Home-made Leather Preserver and Waterproofing

I have a Kangaroo leather Aussie ranchers style hat, which is now 3 years old and has never been either cleaned, nourished or re-waterproofed.

Now that we are in Autumn and moving into Winter I thought it was about time I did something to maintain and weatherproof my hat, along with several other leather items Lois & I own.

Rather than just going into town and buying something suitable from off the shelf, I decided to have a go at making some myself: a decision that I believe to be absolutely the right one now that I have used some of it.

Step 1:

The Ingredients

200 ml of Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

50g Beeswax: I was given about 250g of very old and very hard beeswax by a local beekeeping friend of mine.

20 drops of Lavender essential oil

10 drops of Tea Tree essential oil.

I have chosen to add the Lavender and Tea tree essential oils to make a nice smelling and insect repelling leather preserver....... but these are not necessary.

Comments

[bigmark]

What about a black leather jacket??? My coat is brand new,but I was just thinking about all the rain we've been getting & was wondering if it could even be waterproofed.....Great
job...I will try this on my boots soon...

[Kiteman]

Home-made dubbin, excellent!

What does it do to the colour/shine of the leather?

[Gareth0123]

it gives an nice semi-gloss to gloss shine, but not quite a high gloss, which is exactly what I wanted; my main need was to nourish and water proof my leather items rather than to polish them.

When applied to the leather it is almost colourless; so the original or natural colour of the leather is more or less maintained.

[Kiteman]

Excellent.

[raggedrose]

I did something similar years ago. I used basically the same recipe, only with liquid lanolin instead of olive oil. I figured using something as close to the oils the animal had produced when it was alive was a good idea, and I use liquid lanolin to oil my leather drumhead so I always have it around. It worked quite well, though it darkened the leather considerably and there really is no shine any more. I used it on a pair of homemade period shoes. They're ten-plus years old now and are still in good shape.