cleaning up an old Estwing hatchet - varnish is wore off and the leather is dry - see suggestions of using mink oil, mineral oil, neetsfoot oil and warmed combo mix of varnish & oil .... any suggests?
For wooden handles I have been using Danish Oil lately. Seems to be working out pretty well. You can get it in natural or colors. It stains, seals, and penetrates.
I use Linseed oil for all tool handles, and have used it to water proof gloves so it works well for leather also. I no longer buy those dang fiberglass handle shovels, etc I thought they would be great, but sometimes you can't improve on wood. Rancher
Pro Tool industries offered a product something like mink oil for their woodsman's pal leather. Don't know if t's still available. If lea is loose you may have to replace all of it. Then keep the handle lubed.
I remember a few years ago, looking through my stuff for a tin of mink oil. Jimi asked what I was looking for so I told her that I needed my mink oil. Her response? "I've done oiled them minks."
Be careful! Using too much oil can really turn a leather handle to mush. The finest leather preservative I have ever used (and, yes, I've used a lot of Lexol) is the same one used by the Metropolitan Art Museum in NYC: Pecard's Leather Treatment. But, why am I telling you this? I thought the whole world knew about Pecard's! By the way, I'm almost 75 years old; and I still have my high school baseball mitt. I got it in my freshman year, all the way back in 1958! Know what? After about 25 years of occasional treatments with Lexol; and another 40, or so, years of occasional treatments with Pecard's my well used Wilson's baseball mitt looks and feels as good as it did back in the days when I first cleaned it up before retiring it, and put it away in a plastic box for storage! It's really a beautiful piece of leather; which is, I suppose, why I've kept it for so long. (I played some really good ball games – both here, and in Canada – with this mitt! But, oh jeeze, I wax nostalgic!)
