How to Make Leather Soft Again?
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My proper noun is John and the owner of Maze Leather. I've been working with leather for a couple years now and dedicated this space for making content to aid others get into leather crafting. Regardless of skill, hopefully you lot can find some blazon of resource through this site. Give thanks yous for visiting Maze Leather!
Hardening leather is a good way to make your leather a little extra durable. Whether you want to make armor or but add some actress strength to your leather project, we have a couple tips to help y'all.
Throughout history we come across many different ways to harden leather and this was common for armour making. Romans used leather for shield, helmets arm guards and leg guards for battle. At present regular leather is but a little besides weak to exist used to block attacks then they came up with methods to harden information technology.
When hardening you have to exist conscientious to avoid not over hardening to the betoken of making the leather very easy to intermission.
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How to harden Leather
Veg-tanned leather should exist used to get the best results when hardening leather. Also since other tanned leather involves chemicals, these chemicals can fire off and cause nasty fumes. For the best results utilise a thick piece of veg-tanned, I am using 9-10oz leather in these examples.
Method 1: Boiling water
To start we will brainstorm with filling a basin of room temperature h2o plenty to embrace the whole leather piece. Let the leather to sit in this bowl for a couple minutes.
This will give the leather plenty time to soak up enough water to brand it very flexible. This get-go to hardening leather is pretty universal as you lot will have to mold, bake, boil or hammer the leather.
It also is a must for hardening leather using the boiling method since the leather should be wet earlier placing it in the hot water. If not, the leather will have to soak up all the water showtime and will not get-go to curdle every bit fast.
You will gear up a pot of water onto a warm burner while the leather sits in the bowl of h2o. Once the water starts boiling or reaches 180 degrees take the pot off of the burner. Now y'all can transfer the leather into the pot from the bowl.
If the water is hot enough you will come across the edges of the leather start to coil and darken in color.
This should start inside the first 5-ten seconds. Allow the leather to sit in the h2o for around xv-60 seconds. You will notice the leather shrinking in size, crimper more than and darkening in color. Afterward the time has been reached, take the leather out of the pot and stretch it out a petty bit.
You should notice that the leather has swelled up a decent amount.
Note: I am non also sure if I left it in for too long or the water was likewise hot, merely the leather formed a pocket. This pocket bulged out making information technology very difficult to reshape. The leather had also decreased most 1/three of the original size. I figured if I permit information technology sit for another five-ten seconds the bubble would accept disappeared and swelled evenly throughout the whole piece.
After taking it out yous will want to class it to your object/mold.
I have an article on four ways to wet mold and tips for wet molding to check out to amend understand how to do it. Simply for now we'll just quickly explain.
Take your item that is wrapped with plastic wrap and identify onto a hard/wooden surface. This volition keep the object from getting wet and allow y'all to blast your leather downward.
Place the leather around the detail and hammer in nails or staple the leather downwards equally you shape it against the detail. This volition keep the leather from moving so information technology volition harden effectually the item you are shaping it to.
Allow this to dry out fully, for me it took around half dozen-8 hours as it was very wet when it was taken out of the pot.
One time dry you lot should now have a shaped piece of leather with extra durability.
This method swells the leather making it much more than thicker than the original starting point. Condensing the grain in a smaller area will permit for a harder piece.
Method 2: Hammer Fourth dimension
To start you will exercise the same thing and place your leather in a room temperature bowl of h2o. Allow this to sit for 10 minutes then take it out.
Move to a identify where yous tin can hammer the leather and without dissentious the leather. Starts hammering the surface for a few minutes, making sure you cover the whole area multiple times.
Note: As you hammer the leather yous will meet the leather is taking shape of the hammer caput. This can be unappealing only can be stock-still after done past smoothing information technology out with your fingers or a roller. I left mine how information technology was because I though information technology added a pretty cool texture to it. So doing this with a slice of leather that has been stamped, carved, burned, painted or dyed will profoundly alter the results.
Subsequently you accept hammered the leather you should notice it beingness much dryer than before. This is good since yous hammered out a lot of water from it.
You can now mold your leather around your item and let sit down for a few hours. This method will take a lot less time to dry since you will exist chirapsia the h2o out of it.
Every bit y'all hammer the leather you are thinning out the leather different the first method. This will permit the grain to be more squished together making the thick piece a little thinner and more durable.
Method three: Baking Leather
Once more, start with leather in bowl of water and let sit down for a couple of minutes. Once you place the leather in the bowl, set your oven or toaster oven to 120 degrees fahrenheit. If your oven does non go that depression, use the everyman temperature yous tin can. Mine was set to 150 degrees.
Once ten minutes has been upward take the leather out of the water and start molding it with your hands. As y'all shape the leather be sure to continue to run your fingers along the creases/edges of your item. Doing this for a few minutes will allow the leather to already start to take and hold shape.
One time you observe the leather can stay in the desired shape by itself yous will want to place it into the oven.
For the leather to harden information technology can take anywhere between thirty-90 minutes and will depend on desired strength. The longer you let sit down in the oven the harder it will get, but going too long will plough information technology very brittle.
I noticed effectually 30-xl minutes the leather had dried completely then I left in there for a total of 70 minutes. This method had shrunk the leather a very modest amount making the grain a bit more tight.
Once you have it out permit information technology to cool for around x minutes. Now you it will be ready to be worked on right abroad.
Weaver also explains a different method to do this type of baking. They say adding in oven effectually 200 degrees fahrenheit for 20 minutes will firm up the leather. This will allow you it to however be a little moist to piece of work with but once dry, hard as a rock.
Method four: Hot Wax
This can be a very dangerous method equally boiling wax tin can pop and burn anyone around it. You Are Warned!!
This is why I personally didn't try it nor do I recommend. Simply information technology still is a way, or two ways to apply wax that can be tried.
For dunking into hot wax y'all can accept the leather particular already stitched, inked or carved. This wax will add a hardened layer around the whole detail.
You will cook beeswax (or any other wax, merely beeswax is recommended) into a pot around 250 degrees Celsius. Allow this to sit down in the wax bath for effectually 3 minutes. Since it is wax and not water the leather volition not swell upwardly as it does from the humid water method.
After your particular has been sitting you will have it out and first forming the item. Allow it to absurd downwards a bit earlier paw as it volition be very hot.
Once your detail has been molded yous will place into an oven for 10 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius.
Dark Horse Workshop shows how he does wax molding in this tutorial below.
Some other way to use wax is to melt wax into a pot and paint information technology onto your leather. So afterward you accept wet formed the leather into shape you will apply coats of wax onto the leather.
This wax adds for extra durability and protection to the leather as the wax will dry out and go a thicker substance. You can cook the leather for 30 minutes till its dry to spread up the procedure then utilise the wax.
Regular wet molding
Wet molding in general volition tend to harden the the surface surface area of the leather. As water soaks into the leather information technology volition create a tighter leather. This tin can be washed to make something a fiddling extra durable than your average leather piece but don't count it lasting every bit long every bit some of the other hardening methods.
Even calculation water to a apartment surfaced area of leather can help strengthen the leather. This is can be used for bags to add a little extra back up of add some leather padding to your item. Information technology is very easy to soak some leather and let information technology sit for a few hours until dry
Results
The boiled h2o method definitely seemed to exist the hardest leather over the iii test I did. It feels much more than solid than the original leather and other methods I had tried. The downside is that the leather almost doubled in thickness, darkened in color and was hard to continue even. I would love to do this with a 6-7 oz piece of leather to swell to around an 11 oz piece.
I like the final color but was upset to take the warp in the middle. Like I said, I should accept waited a petty longer till the whole surface area swelled evenly or took it out right afterwards the edges started to neat.
The hammer method worked pretty nicely and gave the leather some absurd rough texture. It feel a piffling harder than normal just just barely more than your average wet molding. I experience I could've hammered information technology for perchance twice the amount and information technology might have helped harden the leather a fleck more.
The baking method didn't seem to piece of work also well. It definitely was a curt alternative to wet molding and waiting hours earlier it was dry, but didn't really harden as much equally I thought it would. The piece came out very clean though so that is a plus!
Weaver Leather also has a specialized leather firmer that can easily had toughness to your leather. You tin can apply this to add to these methods or practise this by itself.
Weaver Leather Supply | Amazon
This squad has a deep knowledge of leather, machinery, hardware and more and works diligently to ensure every product with the Weaver Leather Craft Supply name meets the highest quality standards.
Buy at Amazon.com
We earn a committee if you lot brand a purchase, at no additional cost to you.
All in all it was fun testing out means to harden leather and I hope this gave y'all some ideas of what to try for your next projection!
Source: https://mazeleather.com/4-ways-to-harden-leather/
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