Roorkee Build Part 3 - Finishing Touches to the Leather

Ever since I finished my chair, there was a little nurgle in the back of my brain that told me the edges of the leather needed some treatment.  Back to the Tandy Leather website it was!  This store has a wealth of instructive videos (complete with instructions how to use the tools they sell).  There is one called Finishing Edges that sounded promising, and it was.  It seems the trick is to round the edges of the leather with a simple tool that cuts the sharp edge off, burnish the edge with a nifty little plastic tool called a "slicker," and to paint the edges with some special leather paint (I used "Edge Kote"), applied with some wool daubers.  All in all, about $30 set me up with everything I needed.

Oh!  I also put some leather creme based in beeswax on the leather.  The stuff I used is called Skidmore's Leather Creme.  It applied super easy.  I just applied it with a paper towel, and buffed it off with a clean paper towel.  It took about five minutes.

Here is the result:

After

Close up of the arm strap

Close up of the seat

Just as a reminder, here is what it looked like before:

OK, so you probably can't see much difference from this angle.  It's all I got.

Before, there were sharp edges on all of the parts of the chair that are touched a lot like the arm straps.  This treatment helps incredibly with the comfort of the chair.  At least on my baby-like sensitive skin.  Also, this leather wasn't struck-through, meaning I could see a much lighter color on the edges.  With this treatment, it looks "finished."

Coming up, I am making a trip to my home town in Montana for a week or so.  While there, I talked my dad into building another Roorkee chair with me.  I'll have to take a few tools along, but it should be a lot of fun.  We are going to build it in a rustic style using diamond willow for the legs.


I can't wait.