Hi! I have lurked this forum for years but rarely post. I love this thread-I've had good luck with rehabbing lots of items of various quality and am also a firm believer in "if there's no hope for it, throw it in the washer". I've thrown leather shoes in the washer (pillowcased and padded with towels or blankets) and had had them come out almost new.
So the reason I'm delurking is: ink stains. I have a couple of tips. Some of you probably know this but I haven't seen it explicitly spelled out in this thread so I thought I'd be a little more specific. I usually just use hairspray because it's handy and I always have some, but the same goes for the rubbing alcohol tip: Don't let it dry until you're finished working! It dissolves the ink, but when it evaporates it "redeposits" the ink back in the bag (or clothing, which is how I learned to use it). So if you're dabbing, keep working at it, don't get discouraged if you just get a little off-reapply until you're satisified that it's all off or you're afraid you're going to permanently damage the bag.
So if I'm washing a clothing item with an ink stain I spray it on right by the washing machine and throw it in right away. Don't let it dry! The water lifts the hairspray and the ink and almost always gets it all right away.
The other trick is, if you think the leather can handle it and you're going to be washing it anyway-saturate it! Keep in mind if you do this with a stain on the inside this might cause it to soak through-in other words use your best judgement, but don't be afraid! If it soaks through there's a good chance you can get it out of the outside too, it just might take some retreating.
I'm rehabbing an old black station bag. I don't have a before picture of this and it would be hard to capture because it's black on black, but it had an ink stain in the front pocket below the flap. I assume it started on the inside, but I didn't see it before I gave it a bath and it soaked through so it was visible on the outside. It could have been there before and the slight lightening of the leather after bathing it emphasized it.
It mostly just looked shiny, and I probably could have lived with it (it was a little smaller than a dime), but I finally decided I'm going to touch up the black edging a bit anyway and since I'd experimented a bit with leather conditioners I decided to give it another bath so the dye will take evenly.
I decided to wash it in my frontloader on the hand wash cycle. I just feel like it gets ALL the soap out better than hand washing it, and my frontloader has some settings that result in a super gentle wash. So I got everything else ready to go, and as my final step I saturated both the inside and out of the pocket with hairspray, quickly tied it up in it's little pillow case, and hit start before the hairspray could dry.
The bag isn't fully dry, but it looks like it's all gone. I'm going to let it finish drying today and then check it out in the sunlight after work. It wouldn't surprise me to find that there is still some there, but I have to say, whenever I use this trick it seems like the ink just jumps right out.
