how to clean before finish

[sunny275]

Hey all, brand spanking new to making sheath's I have only make a couple. What I have noticed is all the smudges from your dirty hands. that with the natural oils in your hand , leaves what appears to be a stain. what do i do about this? Do i just use saddle soap? what do i do to get rid of accidental glue spots? water is not working out so well!!!!! Would appreciat any advice i can get. Thanks Sunny.

 

[DC KNIVES]

First, welcome to the forum. You will need to get some "Oxalic Acid" better known as "wood Bleach" at your local home improvement store or hardware.It's in powder form ,mix it with some water and it will clean very well as well as deglaze the leather for dyeing.As far as accidental glue spots, you ,ay be out of luck once they have dried, but try using a pencil eraser, sometimes they will come off.The best way is to obviously not get glue spots but have the glue solvent handy when gluing so you can get it right away before it dries.Dave

 

[Doug Lester]

Another deglaser is get some cirtic acid where they have canning supplies in the grocery store and disolve a couple of tablespoons full into a bottle of denatured alchol. I have had some luck with getting dried contact cement off by scrubbing hard with a cloth soaked in acetone, but no promices. Both the Oxalic Acid solution and the citric acid in denatured alcohol have enough water in them to properly moisten the leather for dying. Also I recommend that you avoid the water based dyes and get the "oil" based (they're actually alcohol based) dyes. The latter works much better. A leather dressing after dying is also good, especially if you were forced to clean with acetone. They will replace some of the oils lost.

Doug Lester