Fatliquor5.0™ and Conditioners
Heat in relation with fatliquor5.0™ and Leather Conditioners
To soften leather fatliquor5.0™ (milky emulsion similar to fresh milk), tanning oils (pure) or leather conditioners must be able to penetrate the leather surface, so that the individual internal protein fibrils are uniformly coated or ionionic polarity bonded.
Charged anionic fatliquor5.0™ with a negative head and a positive tail ion will attract an ionic charged bond with the protein cationic fibrils further enhanced by rinse3.0™.
Tanning oil, fat or wax that has no charge are used for other purpose other than primarily for softening and strengthening leather.
These non-charged “conditioners” may be just “stuffing conditioners” it just fill up the inter-fibrilliary spaces that suffocates the leather making it less permeable, so less comfort for outer weather wear purposes.
It does serve it purpose as an effective water proofing, that is wax and oil for outdoor sports and games.
Refined stuffing oil and wax are available as oilEffect63™ and waxEffect95™, both these are charged emulsion too!
These effect oil and wax are designed for internal lighter usage for example in fashion garments and home furnishings.
Leather conditioners that migrates or stuffs into the leather with no polarity bond will also migrate out naturally (squeeze in = squeeze out).
Fatliquor5.0™ penetrates the leather fast by water medium, when the leather is damp without over saturating the inter-fibrilliary spaces.
It does not require heat to do this job of penetrating and spreading the encased oil throughout the internal leather intimate fibrilliary structure for softness and strength.
Generally, the more oil the softer and stretchier the leather becomes; but excessive amount of stuffing oil may give an undesirable, greasy feel or may interfere with color refinishing.
Generally heat does play a part in the leather softening process or conditioning.
Spray fatliquoring or hand oiling between 5 to 55 degrees Celsius is reasonable.
It is reasonable to do conditioning between 5 to 35 degrees C, as the temperature goes to 55 C it becomes not practical unless in immersion drums in a tannery.
The lower the temperature that fatliquor or tanning oil penetrates the leather, the better the product is.
You save on time and convenience.
Do you need to create a special sweat room or put your furnishing into a sauna to sweat it out immediately after application?
When using raw conditioning oils the need of heat is greatly appreciates as an interface medium.
The higher the heat the lower the interfacial tension between the leather surface and the oil molecules.
The leather dimensional surfaces expands and the oil molecule becomes more volatile thus the oils migrate to a drier surface and stuff the void in between the interfrilliary spaces and coats the fibril as well.
If pure conditioning oils is used so that it will wick up other foreign unwanted substances; it shows that the same oil migrated out with no bonding with the protein cationic fibrils or has it went in the first place?
Comparatively, fatliquor5.0™ microscopic tanning oil are encased by water a true micro emulsion similar to fresh milk.
Once these microscopic oil droplets penetrate and bond with the protein fibrils it breaks up and the water outer phase evaporates and wicks out the unwanted foreign substances with no greasy messy cloudy surfaces.
For absorbent leather surfaces, there is no need to further cleaning these sticky messes as compare with other tanning oils.
Using heat for better migration of conditioning oil into the leather surface serves its purpose.
When temperatures cool down, the oil molecule contracts bigger and the leather surface tension increases; thus it’s a self locking device for the oils to stay in.
So good as the temperature remains cooler that when the oils migrate in.
Once the temperature rises to this critical optimum temperature where the “gates open and the oil molecule becomes volatile” it will reverse the action and migrate out, cause there are no polarity bonding.
This phenomenal is known as “leather spew or spue” and to be remedied with either spew4.8™ or spew9.6™.
A direct comparison is suggested to conclude your own “Conditioning” evaluation.
The what?
The How?
The Which?
And the Why?
Will still continue as we goes along.
The more I know, the more I yet to know!
Roger Koh
IICRC#942 LCT MTC MSR
Leather Doctor® System
[email protected]