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Leather Dressing using Beeswax

A Leather Dressing containing Beeswax that both waterproofs and renders leather more supple.

I have not found a commercial product that is similar to this one, which I evolved for waterproofing Motorcycle Leathers and shooting boots.

It is compounded using beeswax and neatsfoot oil. It penetrates well and in conjunction with manipulation by the fingers will produce a very supple and waterproof item. There is one unfortunate side effect of using this product on boots that have previously been polished... The blue dye used in the original polish will stain your hands (the blue staining comes out after a few washes).

I have used this leather dressing on beekeeping gloves that have been washed in detergent. I also use it to soften the circular leather patches that I sew on to the gloves, some of my gloves have patches on patches, but their age is no problem as they are often washed and re-dressed.

Leather items that are required to be polished should not be treated with this product as the shine will not develop.

There is another version of this product that contains a solvent and should be tried first on a trial area to establish suitability. The version with the solvent was used for items that had been polished with boot polish for several years and had become hard.

As I am unlikely ever to manufacture this product again I will give the details of the recipes of both versions. The basic leather dressing was compounded from 94 grams neatsfoot oil to 6 grams pure beeswax. The version with solvent was the same ratio of beeswax to neatsfoot oil, but had about 10% of a solvent known as turpmix added, which helped to speed up the softening of those items that had gone rather hard with age.

Originated... Summer 2000, Revised... 08 September 2003, Upgraded... 12 October 2006,