Vegetable-Tanned -Aniline Tooled- Ralph Lauren Sofa - How should I restore this scratch?

[chet]

How to restore this Ralph Lauren Tooled (waxed) Aniline sofa. It is only 5-6 years old. A few areas feel dry, it has 2 scratches, and it looks blotchy on the IS back where the client tried to condition it.

I would like to know how to proceed to repair the 2 scratches.

Then strip, clean, rinse, hydrate and fatliquor the leather.

And what is the best way to make it look uniform again?

Client is worried about the tooling going away, is there a concern with hydrating?

[Roger Koh]

1] Start with the Blotchy Problem first.
Most likely caused by body grease initially and subsequent unknown conditioner that worsen it.
This foreign contamination should be strip by using Degreaser-2.2 > Rinse-3.0.

2] The best way to make it look uniform again is by the leather-safe bleaching effect combination of d’Tannin-3.5 > d’Tarnish-1.3.
Spray the d’Tannin-3.5 evenly; agitate with leather Brush-1 and extract with towel; follows with d’Tarnish-1.3 and repeat the process; leave to dry to see the reduced in the color difference.

3] For stripping foreign contamination use Prep-4.4 follows with Cleaner-3.8 then Rinse-3.0.

4] “Client is worried about the tooling going away, is there a concern with hydrating”?
Over hydrating might relax the tooling design, thus has to be airbrush the surface only to break surface tension so that the following fatliquoring also by airbrushing will have a even appearance.

5] Scratch is the last phase; we have to see pictures after 4] to decide how to approach it.
An overall topcoating with Topcoat Aniline-53WM (waxy-matte) might solve the problem if the scratch is not too deep!

Roger Koh
Leather Doctor®