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
Look up "cuir boulli".
Basically, No.
Owain
OK, you now have my attention on the leather lingerie. What do you want cleaning in this line, or what do you know about it? :-)
Dave
NT wibbled on Tuesday 22 December 2009 16:14
No. Tends to make the leather go hard. Can be reversed to some extent with suitable oils or waxes.
I just googled cleaning leather clothing and that was the most practically informative page near the top of the search results. I tried not to think too much about the lingerie aspect.
Owain
I'm somewhat concerned by the idea of putting something repellent on lingerie. Not that leather lingerie strikes me as particularly attractive in the first place.
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".
Thanks everyone.
NT
Wouldn't unwashable leather be rather, um, unhygienic?
Owain
Maybe a crust just kind of builds up over time, and then can simply be peeled off?
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