The Leather Element: Hardening Leather

hi I'm Chuck Dorset for Weaver leather craft supply and this is the leather element send us a question once a week we will do our best to get a good solid answer back to you this week great question coming in from Dan and it's one of my favorite techniques how do i hardened leather you won't believe how easy this is alright right off the bat we're only going to talk about natural vegetable that's Han with heavy wax or tallow not gonna work Chrome tans not at all but a natural vegetarian so easy you won't believe it and we're gonna have no issues with our dye paint or top coat okay historically we are we are in a old-school craft here we've been hardening leather from millennia armor first thought but less don't stave right there because holster right off the top that's gonna protect that gun for lifetimes I have no idea how long that will work back that's seven or eight years old now looks like I made it yesterday that's the point all right secondly though bulls bags masks so you've got a duffel in your round you want some good body to the rounds or laptop bag you want a solid divider or a solid backing on that incredibly easy to do all right historically curve bully this means boiled leather French translation funny thing here we've got multiple documented recipes seven eight nine hundred years old they agree on not a single thing except don't boil the leather like typical history but first off boiled leather now there's a technique out there I've heard a number of people say they use don't do this this is dipping dipping your panel or your leather in boiling wax extremely dangerous you're our customer we love you we don't want anything bad to happen to you but this is fraught with problems first off that panel whatever it touches it's going to wick oil it's a a car seat that will wick oil into that car seat in two minutes and will absolutely ruin it oil will never come out secondly though that project or you will always smell like a candle and third problem who knows what colors can come out am I going to be able to paint that or add a topcoat or an antique probably not okay so boiling not the great way to go my favorite baking now I say banking but we're really more curing the leather because we're going to use a low temp and a low time in your home oven now it's gonna make your house smell like leather not always a bad thing but 200 degrees 20 minutes that panel it's going to be hard hard as a board now when it comes out of the oven I've said I say curing more than baking when that comes out of the oven still going to be moist give that about 24 hours but once you do again no issue with dye stain antique topcoat not a problem everything that's going to apply just like it did before you bake it now a leather firm that's our third way to go we sell a leather firmer this is great now you simply dip your leather in this let it dry here's the trick let that dry for 24 hours I mean don't even touch it but if you do it's gonna harden the leather nicely now we're gonna talk a little bit more about armor only because we're gonna step over here take a look at the suit because it's a very big very visible example of what we're talking about both with the baking and the dying so let's step over here and take a look at that now this just like every other project all I'm looking for is ease and outcome simple as that okay Yves we're baking this now I skipped over a point here sorry let's back up just a little bit if I'm gonna bake a panel what I'm going to do is I'm going to take that panel let's soak it in water straight water for about a minute maybe a minute and a half let that water get good and wikked in now I'm gonna pull it out it's gonna be a little too pliable to work with at this point so maybe give it 15 20 minutes of just sitting now we can take this say with this tacit all I need is a nice bowl shape so in fact on this I think I simply just set that on a 1 by 2 piece of board and let it sit maybe an hour let some more of that water evaporates then we can go to baking okay so leaves on the east side no problem outcome here's the biggest point notice my diet notice how consistent this is this is simply a pro diving's Pro die dip-dyed I dropped in an acrylic paint into my tooling into my background and then I covered that with a saddle AK outcome he's an outcome very simple now would you consider taking a mallet to a project that you've spent more than a hundred hours working on no that's nuts but in this case I can hit that as hard as I want in fact you know what I'm a little bit more worried about my mallet handle than I am the armor now the camera won't pick that up there's not a single ding and that armor this is going to last for years so I hope this is great information for you thanks for taking time to watch the leather element good luck with your projects [Music]

Channel: Weaver Leather Supply

Views: 188,073

Keywords: hardening leather, leather firmer, bake hardening leather, hardening leather by baking, curing leather for armor, baking method for hardening leather, hardening leather in the oven, hardening leatehr in teh oven, hardening leather cheat, hardening leather sheet, hardening leather sheat, hardening leather sheath, Leathercraft tips

Id: hwGW_qwpxYs

Length: 5min 15sec (315 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 28 2018