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Okay, I have about a dozen different recipes.
Basically it's oil, tallow and wax with a colourant added.
Some recipes call for soft soap and some for treacle or syrup :dunno: and most seem to add Myrbane (nitrobenzene) to the mix........that's probably as a preservative, some of my old cosmetic recipes used benzoin to do the same job.

How about this one, simple as I can find.
Light mineral oil 5 parts
Tallow 2 parts
Paraffin wax 1 part
these are melted together in a bain marie then a little lamp or bone black (just carbon) is added and mixed in well. As the mixture is cooling add in a few drops of Myrbane or Benzoin essential oil and stir well.

If you really want the other recipes I could scan them and send to you, but they've got masses of fish oils, one's even got whale oil :rolleyes:

Looking through the recipes there's another kind that seems to be for a hard shine (military boots ? :dunno:) that one's made by using powder roisin in the mix. It's rubbed well into the leather and allowed to sit for a little while and them buffs up to a high shine.

Hope this helps,
cheers,
Mary
 
It's like a liquid vaseline. Boot's will sell it. It's a common ingredient in skin creams.

You could just try vaseline though......otherwise known as white petrolatum.

They're both derived from crude oil.

It's either use that or something like fish oil according to the old recipes.

cheers,
M
 
As a leather worker I would be very interested in seeing these recipes.
I make my own braiding soap and want to do more along those lines, Maybe I can test a few of the recipes and see what happens, Boot polish by my own hand sounds great...
 
I'll have a go at scanning them and see if they're clear enough to send to folks. If not, we could do it by hand.
One of my books, a manufacturers handbook........I think British Red said he'd gotten a hold of a copy on Amazon after I mentioned it on an earlier thread, has literally hundreds of recipes for leather soaps, creams, dubbins, thread improvers and polishes.

cheers,
Toddy
 

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