by bbrah » March 10th, 2010, 11:32 pm
Number 9, I agree that water washes away the oils in leather, if there are any left. Personally, if I've got a folded up piece of wood that's been wedged under a steamer trunk since the Eisenhower administration, I'll soak it in water to get it open. At least that way It won't crack or rip. You can always add back oils, but you can't un-tear leather. While it's wet, I go ahead and scrub it out with a soft brush and industrial hand cleaner (GoJo or Fast Orange), then prop it open to dry in a cool, well-ventilated place. When it dries into a glove-shaped piece of wood, I can easily condition it back to suppleness (with petroleum jelly). If you've got a method for massaging conditioner into the dirty and crusty palm of a glove through a matchstick-wide crack, I'd like to hear it.
I've only restored about a dozen gloves (down to replacing pads and linings, fabricating panels, and restitching) and I've only relaced and conditioned maybe a hundred. I've tried every type of conditioner and cleaner out there. Yeah, Lexol makes fine products, but in my very limited experience, they're at best marginally better. I think it's a bunch of marketing hype. Maybe that thin margin (if it exists) means something to you, but I'm not monkeying around with the 100-year-old gems you work on. I actually play with most of the gloves that I bring back to life, and I have yet to experience a failure because I washed away essential oils or changed the Ph of the leather. By the way, I've used this exact same method on my boots for 30+ years and I currently have a pair of combat boots that are more than 20 years old. I've gone through two resoles and am due for a third. If not for a deep scratch on one of the toes and the worn soles, you'd be hard pressed to tell them apart from a pair of broken-in one year old boots. The only difference with the boots is that I dye them black and let them dry again before I condition them. Lastly, need I remind you, that Nokona recommends petroleum jelly to re-condition its gloves.