News

How to Restore Dry Leather Using intensive or Beeswax Leather Conditioner

Clean the leather

The first step is to clean the leather surface so it’s more receptive to absorbing the essential nutrients in the conditioner.
If you apply leather conditioner to a surface which hasn’t been cleaned it can’t soak in to the leather, and the surface may become sticky when the conditioner comes in to contact with dirt.

Moisturise the leather

To retain flexibility of your leather, apply our intensive conditioner or beeswax conditioner. It helps the leather to be more soft and supple, this also helps it to naturally flex without causing cracks on the leather.
Apply using conditioner using a sponge in even circular motions.

Buff the leather to remove any residue or to increase the sheen
Heat can harden the leather so keep away from direct sunlight or radiators, if this is impossible condition the leather every 2-3 months. 

Genuine leather can flake and peel, we see and treat this problem from time to time in our workshop, the issue is known as de-lamination.

What causes the leather to flake and peel?
More often than not its a lack of adhesion on the underside of the coloured coating, it can't flex with the leather and starts to peel or flake off the surface.

How to treat it?
Its quite labour intensive but it can be done, even by an amateur.

1. Firstly you need a good water based strong cleaner such as our professional power cleaner and a nail brush.
You need to scrub off the flaking leather until the surrounding areas are stable and not flaking.

2. when the area is dry wipe away any loose flakes from the surface.

3. Stablilise the edges of the affected area by carefully applying our leather bonder, we find patiently applying it using a cotton bud gives the best result.
When the bonder is dry, apply again over the whole area.

4. You may see some dis-colouration where it had peeled, at this point you can re-colour the area using our leather paints

5. Finally re-seal the leather using our handy aerosol leather sealants

Do leather repair kits really work?
After 20+ years of experience of restoring and repairing leather, we feel our opinion really does count.

Mostly you get what you pay for when it comes to repairing leather, professional products do work, but there’s a lot on the internet where the images are simply edited to look good, or the videos show paint being coated over the wrong type of leather, which looks great but we know it will peel after a short space of time, quite simply they’re just selling products they don’t know anything about to make a quick profit. 
Unsuspecting customers will waste money; we know this as we hear the same story over and over again from our customers when they approach us for help.

Unfortunately, the Internet is inundated with leather repair kits, how do you know which one to choose? 
We suggest a company such as ours that actually use their own products, provide services, or provide to trade customers, that way you know the products work and you’ll get it backed up with advice from their experience using the products.

At Buffalo we have a team of experienced leather technicians who will be honest, if we assess that the products won’t give the repair you need if the leather is too perished, we will be honest in our opinion.