Campaign Worn
Sept 20, 2020 19:26:27 GMT
Post by illustry on Sept 20, 2020 19:26:27 GMT
Here's how I recreated the light brown "campaign worn" look on my Albion Rouen.
Started with a square of tan pull up leather I found on amazon: www.amazon.com/gp/product/B087Z34N46/
Pull up leather is nubuck impregnated with wax and oil to give it some awesome highlights/lowlights when stretched or pressed on. The more you beat it up, the cooler it looks. And I found, when you wrap it with cord, you get some real cool highlights and dark areas.
I removed the old red leather grip I'd done previously, sanded to 220, cleaned it up, and added some risers.
Started the wrap with leather DRY. I found it skived better than way and I'd already stretched it very well. There's another reason to leave it dry which will mention later. Did a skived top edge, rolled over, and side area. Got that aligned and worked out, then cut and skived the bottom edge. After I was confident enough about the sizing I lightly superglued the seam area on. Too much glue thickens the leather up so avoid that at the seam.
After this part I stretched the leather around and got it sized (you can draw lines in the leather with your fingernail) and cut and skived the seam edge. I used a narrow piece of backsplash marble tile to skive on while the leather is already attached to the wood at the seam... you have about 4" of it loose to work with. Then I hit it with Fieblings cement and working fast, got it stretched out, seams rolled, etc, pressed into place.
A note about glue: I was using clear gorilla glue before, and it was used on the red grip version. That was a mother to remove. In fact I am confident it would withstand a nuclear blast. Even after sanding it down it left a nice poly seal on the grip core. I wanted to use an easier to remove glue this time - thus the Fieblings leather cement. The Fieblings dries much faster; only down side there is less time to work.
Now I dampened the leather with a wet paper towel wrapped around it for a few minutes. I did the wrap part dry because it is easier to skive dry, and since I'd already stretched it out well, after wetting it, it's gonna shrink to a nice tight fit. So: wet the leather after, then wrap with #20 hemp cord. This is how you get the cool imprints, and not just that: with pull-up leather you get some nice light/dark contrasts from the cord wrap.
Now did my best to convince myself not to mess with it for about 36 hours. Unwrapped:
From here I scratched it up, swung it around, got it sufficiently messed up for the "worn" look and added some ren wax, more so in some areas, less in others. You need wax on nubuck/pull up leather to make it more water resistant, plus it can be used to add more contrast to the leather.
And I must say, it feels great in hand.