Is It Leather Or Steel ?

I started this project last night. I had about an hour to kill before this t.v. show came on , so I decided to go downstairs and play around with the steam trunk. I was inspecting it, wondering where to begin, and assessing the years of abuse and damage that the steam trunk had endured. There's just so much work to be done to this thing.

While looking at a crack in what I thought was metal trim, I realized it was leather. The leather had grown so old and dried out it appears to be almost petrified. It really looked and felt like metal trim. Not knowing where to begin, I decided to give the leather a bit of a treatment and see if I could soften it up a bit.

I should of taken a picture of the crack but will get back to that in another post when we try to actually repair the crack. For now , the task at hand was to apply some leather conditioner to the trim and see if we could soften it up a bit. I had some leather cleaner/conditioner in my shoebox , so I got an old sock put some conditioner on it and started working it into the leather trim. As the dirt came off, the trim lost its black, brassy appearance and began to take on the brown hue of leather again.

I did this for two reasons:

1. I had nothing better to do and what could it hurt.
2. If I worked on the leather trim in this dried out condition it would just crack apart.

So in order to avoid possibility two when it comes time to do some real work on this trim, I gave it a good rub down with some conditioner/cleaner. As you can see from the picture this leather is still going to need a lot of work. I did check the trim in the morning and it does appear to of softened up a bit. This took about 30 minutes and will be worth the time if we can save the trim from cracking apart when its time to work on it.  I will probably do this a couple more times before actually working on the leather trim.

If your restoring one of these and the leather is old and dried out I would suggest doing this. You will need:

1. An old sock
2. A good leather conditioner

Just rub the conditioner into the leather trim of the steam trunk and try to get as close to the edges as possible without getting it into the wood or canvas panels that the trim is attached to. I did this to all the leather parts on the steam trunk. This will save you a big headache down the road.

So far I have 30 minutes invested into this project and because I had the leather conditioner already it cost me nothing. 30 minutes 0 dollars so far.

The next thing I plan on doing is getting rid of that ugly pink paint !