4 - Burnishing
About
Next you'll need to following items from your box:
Your purse
Burnishing cloth
A glass of water
Leather finish
Burnishing, or slicking, is the practice of smoothing down the edge fibres, making them softer to the touch and also protecting them from water egress. The 'art' of tidying up edges in the leather world is a time consuming, and competitive sport! Sadly nowadays many high street stores simply add an edging paint to mimic the look.
Here at Morgan + Wells we pride ourselves for using traditional techniques, so get ready with some elbow grease!
What you are aiming for is a slick, shiny, smooth edge. If the edge hasn't been sanded enough, it simply won't work as well as it could do.
1 - First off decide if this purse is for you - or for a gift! If it's a gift, use water.... for you, use some spit!
Yup!!! You heard right!!
The traditional method is to use spit, but obviously nobody wants slobbery (non-covid friendly) gifts....so we use water. Have a try of both and see which you think works best!
2- Taking care not to wet the main face of the leather (we're just talking edges here) lightly wet a finger in the glass of water and rub it along a section of the edge.
3 - Now using your cloth rub along the edge, in one direction and using medium pressure. Gradually you'll see the fibres start to lie down and darken. Re-wet and repeat until they look smooth. The longer you do this phase the better your edges will be.
4 - Once you have got to a point where you feel happy with your edges, take your pot of leather finish. It's good to point out here that once this is applied no amount of water or further burnishing will make any difference.
With a TINY TINY TINY amount on your fingertip dab it around the edges of your purse (work in small sections at a time). Now rub it in around the edge with your finger before using your cloth to burnish it.
The fibres should now feel smoother, look shinier and if you've done a good job.... squeak!
N.B. It's worth pointing out here that we use a traditional wooden burnisher and not a cloth to do this job but I do ultimately finish off with a piece of denim. If you happen to have a burnisher (wooden stick with ridges in it) feel free to use it - or heck why not try an old wooden spoon!
5 - Check back to the edges on your sample leather and you'll notice the difference burnishing does.
Almost there....