Would leather survive a run through the washing machine? There are
some leather goods I'm not really interested in spending on special
cleaning for, some have shiny finish and some completely matt. I just
want to give them a quick clean before passing them on.


cheers,
NT

On 22 Dec, 16:14, NT wrote:
Would leather survive a run through the washing machine?

Look up "cuir boulli".

Basically, No.

NT
wibbled on Tuesday 22 December 2009 16:14

Would leather survive a run through the washing machine? There are
some leather goods I'm not really interested in spending on special
cleaning for, some have shiny finish and some completely matt. I just
want to give them a quick clean before passing them on.


cheers,
NT

No. Tends to make the leather go hard. Can be reversed to some extent with
suitable oils or waxes.

--
Tim Watts

This space intentionally left blank...

On 22 Dec, 22:51, Tim W wrote:
No. Tends to make the leather go hard. Can be reversed to some extent with
suitable oils or waxes.

Can't be reversed _at_all_ Air-drying (i.e. "old leather") is
reversible, but damage from water is there for keeps. This is why it's
so important to wax your kit _before_ immersion, not try and recover
it afterwards.

Of course it's a grey area. Hard, wet leather is a mix of water damage
and simple drying, so you can improve it by treatment afterwards
(lanolin, or leather treatments using lanolin, are the trick). However
damage from water is always going to leave some degree of irrepairable
damage, even if you can recover the other effects.

The Australian museum reCollections site (amol.org.au) is always a
good start for conservation practice. Their leather cleaning advice is
clear: work through the non-water techniques before you go anywhere
water-based approaches. Also use of water darkens the surface
irreversibly. Of course if it's horse tack that has always been
cleaned with water & glycerine saddle soap, and it's only mildly
dirty, then using the same watery soap is fine.

Don't oil leather, or if you do, be careful which oils you use. Non-
film-forming animal oils like neatsfoot are fine, film-forming
vegetable oils like linseed are a disaster. Some carboot sales ago I
bought a large leather gladstone bag that was in good condition, but
very, very stiff with drying. I handed over my money before the chap
told me "it would be fine, he'd just treated it with linseed oil". If
I'd known, I wouldn't have touched it. Now I can't do a thing with it
- there's a skin layer of oil that I can't remove and nothing I can
apply goes through it to actually treat the leather. I'll probably
have to scrap the whole thing (and re-use the frame for a carpet bag),
just because of this well-intentioned (sic) but ignorant "restoration".

On Dec 22, 4:14*pm, NT wrote:
Would leather survive a run through the washing machine? There are
some leather goods I'm not really interested in spending on special
cleaning for, some have shiny finish and some completely matt. I just
want to give them a quick clean before passing them on.

cheers,
NT


Thanks everyone.


NT