Hi all, I have just finished re-covering a bible for a customer. I made a full leather cover, with curved Yapp-style edges and it looks great. On advice from my bookbinding tutor, I used some Renaissance Wax to polish and protect it (Renaissance Wax is a micro-crystalline finishing wax, that dries hard and gives a good sheen). The leather is a veg-tanned goat, finished with a slightly grained smooth finish, in a deep crimson red. The wax has given it a good shine, but there are several areas where the wax seems to have got into the fine grain of the leather surface and has gone white. A little of this showed up last night, while the book was drying, so the tutor advised that I let it dry until today and polish it with a soft cloth; if any white areas remained, he suggested removing them by buffing with a soft brush. Today there are quite a few areas of white and buffing with a small shoe brush (new) hasn't really made any difference, other than giving a better shine!! Can anyone suggest a way to remove the white patches, without damaging the surface of the leather? Thanks!
Great idea. Thank you very much Philip - the book looks spoilt at the moment, so anything that improves it will be a huge bonus!
@LizzieMade Any wax that gives a good polish is also usually hard and brittle compared to softer waxes like beeswax.
When you place this wax on a textured skin that has a grain to it, it sits in the crevices and goes white when the leather is flexed.
This mostly happens on skins that have topcoat finishes where the wax can't get into the grain and just sits on the surface.
If you take a hairdryer on a low heat setting, you will be able to re-melt the wax and it will disappear before your eyes. However, when it cools down again it will become brittle and crack when the leather is flexed.
Fix: Gently warm the area of concern with a hairdryer, then while the wax is in it's molten state, use a soft cloth to buff the excess away. Use the minimum heat to get the job done.
I hope this helps.