You could rub the wax on, put silicone parchment baking paper over top and iron it in. This may additionally add a glazing effect to the leather.

Silicone parchment paper is your friend if working with hot wax. It is heat resistant and impervious to wax. Plus it is in the grocery store.

[spectre6000]

For the wax I found an old plastic tupperware thing that I'm pretty sure the lid has disappeared its lid, lined that in parchment paper, and then lined that with a layer of aluminum foil... Wasn't enough to keep the wax from finding its way to the tupperware. I picked up a pot and lid that looked like it might be about the right size from the thrift store (and a beautiful sewing machine ca. 1959 for my wife for xmas! Because I need more projects!), cleaned it as well as I could, and used it as the top of a double boiler.

Eventually, it double boiled its way down and I ran it through some cheese cloth. It's cooling now on the stove, and it's definitely going to need some additional cleansing. I knew there were a ton of bees in there, but I had no idea the number of larvae of all sizes! First time dealing with that stuff, and it was full of surprises!

Too bad I didn't read that before I went to the thrift store. My plan at this point once it's sufficiently cleaned up is to cut it into chunks per batch roughly by weight and/or by an appropriate volume for the samples. The muffin tin idea may be about perfect for suspending over a pot filled with boiling water to get the wax/oil to melt in little batches all at once though...

What's the story on the propolis? Why is this a good thing?

I was thinking sous vide, equipment... Might be a good thread for research to find some ways to manage the temperatures necessary. Good to know about the iron setting as well. Hadn't thought of that. An upturned iron that has a pretty steady state in the desired range could make for a much simpler heating element for a hot box of sorts... Or maybe for muffin tin cups (just cut them apart).

What about light bulbs? Incandescent bulbs make great inexpensive resistors if you don't need much in the way of accuracy. They may also make a reasonably predictable amount of heat... Hell, a straight up resistor might even make some predictable amount of heat come to think of it... Typically the only thing of concern there is getting rid of the heat, and the rule is overkill for margin of safety. My physicist friend has tons of old electrical junk in his shop (he's into electronics like I'm into cars), and I KNOW there are some heavy duty heat sinks... It's not a huge leap to think that there might be heavy duty heat sources to match... Certainly not the most efficient way to go about it, but for getting controlled heat for a few hours without spending a ton of money may be worth the exercise in electron excess.

Can a typical cooler handle 150° for an extended period of time?

Edited December 3, 2015 by spectre6000

[spectre6000]

Current status:

Waylaid by the more or less unanticipated beeswax refining project, and while I was at the thrift store picking up some sacrificial cookware, I found a beautiful sewing machine from 1959 in my wife's favorite color in a '50s Chevy Bel Air-esque design motif complete down to the owners manual, and functional but dirty and in dire need of a tune up. For $20, it was hard not to do it. So while beeswax has been melting, filtering, floating, and cooling these last several evenings, I've been methodically cleaning, lubricating, and adjusting this little jewel to like new (minus a few characterful chips in the lacquer here and there). I still need to find some foot pad things, make a few soft parts, fabricate a replacement for the one broken part, and clean the case, but the hard part is done.

Meanwhile, we went out to dinner last night with my researcher friends, and the physicist and I devised a test methodology. Using TinkerTailor's iron suggestion, today I'll go cut a few scabs of 1/4" mild steel to serve as thermal batteries to keep the temperature constant while the iron cycles. The scabs will be heated to temp on parchment paper over an iron on the appropriate setting (measured with IR thermometer) under a cotton cloth/insulator, and the leather test pieces will be placed between them to be brought up to temp. Wax/oil mixtures will be mixed ahead of time in 25%/50%/75% wax/oil ratios by weight for each test oil plus one sample for neat beeswax for a total of 13. The mixtures will be poured or placed (depending on how I feel they will be best applied, open to suggestions here), and the scabs replaced to keep the leather at the appropriate temperature while the oil/wax mixture penetrates. I'll have to play the saturation by ear unless anyone has any suggestions.

Meanwhile, the net wax yield was 481g/17 ounces/1 lb. 1 oz. of clean, spotless, sunflower yellow, honey scented beeswax. I'd love to post pictures, but this forum seems to have a white list strategy for photo hosting, and google photos is not on it somehow... Who would I have to talk to to get that rectified?

[TinkerTailor]

Current status:

Waylaid by the more or less unanticipated beeswax refining project, and while I was at the thrift store picking up some sacrificial cookware, I found a beautiful sewing machine from 1959 in my wife's favorite color in a '50s Chevy Bel Air-esque design motif complete down to the owners manual, and functional but dirty and in dire need of a tune up. For $20, it was hard not to do it. So while beeswax has been melting, filtering, floating, and cooling these last several evenings, I've been methodically cleaning, lubricating, and adjusting this little jewel to like new (minus a few characterful chips in the lacquer here and there). I still need to find some foot pad things, make a few soft parts, fabricate a replacement for the one broken part, and clean the case, but the hard part is done.

Meanwhile, we went out to dinner last night with my researcher friends, and the physicist and I devised a test methodology. Using TinkerTailor's iron suggestion, today I'll go cut a few scabs of 1/4" mild steel to serve as thermal batteries to keep the temperature constant while the iron cycles. The scabs will be heated to temp on parchment paper over an iron on the appropriate setting (measured with IR thermometer) under a cotton cloth/insulator, and the leather test pieces will be placed between them to be brought up to temp. Wax/oil mixtures will be mixed ahead of time in 25%/50%/75% wax/oil ratios by weight for each test oil plus one sample for neat beeswax for a total of 13. The mixtures will be poured or placed (depending on how I feel they will be best applied, open to suggestions here), and the scabs replaced to keep the leather at the appropriate temperature while the oil/wax mixture penetrates. I'll have to play the saturation by ear unless anyone has any suggestions.

Meanwhile, the net wax yield was 481g/17 ounces/1 lb. 1 oz. of clean, spotless, sunflower yellow, honey scented beeswax. I'd love to post pictures, but this forum seems to have a white list strategy for photo hosting, and google photos is not on it somehow... Who would I have to talk to to get that rectified?

Hit "more reply options", and there is a button to add attachments at the bottom of the msg edit screen. Upload pics there, as many as you want provided the total is under 1.46mb per post. Once you add them once, they appear in your my media button, allowing you to add them to future posts. You can attach small pdf as well, lots of stuff. I dont think the site will show previews of photos hosted elsewhere, but you can link to them and many do. If you do it right, it will show the youtube video window in a post as well. The forum software is pretty good, but kinda quirky at the same time. Don't even bother with the built in search, its as useful as boobs on a boar. Use google. site:leatherworker.net (search)

Edited December 7, 2015 by TinkerTailor

[spectre6000]

It's not a question of how to get photos on here (I'm a software engineer by trade), it's a matter of I don't want to upload them to the forum servers. They're uploaded in a pretty solid and secure location, they should be able to be served from there without unnecessarily restrictive permission settings at the forum admin level. Meanwhile, I'll proceed without photos unless and until something happens there.

This project hasn't died, I start a new job Monday and I've been scrambling to wrap up the current contract between dealing with a finicky client and trying to subcontract an element of it and get that handled and done before I get completely bogged down with the new gig. Additionally, I tend to have a half dozen or so fairly significant projects going on at any one time, so sometimes balls hang in the air a little longer than I'd like. Balls sitting on the table in front of me as I type this include the leather treatment project, a sewing machine restoration project, an automotive fabrication project, a computer hardware project for the new job, and I have an aspiring luthier coming over this afternoon to pick up an acoustic top set I'm gifting him... And that's just the living room coffee table!

Meanwhile, I've been noodling on exactly what and how to divvy up the beeswax and experimental samples. I think the most likely success for my current goals is going to be an olive oil beeswax blend, but I still want to see how raw flax and walnut oils do in terms of the polymerized film on the surface of the leather for another project down the road. I only have a skosh over a pound of beeswax, and I want to be absolutely sure I have a sufficient quantity for the immediate project (locally sourced beeswax that I personally filtered, etc. would just be icing on the cake!), so if I limit the quantity used per sample to an ounce (I'm going to do everything by weight), which may honestly be a bit too generous anyway, and I want to do 25/50/75 percent blends of wax to oil, that pretty much leaves me with about zero (assuming a certain amount of process waste) for the actual project... No bueno. So I think I want to limit the wax blend samples to just that subset of oils (olive) I think will have positive results.

That's pretty much where this project stands. I'm one piece of carved mahogany away from completing one competing project, about two evenings worth of leather carving away from completing another competing project, and that's about the only real competition for this one. I picked up some small glass vessels at the thrift store yesterday (I think they were tea candle glass holder things), and I need to clean them up. I also need to figure out exactly how to suspend them in a pot for double boiling purposes... I'm thinking an aluminum pie tin... The step after that is to distribute the wax into the vessels and get everything blended, then it's time to apply finishes and finally see what's up.

Meanwhile, I need to get back to reviewing this new code base before Monday morning...

[RKCrowe]

Spectre6000,

Your enthusiasm and excitement on this topic is obviously genuine and it really makes me feel smile. I only had basic chemistry, but your explanations were placed on a level that even I could follow... sometimes. I would have liked to observe you and your friends discussion over cinnamon buns. And even more so after the beer came out! Thanks you

[spectre6000]

Sorry for the extended silent period. Life got busy, then I got in a pretty horrific car accident. I'm finally back to where I can get back in the shop a bit, so back to this project!

Am I correct that there have been some changes while I was away? Signing in with Facebook, and... attach images via URL?

Since we're posting photos and to get everything in the same place, here's the beeswax rendering photos:

There was more rendering after this photo, but what I have.

Soooo.... I started by cutting some belly trimmings into rectangular pieces.

Tinker Tailor for the win! I fine tuned my iron to 145° with the IR gun, used a small anvil as a thermal battery, and parchment paper to avoid ruining the iron or the anvil. The target was between 145° and 155°, erring on the low side for safety. As previously stated, that narrow range is pretty much it where the wax will be liquid and the leather won't be ruined. 

I shaved the beeswax block so that I could weigh out the wax for melting.

And I weighed samples out for a total of 20 grams each (a little less than 3/4 ounce) between the wax and oil. I went with olive oil since it's the closest I have to neatsfoot (the status quo) by fatty acid content.

The five samples were neat beeswax, 75/25, 50/50, 25/50, and 15/85 beeswax to oil ratios. The partial sticky notes (somehow I only had one sticky note and the backing pad...) are marked 20, 15, 10, and 5, referring to the grams of beeswax with the unlabeled being 3. The balance was filled with olive oil to a total of 20 grams. Then...

A last minute sanity check, and...

Into the double boiler. This is the smaller of the two pots I bought for this experiment with an aluminum pie tin sliced to form a smaller diameter, perforated, and wrapped in foil so it would stay together under the weight of the glass sample vessels. I think they were glass tea light candle holders, and I got them at the same thrift store I got all the hardware for this experiment. I also found this:

February 1958 Brother portable sewing machine in pretty good, albeit neglected condition. I restored it for my wife for Xmas, and she loved it! Great little thrift store.

Anyway...

The bellies were pretty seriously old... So much so that I have no idea when I got them, from where, or why. They're all slightly different colors, and all pretty dry, so I taped them off to have a bit more control over the control. Then I got to business.

While the wax/oil mixtures were melting, I made go with the oils. The flax oil smells sweet, walnut smells earthy, canola doesn't have much in the way of a smell, and the olive oil smells spicy. I applied multiple coats until it took a little longer for the oil to all be absorbed, and heated the wax-based samples to temp prior to applying the wax oil mixture. This allowed the wax to absorb and not just harden at the surface on contact. I dipped the hot neat wax sample into the hot wax at one end just to see how stiff it got. 

Here's the end result for the day:

Left to right, top to bottom, that's canola oil, 25% wax, 100% wax, flax, 15% wax, 75% wax, walnut, olive, and 50% wax, and the loner is the control (the organization makes more sense if you rotate it to the right 90°, where you get the waxes in decreasing order followed by the oils with the control to the side). It should be noted that the leather was very dry, and the tape pulled some of the top grain off, lightening the appearance.

The higher wax concentration samples proved difficult to apply, and the result appears pretty splotchy. Application with a good aesthetic result would be either difficult or very time consuming and complicated without significant investment in equipment or risking ruining the leather via heat. Additionally, given the role of the oil in the leather, I don't think ultra high beeswax mixtures will allow the fatty acids to do their lubrication and migration song and dance. That said, it seems the heavier wax mixtures would have a fixative effect on any tooling, and this is desirable... On the other end of the spectrum, it's simply too soon to have any idea how the polymerization of the shorter fatty acid chains will affect the end result.

In terms of color, there are variations in the leather sample pieces muddying things up a bit, but all methods and materials darkened the leather considerably at this point with canola as the surprise stand out. I'm not sure why this is. On the neat wax sample, you can see a strip at the end where I heated it up and just dunked it into the hot wax. The heavy saturation reflects less light than the less saturated area. The splotchiness in the 75% wax sample is a prime example of the difficulty applying higher wax concentrations, while the lesser wax mixtures were considerably easier. Time will tell how these effects last over time.

In addition to the application experience, another significant subjective observation is the smell. The walnut oil sample smelled predominantly of walnut; earthy and not unpleasant, but not especially pleasant either. The olive oil sample smelled essentially like olive oil with no real leather aroma; a bit on the spicy side. The canola oil had no real smell at all. The waxed samples smell to varying degrees of sweet honey to spicy olive oil based on their respective concentrations without much leather smell. The flax oil is sweet on its own, and in the leather has a wonderful smell that stands out above the rest. The leather by itself didn't smell especially strong of anything (it's old), but the flax oil made for a very good leather smell beyond expectation. I don't know why this is, but based on reports of fish oils smelling especially like leather, it makes me wonder exactly what's going on there. They both are notoriously high in omega 3 fatty acids (mid-length polyunsaturated), so maybe there's something going on there... Who knows.

Finally, I allowed the wax mixtures to cool and harden. I expected the neat wax to harden like the rest of the wax, and that the lesser samples would soften considerably to the point that the 15% sample would barely be any more viscous than the oil, but surprisingly they all hardened save the 15% sample.

I stuck my finger in each one, and while the 25% sample gave a tiny bit where some bubbles had formed but was otherwise solid, only the 15% mixture really gave at all. Some water had splashed in from the boiling water, and it squished out from this sample as well. As an aside, it makes good lip balm. Some fiddling with other oils could make for a pretty awesome home made Burt's Bees replacement (the olive oil just lacks the good smell)! 

So... Where does that leave us? The 15%, 25%, and to a lesser extent 50% wax mixtures were easy enough to apply as to be viable. Heavier than that was too difficult using these methods. The liquid oils are obviously easy to apply, but time will tell how they do over time. I like the idea of the wax fixing tooling, but have some concern at what it will do over time as the oils break down and subsequently migrate... Or would the wax prevent migration? Additionally, wax is known to stiffen leather, but with enough oil it softens considerably... The question is how this affects things when it's suspended between the leather fibers. How does it affect things as the oil breaks down? The same question can be asked of the polymerization from the shorter fatty acid chains oxidizing. Does this form a barrier that makes subsequent applications of oil difficult or even impossible? The smooth surface that results from the polymer film would make for a good dark color, this would be even more the case when combined with a percentage of wax. The sweet smell of the wax combined with the sweet leather smell from the flax oil and the shine and tooling fixation could be awesome! It could also ultimately shorten the lifespan of the work... It would probably be years before the effects were noticeable, and they may not happen at all, but it is something outside the norm about which I can't find any information.

The next phase is to wait and see what happens over time... Months... Years... I'm not that patient for the immediate projects, so I'll have to decide on something sooner. The next thing I'd like to try is some lighter wax mixtures with other oils. The flax is especially interesting from the perspective of the eventual high gloss polymer finish and dark color it would ultimately result in, but I want to get some longer carbon chains in there too for a bit better lubricity over a longer period of time. That might ultimately mean a multi-phase finish. Maybe a light oiling or two front and back with olive oil, then finish with a heavy application of a 15-25% beeswax/flax oil mixture. That would help the tooling stay crisp, eventually result in a very polished finish, and the sweet smell of the wax and the sweet leather smell will likely be a pretty killer combo. I might investigate another oil or two in there for fun too when I go for the second round... We'll see.

[stelmackr]

No pictures were visible to me.

[spectre6000]

OK. I think I figured it out. I can't go back and edit the previous post, but I'll repost it with the photos correctly linked. I think it was my fault. Stand by.

Maybe a mod can do some mod magicks and delete the dupe, move things around, or whatever else makes sense.

Edited April 4, 2016 by spectre6000

[spectre6000]

Sorry for the extended silent period. Life got busy, then I got in a pretty horrific car accident. I'm finally back to where I can get back in the shop a bit, so back to this project!

Am I correct that there have been some changes while I was away? Signing in with Facebook, and... attach images via URL?

Since we're posting photos and to get everything in the same place, here's the beeswax rendering photos:

There was more rendering after this photo, but what I have.

Soooo.... I started by cutting some belly trimmings into rectangular pieces.

Tinker Tailor for the win! I fine tuned my iron to 145° with the IR gun, used a small anvil as a thermal battery, and parchment paper to avoid ruining the iron or the anvil. The target was between 145° and 155°, erring on the low side for safety. As previously stated, that narrow range is pretty much it where the wax will be liquid and the leather won't be ruined. 

I shaved the beeswax block so that I could weigh out the wax for melting.

And I weighed samples out for a total of 20 grams each (a little less than 3/4 ounce) between the wax and oil. I went with olive oil since it's the closest I have to neatsfoot (the status quo) by fatty acid content.

The five samples were neat beeswax, 75/25, 50/50, 25/50, and 15/85 beeswax to oil ratios. The partial sticky notes (somehow I only had one sticky note and the backing pad...) are marked 20, 15, 10, and 5, referring to the grams of beeswax with the unlabeled being 3. The balance was filled with olive oil to a total of 20 grams. Then...

A last minute sanity check, and...

Into the double boiler. This is the smaller of the two pots I bought for this experiment with an aluminum pie tin sliced to form a smaller diameter, perforated, and wrapped in foil so it would stay together under the weight of the glass sample vessels. I think they were glass tea light candle holders, and I got them at the same thrift store I got all the hardware for this experiment. I also found this:

February 1958 Brother portable sewing machine in pretty good, albeit neglected condition. I restored it for my wife for Xmas, and she loved it! Great little thrift store.

Anyway...

The bellies were pretty seriously old... So much so that I have no idea when I got them, from where, or why. They're all slightly different colors, and all pretty dry, so I taped them off to have a bit more control over the control. Then I got to business.

While the wax/oil mixtures were melting, I made go with the oils. The flax oil smells sweet, walnut smells earthy, canola doesn't have much in the way of a smell, and the olive oil smells spicy. I applied multiple coats until it took a little longer for the oil to all be absorbed, and heated the wax-based samples to temp prior to applying the wax oil mixture. This allowed the wax to absorb and not just harden at the surface on contact. I dipped the hot neat wax sample into the hot wax at one end just to see how stiff it got. 

Here's the end result for the day:

Left to right, top to bottom, that's canola oil, 25% wax, 100% wax, flax, 15% wax, 75% wax, walnut, olive, and 50% wax, and the loner is the control (the organization makes more sense if you rotate it to the right 90°, where you get the waxes in decreasing order followed by the oils with the control to the side). It should be noted that the leather was very dry, and the tape pulled some of the top grain off, lightening the appearance.

The higher wax concentration samples proved difficult to apply, and the result appears pretty splotchy. Application with a good aesthetic result would be either difficult or very time consuming and complicated without significant investment in equipment or risking ruining the leather via heat. Additionally, given the role of the oil in the leather, I don't think ultra high beeswax mixtures will allow the fatty acids to do their lubrication and migration song and dance. That said, it seems the heavier wax mixtures would have a fixative effect on any tooling, and this is desirable... On the other end of the spectrum, it's simply too soon to have any idea how the polymerization of the shorter fatty acid chains will affect the end result.

In terms of color, there are variations in the leather sample pieces muddying things up a bit, but all methods and materials darkened the leather considerably at this point with canola as the surprise stand out. I'm not sure why this is. On the neat wax sample, you can see a strip at the end where I heated it up and just dunked it into the hot wax. The heavy saturation reflects less light than the less saturated area. The splotchiness in the 75% wax sample is a prime example of the difficulty applying higher wax concentrations, while the lesser wax mixtures were considerably easier. Time will tell how these effects last over time.

In addition to the application experience, another significant subjective observation is the smell. The walnut oil sample smelled predominantly of walnut; earthy and not unpleasant, but not especially pleasant either. The olive oil sample smelled essentially like olive oil with no real leather aroma; a bit on the spicy side. The canola oil had no real smell at all. The waxed samples smell to varying degrees of sweet honey to spicy olive oil based on their respective concentrations without much leather smell. The flax oil is sweet on its own, and in the leather has a wonderful smell that stands out above the rest. The leather by itself didn't smell especially strong of anything (it's old), but the flax oil made for a very good leather smell beyond expectation. I don't know why this is, but based on reports of fish oils smelling especially like leather, it makes me wonder exactly what's going on there. They both are notoriously high in omega 3 fatty acids (mid-length polyunsaturated), so maybe there's something going on there... Who knows.

Finally, I allowed the wax mixtures to cool and harden. I expected the neat wax to harden like the rest of the wax, and that the lesser samples would soften considerably to the point that the 15% sample would barely be any more viscous than the oil, but surprisingly they all hardened save the 15% sample.

I stuck my finger in each one, and while the 25% sample gave a tiny bit where some bubbles had formed but was otherwise solid, only the 15% mixture really gave at all. Some water had splashed in from the boiling water, and it squished out from this sample as well. As an aside, it makes good lip balm. Some fiddling with other oils could make for a pretty awesome home made Burt's Bees replacement (the olive oil just lacks the good smell)! 

So... Where does that leave us? The 15%, 25%, and to a lesser extent 50% wax mixtures were easy enough to apply as to be viable. Heavier than that was too difficult using these methods. The liquid oils are obviously easy to apply, but time will tell how they do over time. I like the idea of the wax fixing tooling, but have some concern at what it will do over time as the oils break down and subsequently migrate... Or would the wax prevent migration? Additionally, wax is known to stiffen leather, but with enough oil it softens considerably... The question is how this affects things when it's suspended between the leather fibers. How does it affect things as the oil breaks down? The same question can be asked of the polymerization from the shorter fatty acid chains oxidizing. Does this form a barrier that makes subsequent applications of oil difficult or even impossible? The smooth surface that results from the polymer film would make for a good dark color, this would be even more the case when combined with a percentage of wax. The sweet smell of the wax combined with the sweet leather smell from the flax oil and the shine and tooling fixation could be awesome! It could also ultimately shorten the lifespan of the work... It would probably be years before the effects were noticeable, and they may not happen at all, but it is something outside the norm about which I can't find any information.

The next phase is to wait and see what happens over time... Months... Years... I'm not that patient for the immediate projects, so I'll have to decide on something sooner. The next thing I'd like to try is some lighter wax mixtures with other oils. The flax is especially interesting from the perspective of the eventual high gloss polymer finish and dark color it would ultimately result in, but I want to get some longer carbon chains in there too for a bit better lubricity over a longer period of time. That might ultimately mean a multi-phase finish. Maybe a light oiling or two front and back with olive oil, then finish with a heavy application of a 15-25% beeswax/flax oil mixture. That would help the tooling stay crisp, eventually result in a very polished finish, and the sweet smell of the wax and the sweet leather smell will likely be a pretty killer combo. I might investigate another oil or two in there for fun too when I go for the second round... We'll see.

[spectre6000]

Part two of experiment execution:

A little over 24 hours has passed. The smell of the oils had more or less disappeared. The canola oil is still slightly darker than the other oils, but the colors have pretty much evened out save the heavier wax mixtures. I inspected the back of the patches, and noticed a pretty interesting trend: the lighter oils, especially the canola oil, had penetrated through to the back of the patches. This was unexpected, but not at all surprising. The implications have potential import in the next phase. I reapplied the oils for a second round. I'll probably do three total and call it good on this set.

In preparation for the next phase, I purchased a floral, pleasant smelling blend of essential oils. Rose oil was completely unavailable, and would have been insanely expensive at any rate. I don't recall the exact blend, and I haven't done any research on the makeup of the oil combination, but I don't think it's of special import. This morning over breakfast, I went back and re-read the thread and realized I forgot a step; I neglected to case the leather ahead of time, and this combined with the especially dry nature of the leather means less and less even penetration. The idea with the essential oils is to see if I can impart some especially pleasant smell to the leather. Given the loss of smell of the other oils over as little as 24 hours, I doubt very much it will, but it's in the plan and why not. I'm hoping to emulsify the essential oils into some water, and use that to case the leather. Ideally this should distribute the oils pretty evenly throughout the leather, but only in very small quantities. Again, not expecting much, but that's the plan. From there, I find the penetration of the lighter oils interesting and potentially useful. I think some stratification in the choice of oils applied in stages could have an overall positive effect. More on this later.

Finally, I was thinking about the wax mixtures. I was thinking it might be nice to use some wax to set the tooling and provide a little extra crispness and staying power. The downside to this is that it stiffens the piece overall, and could have a negative effect on longevity. The other side of the coin is that it seals the leather, and can potentially be used to shine it up a bit. Combined with some lighter fatty acid byproducts, it could result in a really nice finish over time. These two goals are pretty much counter indicated though, and I'm thinking the latter has more merit overall. It further dawned on me that the oil lowers the melting point of the wax (duh!), and I hadn't accounted for that in any way. In the event the wax/oil mixture is used for something clothing oriented (like a belt), the wearer's body heat would completely nullify the fixative properties of the wax. The 15% wax mixture is so soft at room temperature, that there's no fixing whatsoever, and I'm not sure it would have any benefit outside of sealing out moisture; this could also seal out future oilings. The 25% mixture is fairly stiff at room temperature, but held in my hand for a few minutes resulted in it turning to a consistency very much like the 15% mixture at room temperature. This could be a good middle ground for non-wearable tooled leather pieces to set the tooling a bit without it being too difficult or detrimental. The 50% mixture softened up a bit as well, but not quite as much. When suspended in the leather, this could be the golden ticket for fixing tooling with the application technique I used. The downside is that it's somewhat difficult to apply evenly, but I would say it can probably be done successfully. I'll have to mess with that one a little more. 75% wax was hard as hard can be no matter what. 

At any rate, more experimentation is scheduled. Still refining the strategy. It's going to be a long time before anything conclusive can be decided in terms of whether or not any of this has results that are in any way superior or even different from the status quo, but it's a lot of fun exploring it!

[spectre6000]

An update on this for the one or two people still following this little vanity project...:

I unpacked the treated samples detailed above after moving recently, and discovered the fatty acid composition of the beeswax must have some shorter carbon chains than I initially thought, or ultra long carbon chains in the wax are not as stable as I thought and are also subject to the sort of precipitates that result in spue/spew. The heavier (50% and greater) beeswax concentrations are all showing spue/spew, with the higher concentrations exhibiting more noticeable effects. These samples have not been handled hardly at all, and I'm sure regular use would rub the spue/spew away pretty handily such that it would never be noticeable. 

Meanwhile, I've also been experimenting heavily with oil treatments in various combinations, orders, methods, etc. I think I've landed on some pretty stellar results! There's a time aspect that I can't really control for due to lack of the proper equipment (time machines are expensive), but I am extremely confident in the long term viability of my methods. Looks and feels fantastic too! I'm still working on what I hope will be the final incarnation for regular use, but my wife is very excited for the belt she's getting out of the current iteration of this little exercise (I got tired of all the squares of belly scraps)!

[CalSheaths]

Thank you for conducting this research/experiment and this update. Very interesting.

[spectre6000]

No problem at all! It's been a fun and rewarding project. I'm glad to know others are benefiting as well.

[pennyjf]

I am also very interested.  I have had requests for patent finish on some of my leather work projects (braided horse tack)

Thank you for posting all this.  Hope you are recovered from your car accident sounds scary!

[Martyn]

This is a fascinating thread - it'd be great if you could sort the pictures out?

The forum software is rendering an image as it should and google is serving an image, but that image is a white block with a greyed out stop sign, which would generally mean it's either a blocked image or a link to a non-existent or moved image. Even when viewed as an external link it's still blocked/stopped/broken...

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/i_Q90a27xCZOHC8WLZ5NIkecjDYk3vLn2_xbVBFsO4wVdzRQBrlraWrlmy7JlhwoEcpBWFUqMa-_0u0PRJrVDdQ-UKkijoqkwWfrhmiunWfMNn01fbHYyE_zAbSp850_dcIyJaMYHCrFbPwdYdb9cp6nmeQyjX6XYnZlsctIPUMxMd-UBT02Uf9JVm2IZycEBp3KP8MciuVyZKQcRP_ii88V6eCNS-k0gHOgeXA8C9AcV6iTxMGEhxXGiTIELMDvuUCxprXDlondAgbBdwoQr4a_RWguh1qPrp18tqQY-bqeg6pVyJ7yCcWMkcQgiMkWRdnYBWeKWC59CDucB-tMxCR3us_POx3HFUnxA1e6t_1-d2dT2erZvcBsKUYisA2Mwla5lrCLABPPfCGrjsh9a5NGHpLos9ddWV45V3MyVnBWVSQT1jAkCH4-QvB6tktbDPs2YgdqlDMtzYCNw98nNSHn0OJiXFbuCY-46Hcia7HWxERlCm-ysxxVJEKfVz9uid2ljUjXpNY1Sd4wumbhPOCcX2GHgcRFD5G9jFPpJSHFhCydA0Mz6T5Joe8tbUCVjUS_=w640-h480-no

...which means the problem is with your image hosting, not the forum software.

If you look at the very end of the link above, it defines display parameters...

=w640-h480-no

...the '-no' at the end suggests a permissions issue perhaps?

Edited June 14, 2016 by Martyn

[spectre6000]

I picked a photo at random, and it appears to be working across devices for me regardless of any session states. Can someone please do a sanity check and confirm whether on not it's visible to anyone else? 

Martyn, I'm not familiar with a white square and grayed out stop sign logo. Could you please share your browsing info (OS, application, version, etc.)?

Edited June 14, 2016 by spectre6000

[Martyn]

Yes, that is displaying properly.

I'm using firefox on windows 7 home premium (links are broken in chrome too). If you are seeing images in your older posts, I think you asre seeing cached images. Clear your browser cache and it's my bet you will see the stop sign.

Interestingly your non-displaying image links terminate with...

=w640-h480-no

while the one that displays terminates with...

=w640-h480-no&key=802effcce77dc2b3bb281b234fe1f57339fd2766e2d901edb31d8d7f77113528

 

Edited June 14, 2016 by Martyn

[spectre6000]

On 4/3/2016 at 5:25 PM, spectre6000 said:

Sorry for the extended silent period. Life got busy, then I got in a pretty horrific car accident. I'm finally back to where I can get back in the shop a bit, so back to this project!

Am I correct that there have been some changes while I was away? Signing in with Facebook, and... attach images via URL?

Since we're posting photos and to get everything in the same place, here's the beeswax rendering photos:

There was more rendering after this photo, but what I have.

Soooo.... I started by cutting some belly trimmings into rectangular pieces.

Tinker Tailor for the win! I fine tuned my iron to 145° with the IR gun, used a small anvil as a thermal battery, and parchment paper to avoid ruining the iron or the anvil. The target was between 145° and 155°, erring on the low side for safety. As previously stated, that narrow range is pretty much it where the wax will be liquid and the leather won't be ruined. 

I shaved the beeswax block so that I could weigh out the wax for melting.

And I weighed samples out for a total of 20 grams each (a little less than 3/4 ounce) between the wax and oil. I went with olive oil since it's the closest I have to neatsfoot (the status quo) by fatty acid content.

The five samples were neat beeswax, 75/25, 50/50, 25/50, and 15/85 beeswax to oil ratios. The partial sticky notes (somehow I only had one sticky note and the backing pad...) are marked 20, 15, 10, and 5, referring to the grams of beeswax with the unlabeled being 3. The balance was filled with olive oil to a total of 20 grams. Then...

A last minute sanity check, and...

Into the double boiler. This is the smaller of the two pots I bought for this experiment with an aluminum pie tin sliced to form a smaller diameter, perforated, and wrapped in foil so it would stay together under the weight of the glass sample vessels. I think they were glass tea light candle holders, and I got them at the same thrift store I got all the hardware for this experiment. I also found this:

February 1958 Brother portable sewing machine in pretty good, albeit neglected condition. I restored it for my wife for Xmas, and she loved it! Great little thrift store.

Anyway...

The bellies were pretty seriously old... So much so that I have no idea when I got them, from where, or why. They're all slightly different colors, and all pretty dry, so I taped them off to have a bit more control over the control. Then I got to business.

While the wax/oil mixtures were melting, I made go with the oils. The flax oil smells sweet, walnut smells earthy, canola doesn't have much in the way of a smell, and the olive oil smells spicy. I applied multiple coats until it took a little longer for the oil to all be absorbed, and heated the wax-based samples to temp prior to applying the wax oil mixture. This allowed the wax to absorb and not just harden at the surface on contact. I dipped the hot neat wax sample into the hot wax at one end just to see how stiff it got. 

Here's the end result for the day:

Left to right, top to bottom, that's canola oil, 25% wax, 100% wax, flax, 15% wax, 75% wax, walnut, olive, and 50% wax, and the loner is the control (the organization makes more sense if you rotate it to the right 90°, where you get the waxes in decreasing order followed by the oils with the control to the side). It should be noted that the leather was very dry, and the tape pulled some of the top grain off, lightening the appearance.

The higher wax concentration samples proved difficult to apply, and the result appears pretty splotchy. Application with a good aesthetic result would be either difficult or very time consuming and complicated without significant investment in equipment or risking ruining the leather via heat. Additionally, given the role of the oil in the leather, I don't think ultra high beeswax mixtures will allow the fatty acids to do their lubrication and migration song and dance. That said, it seems the heavier wax mixtures would have a fixative effect on any tooling, and this is desirable... On the other end of the spectrum, it's simply too soon to have any idea how the polymerization of the shorter fatty acid chains will affect the end result.

In terms of color, there are variations in the leather sample pieces muddying things up a bit, but all methods and materials darkened the leather considerably at this point with canola as the surprise stand out. I'm not sure why this is. On the neat wax sample, you can see a strip at the end where I heated it up and just dunked it into the hot wax. The heavy saturation reflects less light than the less saturated area. The splotchiness in the 75% wax sample is a prime example of the difficulty applying higher wax concentrations, while the lesser wax mixtures were considerably easier. Time will tell how these effects last over time.

In addition to the application experience, another significant subjective observation is the smell. The walnut oil sample smelled predominantly of walnut; earthy and not unpleasant, but not especially pleasant either. The olive oil sample smelled essentially like olive oil with no real leather aroma; a bit on the spicy side. The canola oil had no real smell at all. The waxed samples smell to varying degrees of sweet honey to spicy olive oil based on their respective concentrations without much leather smell. The flax oil is sweet on its own, and in the leather has a wonderful smell that stands out above the rest. The leather by itself didn't smell especially strong of anything (it's old), but the flax oil made for a very good leather smell beyond expectation. I don't know why this is, but based on reports of fish oils smelling especially like leather, it makes me wonder exactly what's going on there. They both are notoriously high in omega 3 fatty acids (mid-length polyunsaturated), so maybe there's something going on there... Who knows.

Finally, I allowed the wax mixtures to cool and harden. I expected the neat wax to harden like the rest of the wax, and that the lesser samples would soften considerably to the point that the 15% sample would barely be any more viscous than the oil, but surprisingly they all hardened save the 15% sample.

I stuck my finger in each one, and while the 25% sample gave a tiny bit where some bubbles had formed but was otherwise solid, only the 15% mixture really gave at all. Some water had splashed in from the boiling water, and it squished out from this sample as well. As an aside, it makes good lip balm. Some fiddling with other oils could make for a pretty awesome home made Burt's Bees replacement (the olive oil just lacks the good smell)! 

So... Where does that leave us? The 15%, 25%, and to a lesser extent 50% wax mixtures were easy enough to apply as to be viable. Heavier than that was too difficult using these methods. The liquid oils are obviously easy to apply, but time will tell how they do over time. I like the idea of the wax fixing tooling, but have some concern at what it will do over time as the oils break down and subsequently migrate... Or would the wax prevent migration? Additionally, wax is known to stiffen leather, but with enough oil it softens considerably... The question is how this affects things when it's suspended between the leather fibers. How does it affect things as the oil breaks down? The same question can be asked of the polymerization from the shorter fatty acid chains oxidizing. Does this form a barrier that makes subsequent applications of oil difficult or even impossible? The smooth surface that results from the polymer film would make for a good dark color, this would be even more the case when combined with a percentage of wax. The sweet smell of the wax combined with the sweet leather smell from the flax oil and the shine and tooling fixation could be awesome! It could also ultimately shorten the lifespan of the work... It would probably be years before the effects were noticeable, and they may not happen at all, but it is something outside the norm about which I can't find any information.

The next phase is to wait and see what happens over time... Months... Years... I'm not that patient for the immediate projects, so I'll have to decide on something sooner. The next thing I'd like to try is some lighter wax mixtures with other oils. The flax is especially interesting from the perspective of the eventual high gloss polymer finish and dark color it would ultimately result in, but I want to get some longer carbon chains in there too for a bit better lubricity over a longer period of time. That might ultimately mean a multi-phase finish. Maybe a light oiling or two front and back with olive oil, then finish with a heavy application of a 15-25% beeswax/flax oil mixture. That would help the tooling stay crisp, eventually result in a very polished finish, and the sweet smell of the wax and the sweet leather smell will likely be a pretty killer combo. I might investigate another oil or two in there for fun too when I go for the second round... We'll see.

Fingers crossed... Testing in other browsers now...

Tested. Working. Let me know if it plays nice over there... It's something like 1 in the morning over there now, so maybe I'll hear about it in the morning. 

Edited June 15, 2016 by spectre6000

[Martyn]

44 minutes ago, spectre6000 said:

Tested. Working. Let me know if it plays nice over there... It's something like 1 in the morning over there now, so maybe I'll hear about it in the morning. 

Looks good, good job. It's late here too (early?) so I'll read it tomorrow, the pictures make all the difference though.

[LH4H]

An absolutely fascinating read, thank you!  I've been dealing with a spew outbreak and found this discussion.

I know this is a bit much to ask but...it's been almost 8 years.....do you happen to have these samples still?  I'd be very curious to see what they look/smell like now!

[rustyred]

@spectre6000 I am also curious about results. Please give an update if you're around. For science!

[spectre6000]

Woof. Necro thread. I haven't been to this forum at all in nearly that entire time to boot. I got a notification email though, and my password still works, so cool! 

The good news, I suppose, is that you got my attention. More good news is that I might actually still have those samples kicking around. The bad news is that I moved since then, and the house I live in now is experiencing some extremely major repair issues. The box those samples would be in is DEEPLY buried in storage at the moment. 

I can say that the last time I saw them (more this side of the timeline than my last post), they had darkened up a bit with age with some of the lighter samples sort of evening out (the oiled section didn't get darker at the same rate maybe?), and there was no smell other than just leather. I don't recall any bloom whatsoever either. 

Here's the really good news though... I made up a large batch of the final oil/wax mixture, and it became my default finish treatment. The belt I wear every day gets a touch up once a year/when it occurs to me and I have the time (nowhere near once a year if I'm being honest). By the time I eventually used up the first jar I made, it smelled... compromised. Rancid probably isn't exactly the right word, but it was clear the fatty acids were breaking down and oxidizing. I still used it, and once applied, the smell went away. Never was an issue. The whole thing about those aromatic compounds is that they're volatile (which is why they get in the air to where you can smell them), and so they dissipate quickly and leave the good stuff behind.

I further went on to experiment with coloring the leather with UV using the oil/wax as a color enhancer. Most of my projects are a deep mahogany brown as a result of the two in combination.

The results of this experiment were that I got a great education on oils and waxes, and I now have a go-to homemade, tunable finish.

Hopefully, that's a satisfying enough answer. When I get my office back, hopefully I'll remember about this thread when I stumble upon that box, and post back. If not, necro post again, and maybe I'll get an email!