Best glue for patches on leather?

[BikerBill]

Hi all,

It's been a long long time since I posted on here. I am currently experimenting with putting my embroidered patches that I sell onto leather purses and other small leather items. They have a very good solid heat glue backing. However that does not work well on leather. I did some searching and see that  PETRONIO RUBBER CEMENT seems to be a good glue for leather. Is there anything better than that? I suppose I may have to rough up the solid glue backing on the patches to get them to stick. I tried the best glue that Tandy leather has and it did not work good at all. Any advice or tips much appreciated. Thank you.  

[blue duck]

For what it is worth I find Barge contact cement to be the best. Pretty sure it was originally for building shoes. Once leather with leather is bonded, it is stuck. You will tear the leather many cases before breaking the glue bond. That said I don't know about your specific case. If you do choose to try it, I think the toluene free barge is not as tough as the regular. Also make sure you use good ventilation. Finally, it sounds like you are applying it to the finished side, so if you rough up the area where you are attaching the patch, you will get better adherence to the leather. 

[BikerBill]

Thank you for the advice. Actually Barge contact cement is what I got from Tandy leather. They said it was the best glue for leather. I tried putting a patch on a scrap piece of leather and let it set overnight. It was pretty easy to peel the patch off. I may find that it's going to be hard to find something that works with the patches. I was thinking of using automotive silicon, that stuff seems to stick to anything. Anyways thank you for trying to help. 

[ScoobyNewbie]

I’ve been using Leather Weld. I can rip the welded parts apart by main force, but they don’t just pull apart easily.

[Rockoboy]

After applying the glue and placing the patch, are you able to apply some clamping force? That might be a 1lb or 2lb weight sitting on the patch and the piece sitting on a firm flat surface, or a spring clamp, G clamp or similar.

[BikerBill]

1 hour ago, ScoobyNewbie said:

I’ve been using Leather Weld. I can rip the welded parts apart by main force, but they don’t just pull apart easily.

Thanks, will see about that stuff.

42 minutes ago, Rockoboy said:

After applying the glue and placing the patch, are you able to apply some clamping force? That might be a 1lb or 2lb weight sitting on the patch and the piece sitting on a firm flat surface, or a spring clamp, G clamp or similar.

I did use a glass on a coaster over it. Maybe I need to use more pressure. Thanks.

[Aven]

1 hour ago, BikerBill said:

Thank you for the advice. Actually Barge contact cement is what I got from Tandy leather. They said it was the best glue for leather. I tried putting a patch on a scrap piece of leather and let it set overnight. It was pretty easy to peel the patch off. I may find that it's going to be hard to find something that works with the patches. I was thinking of using automotive silicon, that stuff seems to stick to anything. Anyways thank you for trying to help. 

When I use Barge, I rough up the area that I'm going to glue and put a light coat of glue.  IF the leather is thicker, will flex a lot, I'll add another thin coat before the first coat is completely dry.  Once they are tacky I put the glued pieces together.  Then use a smooth faced hammer to beat the two pieces together.  I haven't had two pieces come apart yet.

[BikerBill]

3 minutes ago, Aven said:

When I use Barge, I rough up the area that I'm going to glue and put a light coat of glue.  IF the leather is thicker, will flex a lot, I'll add another thin coat before the first coat is completely dry.  Once they are tacky I put the glued pieces together.  Then use a smooth faced hammer to beat the two pieces together.  I haven't had two pieces come apart yet.

Thank you. I may try it again using your steps, thanks. 

[Aven]

Bill, the hammer I was referring to is a cobber's hammer.  The face of it is a bit domed so that the edges don't dig in.  Some where in here is a tread about them.  I remember someone saying that they had glued a piece of leather to the face to reduce the marking even more.

[Mattsbagger]

Also need to rough smooth leather to give it a “tooth” just like with wood.

[chrisash]

I used to do commercial embroidery with computer controlled embroidery machines, we did quite a lot of embroidery directly onto Chrome leather just using leather needles

[BikerBill]

Thanks everyone for the replies. As for using an embroidery machine, those are great, but very expensive. In fact tomorrow I'm going to the ISS convention show here in Orlando. They will have a lot of embroidery machines set up and running. Very cool to see them making designs. No way I can afford one though.