Hi everyone! I thought it might be nice to talk through some of the items I use when caring for our leather pieces! I know there are many products and procedures out there, but this is just our method 😉
When you receive an item from The Red Tractor Leather Company, we are hoping it stays with you for a very long time! Honestly to us, each item is a work of art and we have a hard time letting them go. With time, real leather can change. It may stretch, bend and/or soften for instance. But what we really geek out about around here, is when we see one of our pieces start to patina! This ‘Patina’ is where your leather will begin to darken due to the oils in your fingers, the sunlight, moisture (the happy accident of a coffee spill 😉 among other things. These forces/elements begin to change your leather and it takes on a personality of it’s own! Here is an example:
As awesome as it is to see your piece Patina, you will want to try and care for your item to keep it from cracking and drying out! Here are a few things we use here in the shop to help keep these leather items looking their best and lasting for years.
Our first and easiest go to is olive oil. Yep – the same stuff you buy at the grocery store. We use this on all of our pieces as a final touch. It helps put the needed oils back into our leather (after our tooling and carving process). This helps to keep the leather soft and beautiful – kind of like your skin 😉
We also use beeswax (we actually make our own mixture that includes olive oil). The reason we include beeswax is that the wax actually helps protect the leather from water and other damage while revitalizing the leather. We also have bees which makes things easy.
Another product we buy and use is called Skidmore’s Leather Cream. This stuff is amazing and we use it especially when restoring older items that need help with softening old scratches and scars that are inevitable with items being used daily.
The last item I will recommend is a product called Lexol All Leather Cleaner (Step 1). This has been a life saver for me when I have to restore or clean a piece of leather (Thank you Mark Bohaty for the recommendation!) I normally treat the leather with one of the conditioners I mentioned above AFTER using Lexol. And it kind of smells fun too 😉 Too much?
Bottom line, if you want your leather items to last a really long time – protect them and keep them away from the elements I listed above (i.e. sun, moisture, dirt – and coffee…) as much as possible, and take a little time to condition them. In fact, I actually find it to be a little therapeutic to rub new life into my pieces – give it a try!
Thanks for reading!