Leather and Water

There are many kinds of leather, a few are completely waterproof, most are somewhat water resistant, and some fine leathers will stain very easily if exposed to water. I use vegetable tanned leather for all my products, and soaking the leather in water is the first step in tooling and engraving my designs into the surface. For this simple reason, my products cannot be made from completely waterproof leathers.

I airbrush a thin clear acrylic over each project as the final finishing step for everything I make. This give the leather a beautiful luster, and provides some amount of water resistance, but it does not completely waterproof the leather. On items which do not flex in use and do not receive high wear, like my coasters, the water resistance is quite good for quite a long time.

On items which flex and receive more wear, such as belts and wallets, the water resistance is less good, especially after some time and wear.

After a few years in and out of a pocket, the acrylic clear-coat on a wallet will be completely gone. At that point it will be saturated with oils from your hands, which will provide a new sort of water resistance and luster, but that too will be imperfect. The acrylic can be applied much more thickly to items like my coasters which will not bend in use. This makes the finish much more robust against water, but if the acrylic is applied too thickly on a more flexible item, the finish will visibly crack and those cracks will let water right through.

All of my items should be fine to receive an accidental splash of water if they are dried off immediately, and a bit of water is involved in the process of cleaning your leather, but water left to stand may cause staining, especially on lighter colored items, and on older or more flexible items. My coasters are safe from rings, but they should not be stacked until completely dry, and wiping them off after use will extend their serviceable life. If some discoloring does develop from long term use, the gradient of the dye and the texture of the tooling is designed to hide this as much as possible. If completely waterproof leather is what you are looking for, and the sort of decorative work I do is not of interest to you, you might be happier with the work of someone who works with a different sort of leather entirely. Many top grain leathers are much more resistant to water than the full grain leathers I work with. Some full grain leathers have been imbued with hydrophobic oils which causes water to bead and run off. These leathers also have an unique visual characteristic called "pull-up" in which the leather lightens in color in areas of stretch. There are many kinds of leather, and question of which kind of leather is best always needs to be evaluated on a case by case basis.