Coach Rehab and Rescue Club
- Thread starter greenpixie
- Start date
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Not entirely Coach-related but I thought some of you might find this valuable. Last week while I was travelling I was carrying a large black leather hobo that ended up heavily encrusted with road salt and salt-water stains after I thoughtlessly left it on the floor of a car. I thought the bag was a goner as the bottom third of it was streaked white with salt. It was truly a mess like a pair of sloppy snow boots. When I got home I cleaned it with water and vinegar--2 parts water/1 part vinegar, like google advised, and voila all the salt wiped off easily and quickly. Even the salt water stains were gone. In fact the bag looked like new after just a few minutes. After it dried I rubbed on Leather CPR so the leather wouldn't dry out. The effectiveness of the cleaning may have been due to the fact that the salt had been on the bag for less than 24 hours (I think) and hadn't had time to really penetrate the leather.
not that bad. i think that they are dry cracks. when i received the bag, it is totally dry out. the strap is very stiff. so the first thing i do is to cover it all with mink oil. now the situation is improved， the bag is becoming kind of soft.
Beautiful! Are you going to seal it with something after?The colours you picked are stunning and you did/are doing a beautiful job!!!
Thank you @Vimsmum and @whateve. Interesting on the magnet "trick". Took out my rare earth magnets that used to attach hides for my dogs nose work. Walla, the clips are brass and the turnlock. Ordering some find grit paper now. The project continues.You can test whether or not the brass is solid or plated with a magnet, magnet sticks, its plated, magnet doesn’t stick its solid brass. If your brass is solid, and removable, or even the clips on the end of straps, I’ve put them in a shallow bowl with warm vinegar for about 15-20 minutes, then removed, rinsed and polished. Sometimes this is all you need. If it’s stubborn, then I’ll use Barkeepers Friend with a soft toothbrush. You could also try very fine grit wet/dry sandpaper (800 grit or higher). Hope this helps
I've never used Saphir for this. I like acrylic paint because it is cheap, comes in a ton of colors and can be cleaned off if I don't like the way it looks. After awhile it becomes permanent.
I haven’t used acrylic paint yet. I picked up Saphir Juvacuir in a shade I thought would be good for evening out the color on a brown bag. It turned out to be a good match for BT, so ended up using that on piping and some scratches on a BT bag instead instead.
Here's my rehabbed Weston Shopper . As you can see it came very scuffed with a huge ink stain that refused to budge. My only choice was to redye the bag - my first time ever doing this . I used acetone to strip the finish then slightly dampened the bag and applied Fiebing's dark brown. I applied about three coats but it was splotchy and dried with a green iridescent tinge. I decided to start over so I dunked the bag and washed with dish soap - that actually got the green out but left me with some splotches. I decided to apply a couple coats of oxblood dye when the bag was damp and that evened out the colour a bit. I was hesitant to apply resolene since some people said it was hit or miss. It was a hit for me. It actually did a phenomenal job of evening everything out.
Anytime
Not many people outside of this thread are interested in this info!!