Oils In Leather (Chemistry)

[TwinOaks]

I can and DO respect a quest for knowledge just for the sake of that knowledge. However, the depth of your research reminds me of something I've told my kids several times: " When you learn by your actions, including mistakes, it's called Experience. When you learn from the actions of others, especially mistakes, it's called Wisdom."

Suggestion for your project: Call and speak with a person when ordering your leather (my opinion favors Springfield Leather) and order something with a soft hand/temper. Carve/tool, use a "Pro Oil Dye", and condition with neatsfoot oil or Aussie conditioner. Rub in a generous amount of carnauba cream from the flesh side (helps with suppleness), then (when all the conditioner has had a day to absorb/migrate) finish with a lacquer. As far as the scent...personally, I like the smell of regular ol' leather. If you use a scented oil, then efforts to 'refresh' the scent may eventually result in over oiling the leather.

[spectre6000]

My dad has a similar saying, albeit more colorful and with an emphasis solely on the wisdom part.

I've had the leather in my stash for a while, so it is what it is (this isn't my first leather project by a long shot, just the first down this particular path). The first part is already cut, riveted, and sewn ready to layout for carving. I'm trying to avoid dies and other heavily manufactured things. As with food, the simpler and more pronounceable the ingredients the better. I've got a pretty solid understanding of oil applications by now (the theory lines up with my experience), it's the specific chemistry I'm seeking.

Tell me more about your lacquer suggestion. What sort of lacquer, specifically, do you have in mind (I assume you're not referring to lac beetle secretions in solvent)? Have you used it? How does it hold up?

As for the scent, I like the smell of regular ol' leather too... What IS the smell of regular ol' leather though? That's the rub (pun intended). Let's be honest, not all leather smells the same in quantity or quality, and the question of the day is why? Olive oil is frequently touted as an excellent leather treatment, but some say (somewhat truthfully, though not in the way they intend) that it goes rancid in the leather. This would seem on its face to be a bad thing, but I've never personally seen anything like that occur in real life... Why? I read that cod liver oil is the secret to that beautiful old English leather aroma. Why? Similarly that Neatsfoot oil is the only option for leather treatment? Why? Also, any time anyone makes broad absolute statements, alarms go off in my head that that person has little to no clue what they're talking about, and the subject bears investigation; when MANY people within a 'tribe' (referring to the 'tribal knowledge' mentioned earlier in the thread) say the same thing, it implies there is some serious and widespread lack of understanding or misinformation afoot and then the game is on!

At this point, I can say with some authority that the "smell of regular ol' leather" is a direct result of the applied oils breaking down (rancidification) and the resulting aromatic compounds that are released from the leather. The variety and proportion of these aromatic compounds will be directly affected (and can thus be directly controlled for) by the fatty acid composition of the oils from which they originate. It would seem at least some of the aroma (the word we use for smells/odors/stenches/etc. when they are subjectively considered pleasant) comes from the byproducts of heavier oils and thus longer chain fatty acids, but what part and how much?

One of my many avocations is that of luthier; I've made several instruments, taught clinics, have written on the subject, and have even been invited to guest lecture in a university setting. Something the more adept luthiers are good at is being able to break down a fleeting and somewhat subjective sensory experience into component parts and manipulate them to be subtly more pleasing; bringing out harmonics in different ranges to affect the voice of the instrument. Timbre, as a mixture of disparate mathematically related frequencies in proportions relative to each other, is not dissimilar from smell. A similarly subjective, fleeting, and barely communicable sensation. How something looks is only part of the total experience. How it feels and smells (and sounds and tastes, but we're considerably less concerned with these from a practical standpoint) are just as important. We dislike cheap Chinese-made junk (radical overgeneralization for the sake of illustration) because it may LOOK appealing, but by the time you get up close to it and investigate it more thoroughly with your other senses, it breaks down entirely (again, pun intended). I have specifically in mind a piece of chocolate obtained in Beijing that looked especially attractive, but tasted like wax and nothingness; nothing can be more off putting than having expectations unmet (just ask Seneca). It's like the uncanny valley in robotics (I've been working on a contract to write a thin AI engine for a local robotics startup these past few days, and it seems like a pertinent analogy), the more it appears to be what you expect without achieving Turing levels of aesthetic indistinguishability, the more off putting it is. If I were to create this piece of leatherwork that looks absolutely stunning in every aspect, but felt like plastic and smelled like garbage (or nearly as damningly, nothing at all), it would be wholly off putting (to everyone that wasn't merely looking at a photo on the internet).

Updating the current plan of action as it relates to the immediate phase of the larger project: I'm going to investigate and probably make a chart/list/spreadsheet of various oils that I can readily obtain in sufficient quantities and at reasonable prices, and detail their fatty acid composition, percentages, saturation levels. If I can find the information, I'll see what I can do about nailing down the decomposition elements and see if I can't come up with some correlative understanding as to what smells pleasing on paper. Essentially, if neet/neatsfoot is the norm, olive oil is nothing out of the realm of expectation, and cod liver is somehow ideal, then compare them and figure out what they have in common.

One of the more pertinent takeaways from the 1919 book on oils and greases in leather was that of how to affect color. For starters, many things stated in the book were directly counter to my goals as I am hoping to achieve a fairly dark color, and it seems the fashion of the time dictated that lighter colors were a highly sought after norm (there is quite a bit in there about how to lighten leathers, etc.). The way this is achieved is by smoothing and slicking the fibers on the surface of the leather; essentially wetting them down. A non-wet way of doing this would be some sort of lacquer or a level-able hardened surface coating. One pretty excellent way of doing this, taken from the production of patent leather, is to use flax/linseed oil. The a-linoleic acid oxidizes at the surface of the leather and forms a polymer coating. This coating, when heavily applied, polished and mixed with colorants, is what gives patent leather its sheen. Less liberally applied, I think it would be a pretty excellent way within my aesthetic parameters to achieve the darker color I'm after (assuming there are no negative effects from hardness or impermeability of this polymer coating). Unfortunately, the concentration of shorter fatty acid chains and subsequent dearth of longer fatty acid chains could have a net negative affect on the aroma and suppleness of the leather, and thus it may not be suitable as a standalone treatment. It may be required that it be mixed with a heavier oil (TBD). Further, if the only part of the flax oil I'm interested in is the a-linoleic fatty acids, there are myriad other sources, some of which come bound up with other aromatic compounds (and water, which helps with the oil penetration). These other aromatic compounds may be too tightly bound in the leather or too fleeting to be of any real value, but just as the mechanical properties of the leather seem to slow and diffuse the negative byproducts of oil rancidification, they may similarly slow and diffuse the release of these aromatic compounds such that the leather smells additionally and subtly pleasing for a long long time...

So long term, I have some bellies that will make excellent oil treatment test subjects. Short term, I need to get something figured out for the immediate project between now and when it comes time in the current phase of the current project to oil the leather. I may see if my biochemist friend would indulge me, and see if we can't come up with a way to intentionally create a concentration of some of these aromatic compounds in a controlled setting either in her lab or here in one of our kitchens or garages or something. Getting an idea for the smell of certain things in isolation will make it considerably easier to build a desired aromatic timbre. Even more short term, I need to eat a (very late) breakfast and finish this AI engine code while it's too cold and snowy outside to work on some of the other projects on my 'to do' list...

Edited November 29, 2015 by spectre6000

[spectre6000]

Well... I hit a snag on the software contract, and can't really do a whole lot more until I hear back from the client on some hardware specifications. I know they do occasionally work on Sundays, so I might hear back, but until I do I'm a bit stuck... So.... While I wait, it's time to dig into the second book! I'm 30 pages in, and already, if nothing else, there's a very distinct difference in the overall voicing... The words 'peculiar' and 'evil-smelling' are abundant to the point that one doubts the extent of the author's vocabulary... It's very interesting in its addressing of mechanical oils toward the end of the Victorian era as I have a particular interest in clockworks of that era. Neat read. The way it addresses rancidity and fatty acids, etc. is markedly different from the other such that I wonder what the state of the science was during the intervening decade and change... It's not quite back to transitional alchemy, but certainly not written in a modern scientific voicing like the other. Very cool book pairing for anyone so inclined. That is all for now.

Finally got to the part you referenced about neet/neatsfoot oil, violet glass, precipitates, etc. Very interesting, but also very much in period. Science clearly came a long way in the 13 years between the authoring of this book and the former, and it's come far longer since. The statement about the oil not going rancid for years is directly countered by exposing it to sunlight (intentional decomposition via UV light) and the filtering of distillate (crystalized fatty acids, again from decomposition). "Rancid" may be subject to vernacular here. To me, it means the oil has decomposed from a triglyceride to diglycerides, fatty acids, and beyond. It seems to the author, "rancid" refers to a specific "peculiar"smell that likely refers to a very specific class of aromatics and aldehydes that may be present in greater or lesser quantities in neet/neatsfoot oil. Personally, I always thought neet/neatsfoot oil smelled rancid when new, so I'm not sure it would be easy to tell in any case. I don't know the state of organic chemistry in 1906, but I think it would be a pretty safe bet that the technology required to discern the chemical composition of a complex organic substance like naturally derived oils (which all the oils discussed in this book would be classified as to a greater or lesser degree) either did not yet exist or were in such a state of infancy that the author did not have knowledge of access to them.

"Green vitriol" (pre-modern science's cousin Alchemy's word for iron sulfate)... Love it!

Edited November 29, 2015 by spectre6000

[spectre6000]

Alright, I'm done waiting and I'm calling it a day. I'm going to go out and get some work done on some fun projects. For starters, I'm going to see what I can do in terms of designing an experiment to nail some of this stuff down. I have some veg tanned bellies that I don't remember buying. From the look of what's not there, I'm going to assume I used them for tool wear/friction linings. Since I don't remember buying them, it's possible they were cut offs from whole hides... I really have no idea, but they're here and I don't have any real plans for them where they're so special that I couldn't just use some other scrap cutoffs or buy some cheap stuff from Tandy or other.

So here's what I have in mind:

Acquire a collection of varied and assorted oils according to research findings regarding relative fatty acid composition in very small quantities (hopefully I can find some place that samples such things).

Cut the bellies up into smallish pieces.

Find a means of hanging them such that there is some air flow and minimal risk of cross contamination.

Find a means of labeling the samples (probably nothing more complicated than a sharpie)

Oil them up,

hang them up,

check in every so often and take notes.

I figure reapply once a quarter maybe?

Total elapsed time... 1 year?

Thoughts?

[TwinOaks]

Enjoy your experiment

[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?