Hunting Pouch Leather Finish

[david64]

What finish do most of you use after completing
a hunting pouch?  A commercial leather finish
product, shoe polish or   

[rickevans]

On recently made bags, I use shoe polish and buff with a brush.
On older bags or those that have been rode hard and put away wet...I have used White's Boot dressing and heated with a hair drier or a heat gun SET ON LOW! to get the dressing to soak into the leather.

[necchi]

Sno-seal.

[EricEwing]

I've been experimenting with some different stuff and found neatsfoot oil to be my favorite so far.

[gizamo]

Homemade Dubbin

[EricEwing]

Homemade Dubbin

What's that?

[david64]

I was wondering how well Neatsfoot Oil would do.

[TPH]

Neatsfoot oil is my favorite and it does very well but be sure to use pure neatsfoot oil, not the commonly available neatsfoot oil compound which contains less desirable additives such as petroleum products that so many of the popular modern "preservatives" use.

Be careful to use only a small amount when starting. You can add more later if needed but you can't remove too much. Don't drown the leather, no matter what you use.

[Artificer]

Homemade Dubbin

What's that?

I had heard of Dubbin a long time ago, though I didn’t know what it was and forgot all about it until Chuck Burrows recommended it on this forum. I didn’t remember exactly what it was, so looked it up. Orignal Dubbin was a combination of beeswax, tallow and oil.  It was used to preserve and somewhat waterproof leather – the last done by the bees wax.

James Rogers mentioned that Chuck Burrows recommends the product “Montana Pitch-Blend.”  It is a made from Pine pitch, beeswax and real mink oil.  http://www.montanapitchblend.com/


Gus

[Artificer]

I'm sorry, my mistake.  James Rogers suggested the 1/2 beeswax and 1/2 brewers pitch formula, that I deleted from the post above, is used to make "Coad" which is used for waxing linen thread to hand sew leather. Brewers pitch can be found here: http://jas-townsend.com/product_info.php?products_id=373

I did not find a really good home made formula for "Dubbin" when I googled it.
Gus

[gizamo]

1/3'rds

Raw Cod liver oil
Beeswax
Rendered Beef fat

[Artificer]

THANKS !
Gus

[gizamo]

Gus...

After you have rendered the fat,...
Place it and the other ingredients in a double boiler. Lots safer to melt and mix them all together.

Giz

[James Rogers]

I have made up some batches using neatsfoot or sweet oil in the stead of the CLO Gizamo mentioned.

[Artificer]

Gus...

After you have rendered the fat,...
Place it and the other ingredients in a double boiler. Lots safer to melt and mix them all together.

Giz

Giz,

Thanks for mentioning about using the double boiler to heat up and melt/mix everything, but that leads me to a question. 

Though I have a double boiler, when I melt beeswax to mix into an old gunstock finish formula, I have more recently melted the beeswax in a microwave.  Would there be a danger from the flashpoint of the tallow or oil, if one does it that way? 
Gus

[Artificer]

I have made up some batches using neatsfoot or sweet oil in the stead of the CLO Gizamo mentioned.

James,

Some time ago, I asked James Wilson Everett about what he uses for oil when he works guns at living histories.  I have often read they used sweet oils or whale oil.  He advised against using Olive Oil “Sweet Oil” because it attracts the small bees that my family has always called “Sweat Bees.”  JWE also noted that he uses “Pennsylvania Rock Oil” instead of Olive Oil for that reason.

I never got stung by the tiny Sweat Bee’s until a few weeks ago when I was cutting the grass in my backyard just across the James River from Richmond, VA.  I must have run over the ground nest hole of them, as I got stung nine times in about two minutes.  I really don’t want to “set myself up” for that again.  GRIN. 

So my question is, if you use Olive Oil in the Dubbin, does that attract Sweat Bees – at least when you apply it outdoors?   Would using linseed/flax oil do the same? 

I don’t know much about “period correct oils” and am trying to find out all I can.

I hope I don’t get too confusing with this paragraph.  I did not think about using raw Cod Liver Oil until Giz brought it up.  I have been thinking about using Jojoba Oil as a substitute for Whale Oil at living histories to work guns.  I found out that Jojoba Oil does not have quite the stability at room temperature as Castor Oil, but then I noticed in further checking that both oils and raw Cod Liver Oil contain natural fungicides that could/would help retard mold growth of the leather goods.  Is that the reason Giz and others suggest using raw Cod liver oil? 

So I tried to check if neatsfoot oil is also a natural fungicide.  I did not have much luck finding out if it is or not, but it sounded like it is not?

I want to make my dubbin as “18th century period correct” as possible and I would also like to use the best “period correct” oil for the leather.  Though Cod Liver Oil was well known in as early as the 17th century and before, I’m not sure if it was imported here in Virginia in the 18th century?

Gus

[Mark Elliott]

I always use Mink Oil, but I will have to mix up some of that olive oil/beeswax/tallow mixture when I run out.   By the way, my old bullet lube was made of beeswax and Crisco as a substitute for tallow.   Rendering beef fat never seemed all that appealing to me.

[Elnathan]

I always use Mink Oil, but I will have to mix up some of that olive oil/beeswax/tallow mixture when I run out.   By the way, my old bullet lube was made of beeswax and Crisco as a substitute for tallow.   Rendering beef fat never seemed all that appealing to me.

I didn't find it all that difficult when I did it years ago. If I were to try it again, I would try using a crockpot/slow cooker and boiling everything down over a day or so. Tallow has become popular as a food these days due to the "paleo" diet fad, and as a consequence there is a lot of info online on different ways of rendering it.


Artificer,
I don't know if the double boiler you are using has its own heat source or not, but I recently tried using my mother's hotplate outside to melt down some dried pine sap into pitch and then into cutler's rosin. It worked extremely well - having electric heat meant that I could turn up the temperature by small increments to avoid setting the pitch alight, and the mobility of the hotplate meant that I could take it outside to avoid running the risk of producing a six-foot flame in the kitchen. Very useful tool.

[Artificer]

The first time I melted beeswax was when a bee keeper gave me a HUGE chunk of about 1 foot by 11 inches by three inches thick.  It was really nasty looking grey/black and had some remains of bee carcasses in it.  But, hey, I wasn’t going to complain as it was free.  Grin.

The only double boiler I had then was actually a 19th century cast iron double boiler that I later learned was for heating hide glue.  I had inherited it when my Grandfather passed and found out it belonged to his father who was a rough carpenter.  Grandpa never used it when I was growing up, so it took a while for me to find out what it was really for.  Of course as it wasn’t meant for melting wax, it didn’t work real well, though I used it on an electric hot plate and got some good clean melted wax.   Then someone suggested using the Microwave and boy was that a whole bunch easier. 

I mixed up a bunch of old gunstock finish that was 1/3 each by volume of beeswax, turpentine and real raw linseed oil.  After melting the beeswax, you pour it into the turpentine and add the linseed oil then stir it up well.  The first batch came out real “goopy,” so I backed off the turpentine a bit on the next batch.  Well, I found out the second batch didn’t have the shelf life of the first and it got hard in about three months, though one can “refresh” the mixture by remelting it and adding some turpentine later.  After that I stuck to the orginal formula. 
Gus

[Daniel]

I use neatsfoot or bear oil. prefer bear oil myself.

[richard97]

the English  have a paste it comes in a shoe polish can its red a paste its used on bike seats to make then soft I do not know the name of it but the stuff works reel well
thanks for the use of your ear
Richard Westerfield