Leather Maintainance
Q: Is WOTANCRAFT leather bags water resistant?
A: Most WOTANCRAFT leather are water repellant, to cope with rainy / snowy days. Different leather have different water-resistant levels:
"Hand-crunched leather" is most water-repellant, water drop will only soak into leather after 15 mins.
"Battle-distressed leather" is also water-repellant, water drop will soak in after 10 mins.
Note, the "pebble-grained leather" has no additional treatment to ensure smooth hand feel, so it is not water-repellant at all, water drop will soak in within 3 mins.
If you wish to apply water-repellant coating to leather, be sure to use "natural wax-based" products, such as boot wax by Ottor Wax, or Collonil Outdoor Biwax Spray.
Before applying wax to leather surface, be sure to brush off any dust/dirt on the leather, so that they don't get caught within the wax layer.
Q: Does WOTANCRAFT leather products require maintenance?
A: WOTANCRAFT's choice of leather are made to last, you only need to watch out for the following:
1. When leather is wet, only dry it in the shades. Do not expose it under sunlight to dry, the grease essence between the leather fibers will be lost, and the leather will become stiff and even crack.
2. If you wish to replenish the grease of leather, to make the leather more glossy and supple, first wipe the leather clean with dry cotton cloth, and the rub small amount of solid mink oil into the leather in small circular motion. Repeat the oil rubbing till every corner of the leather is covered, and then wipe the surface clean till the surface gloss begin to appear, and there are no more sticky feeling.
3. The "hand-crunched" leather has wax between the leather fibers, so when leather bag is stored for a while, a thin layer of white wax will appear. It is more like a large area of thin white veil, unlike the spotted pattern of molds. Simply wipe it off with dry cloth, the leather will return to its glossy condition.
Q: What do I do if leather product grows mold?
A: Follow these steps:
1. Use dry cloth to wipe off all the mold spots. Careful, don't touch other areas of the leather with stained cloth.
2. Once you removed all the mold spots, apply a little amount of mink oil on clean cloth, and then wipe the molded areas again, to further remove mold particles.
3. Last, replenish leather fully with mink oil, increase the grease content of leather to avoid moisture taking over. Refer to point 2 of previous paragraph "Does WOTANCRAFT leather products require maintenance?"
Q: Does WOTANCRAFT leather products shift color over time?
A: The leather we use obtain color from "tanning agent (brown)", "aniline dye (various colors)", or "alcohol based leather dye (various colors)", and they all have these characteristics:
1. leather color will darken with use.
2. after exposure to sunlight / UV ray, the color will gradually develop a warm tint. This is more apparent in colder colors (eg. sky blue will shift towards denim blue, turquoise will shift toward green)
This is the "aging / maturing" process that people came to love about vegetable-tanned leather, a touch of character that is not found in chrome-tanned leather used by international luxury brands.
Q: Does WOTANCRAFT leather shift color to my white T-shirt?
A: The pigment of vegetable-tanned leather is not as permanent as chrome-tanned leather, so the color can shift onto lighter shaded objects when rubbed against each other frequently.