Preventing Wet Leather........

[Rick Marchand]

Back to business, Dave... How do you treat your leather? Is there a difference in finishes from tack to sheaths? I imagine that you buy pre-treated utility leather for a lot of your stuff. I suppose I could hunt down my answers on your site but then it would be work on my end.

 

[Horsewright]

Rick I pretty much use regular veggie tan for most projects, (sheaths, martingales, holsters, rifle scabbards, spur straps etc). The leggings for the most part are chrome tan and then for work ones I often will use a heavier, much more water resitant leather called oil tan. Here is a pic of an oil tan pair. This stuff is about as water proof and bulletproof as leather can get and still be flexible enough to make leggings out of. But its not waterproof its water resitant.

For the vast majority of my projects I just oil with warm neatsfoot (pure) oil and then a light coat of Tan Kote afterwards as finish. Thats what was done to the yokes (the basket stamped part in the leggings above). You can't make leather waterproof. I know this. I have spent days horseback when a fish would of been indoors. I've been on pack trips where the trail was marked by rain strangled frogs. You can't waterproof leather. Leather getting wet does not hurt it. Leather drying out with out being reconditioned hurts it. Years ago I made a Leatherman sheath for a MS cattleman that ranches on the gulf coast. It was different design than my current Leatherman sheath and had two points of belt attachment, a 2" slot and a loop riveted on the back. This rancher told me that daily he was in saltwater up to his waist pulling some cow out of a marsh. Finally the nickel rivet rusted through (I know you're a rivet guy Rick), the leather was still good. So after 5 years of daily soaking in saltwater he asked me to fix it. Said it was the best product out there. I just built him a new one n/c as I knew he'd be back and he has been.

So day after we got back from the beach we set 4 saddle stands in the living room (one of the other couples on the trip stayed a couple days with us when we got back) on top of some old sheets. Brought in our saddles and anything else leather that got wet. We washed em down with warm soapy water on a rag (just a little Dawn dish soap in the water) and then conditioned them while watching Appaloosa (Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen) on the big screen, might of been a couple of beers drunk too. In the cowboy world this is called a "dubbin' party". Dubbin being an old word for leather conditioner. We used Williams leather conditioner from Australia as it was recommended by our saddlemaker and he has not led us astray. Good stuff, however we used up the rest of it and I see that there are no US suppliers anymore cause I tried to order some more that day. Failing obtaining Williams I would use Skidmore's, a close second in my book. Both of these are beeswax and lanolin concoctions, I can smell the lanolin.