Coach Rehab and Rescue Club
- Thread starter bunnymasseuse
- Start date
TPF may earn a commission from merchant affiliate
links, including eBay, Amazon, and others
- Status
All of you may know, I had an extremely luck day last Saturday when I found this vintage beauty on ebay. Please use the link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/76058330@N03/sets/72157629398271288/
Remember, if you want to see the comments, view the photos one by one and not as a slideshow.
BTW - there is another "Cashin Big Mouth" in black on ebay, not promoting, just telling you in case you want to have this beauty for your collection. The one listed is black, mine is chocolate brown.
Happy Easter (if you celebrate it).
Beautiful-I can't wait to see the final pictures. It would be hard to find on eBay for less than you paid for it, I noticed that black bag is already priced pretty high. Probably worth it, and I bet it will go higher.
I feel my Cashin bag is out there somewhere, someday.
Unfortunately we don't have a FP store in the state, there is an outlet a little over an hour away. That's one reason why I figure I'll never be as lucky as KateV when it comes to finding used bags in thrift stores, there probably aren't that many here. The outlet store hasn't really been here very long, I'm guessing 10 years or so.
I'm back and forth on sending it to Coach, I think it's time to make a decision though. I have another bag (non coach) that needs a repair so I'll more than likely kill two birds in one trip and take them to a cobbler.
and Jessi, I think I will ultimately give her a dunk, I've noticed the water just seems to sorta "fluff" the leather and that is really the only other thing besides the hardware that this bag needs. I think the only thing I"m worried about is the leather lightening, she's a good rich brown. I know it should come out OK, it's probably one of the easiest colors to work with.
Fantastic!
All of you may know, I had an extremely luck day last Saturday when I found this vintage beauty on ebay. Please use the link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/76058330@N03/sets/72157629398271288/
Remember, if you want to see the comments, view the photos one by one and not as a slideshow.
BTW - there is another "Cashin Big Mouth" in black on ebay, not promoting, just telling you in case you want to have this beauty for your collection. The one listed is black, mine is chocolate brown.
Happy Easter (if you celebrate it).
That's too bad, but keep in mind that department stores also sell Coach bags, Nordstroms, Macys, Bloomingdales, Dillards, and many more - so you may still find a great bag at a thrift store some day!
Thanks, I'm very happy with how it came out. Here's a preview of my next project. It was in very good shape, but I paid too much so I'm going to be too sensitive to post it unless it comes out really well. Normally I wouldn't care too much if a bag darkens, but I like the color of this bag NOW and I don't want it to change. It has minor issues, just a little dirty and kinda stinky, again I could probably skip the bath. I almost just washed the strap to straighten it out and let it be.
More soon, I hope, if I don't end up in tears over this one!
Oh, another NYC bag!! I am a fan of those bags!!
So, on the ink thing... I couldn't get it all out! I worked on all of those bags for almost four hours, and I got a lot of improvement, but there is just no way to completely remove the ink from the leather and not also destroy the dye in the leather! I did pretty good though, and I am kinda proud of my results, but still not perfect.
Two of the bags with ink are New York City bags, and one is a United States bag, but the kind with the United States inside the creed and not under it.
Anyway, my process was like this:
I pre-treated the stains with alcohol. Then I started washing them. I used my fingernails at first to scratch the surface of the leather to open up the pores, and watched as the ink came out in the water. Two of these stains were massive, like bigger than a quarter in size, like a whole pen had leaked into each of these poor bags! I ruined my shellac manicure doing this, just FYI!! So, then I began using a metal cuticle pusher to scrape the leather, lightly so it wouldn't damage, but hard enough to open up the pores and allow the ink to escape. Each time I did it, I filled the spoon of the metal cuticle pusher with ink! One bag had blue ink, the other black, and it wasn't ball point because there was simply too much of it. The alcohol at one point became ineffective, and no more ink would come out in the scraping process. I then decided to try to use bar soap. I use bar soap for lots of stains in fabric, and I figured it might work. I took a bar of hotel soap, and started rubbing the corner of the soap into the ink spot, voila, the ink started filling up the spoon again. I had to keep alternating between alcohol and soap, when one stopped working, I would switch to the other. I would work on one bag for a while (in one bathroom) then leave that one to soak and go to the other bathroom to work on the other bag. I took pics of the whole process on both bags, I will post them to my blog hopefully tonight after I am done writing this. The water would start pulling the ink out of the bags in large inky clouds, and then I would continue the scraping/treating process, then soak, and repeat. This took about three hours!! It is not a fast process at all! Eventually, no more ink would come out of either bag no matter what I did. There are still outlines around the ink spots, but the spots themselves went from completely opaque, to pretty transparent. I am hoping that once they dry they will not be very visible, but I won't know that for a couple of days most likely.
I don't mind imperfections on my bags, especially on bags as old as these are. I am hoping the stains will be faint and just look like part of carrying an aged and vintage but well cared for bag...
Oh, and I wrote to the seller of one of the bags that didn't disclose the huge ink spot, I told her I would like a partial refund for the bag because of the non-disclosure. We will see how that goes!
Here is the link to the blog, and I only used pics of one of the bags, it was too confusing with all of them in there!
http://coachbagrehab.blogspot.com/
And FYI, those pics are of the undisclosed ink spot bag! How could you sell that bag and not tell the buyer there was an ink spot that size on it???
So, on the ink thing... I couldn't get it all out! I worked on all of those bags for almost four hours, and I got a lot of improvement, but there is just no way to completely remove the ink from the leather and not also destroy the dye in the leather! I did pretty good though, and I am kinda proud of my results, but still not perfect.
Two of the bags with ink are New York City bags, and one is a United States bag, but the kind with the United States inside the creed and not under it.
Anyway, my process was like this:
I pre-treated the stains with alcohol. Then I started washing them. I used my fingernails at first to scratch the surface of the leather to open up the pores, and watched as the ink came out in the water. Two of these stains were massive, like bigger than a quarter in size, like a whole pen had leaked into each of these poor bags! I ruined my shellac manicure doing this, just FYI!! So, then I began using a metal cuticle pusher to scrape the leather, lightly so it wouldn't damage, but hard enough to open up the pores and allow the ink to escape. Each time I did it, I filled the spoon of the metal cuticle pusher with ink! One bag had blue ink, the other black, and it wasn't ball point because there was simply too much of it. The alcohol at one point became ineffective, and no more ink would come out in the scraping process. I then decided to try to use bar soap. I use bar soap for lots of stains in fabric, and I figured it might work. I took a bar of hotel soap, and started rubbing the corner of the soap into the ink spot, voila, the ink started filling up the spoon again. I had to keep alternating between alcohol and soap, when one stopped working, I would switch to the other. I would work on one bag for a while (in one bathroom) then leave that one to soak and go to the other bathroom to work on the other bag. I took pics of the whole process on both bags, I will post them to my blog hopefully tonight after I am done writing this. The water would start pulling the ink out of the bags in large inky clouds, and then I would continue the scraping/treating process, then soak, and repeat. This took about three hours!! It is not a fast process at all! Eventually, no more ink would come out of either bag no matter what I did. There are still outlines around the ink spots, but the spots themselves went from completely opaque, to pretty transparent. I am hoping that once they dry they will not be very visible, but I won't know that for a couple of days most likely.
I don't mind imperfections on my bags, especially on bags as old as these are. I am hoping the stains will be faint and just look like part of carrying an aged and vintage but well cared for bag...
Oh, and I wrote to the seller of one of the bags that didn't disclose the huge ink spot, I told her I would like a partial refund for the bag because of the non-disclosure. We will see how that goes!
Here is the link to the blog, and I only used pics of one of the bags, it was too confusing with all of them in there!
http://coachbagrehab.blogspot.com/
And FYI, those pics are of the undisclosed ink spot bag! How could you sell that bag and not tell the buyer there was an ink spot that size on it???
Last edited:
Thank you for sharing your information, and I love your blog too - please keep linking to it.
I have just bought 2 patricias legacy bags and am hoping that I won't get caught with undisclosed ink stains also.
I have just bought 2 patricias legacy bags and am hoping that I won't get caught with undisclosed ink stains also.
I just bought a red patricias legacy bag and am waiting for her to arrive. I'd be very keen to see how your red tribeca goes.
I'm sure we're all keen to see how this goes, and maybe for more of an idea of what you have.... regardless of how it turns out or what you paid for it! Seems like there is always a better bargain going just AFTER i pay for mine!
Thanks, I'm very happy with how it came out. Here's a preview of my next project. It was in very good shape, but I paid too much so I'm going to be too sensitive to post it unless it comes out really well. Normally I wouldn't care too much if a bag darkens, but I like the color of this bag NOW and I don't want it to change. It has minor issues, just a little dirty and kinda stinky, again I could probably skip the bath. I almost just washed the strap to straighten it out and let it be.
More soon, I hope, if I don't end up in tears over this one!
I did give it a good long sudsy Dawn Extra Strength soak in the hottest water I could get from the tap. Massaged the spots well, but without a good result. As the bag dried, they reappeared. Really "cooked!" Next I boiled some good strong black tea and gave it another soak (while the tea was still pretty warm!) and a good rinse. Haven't checked the result yet this morning...will post more details later.
Thanks for your advice...everyone's tips are soooo valuable!
I had washed and conditioned it once, but it wasn't helping with the light spots. Since the ink spot on the front was kind of bothering me anyway, once I decided to dye the black, I figured it would take more evenly on unconditioned leather-and I could also attempt to get the ink out at the same time.
It's worth mentioning that the light spots weren't that noticeable, and I could have lived with them, it was as much to experiment with the dye as anything. I wanted to start with a clean slate, no conditioners.
The Fiebings is super thin, pretty much like black water. As I said, they dye just soaked in. After conditioning, I could still see the lines between the touch ups and the undyed, but only if I tried really hard.
So here are the afters:
The piping around the corners, this was the worst part of the bag:
The back of the bag, for some reason the glare in the picture makes the bag look lighter than it is, but it shows the contrast a little better, you can kind of see the black dye, but just barely.
Here is the full bag, it's not a very good reveal picture, it looked better on my phone, and it looks as black in real life as the above pictures where I show the piping:
Overall I'm really happy with it. You can really see all the flaws out in the sun where I took the pictures, if you're looking for it. Indoors it really looks like a new bag. I'm going to try buffing it again tomorrow afternoon, I still get a little black on the cloth when I rub it down. I'm going to wear it with black pants the first time I use it just to play it safe, but I suspect that it's not really going to be a problem. Will report here if it is in case anyone else is tempted to try the same method.
How did you apply the Fieblings dye? with a dauber, or with a cloth? I had very good luck with my Minwax experiment using Leather CPR to condition...NO rub off!
Beautiful job on this bag...congrats!
- Status