Lexol Help with dried out leather liners / chinstraps

W

woznotwos

Member
I have read on here somewhere that there is a good leather cleaner by Lexol to use on the liners and chinstraps that breathes new life into them . I cannot find the original post now . However there are conditioners / cleaners and a 3 in 1 available by Lexol. Are all these suitable or do you guys use just the conditioner ? Or is there now something better on the market ?
P.S and whoever tipped Hagerty silver foam for the brass fittings , awesome stuff , thanks. :lol:
 
Lexol on liners and chinstraps is a very touchy subject for me. One you Lexol it, you can't go back. Lexol will darken all leathers.

And most of the time the helmet ends up looking like a greasy old catchers glove. Ebay UK is full of greased up helmets, I don't know, maybe they like the stuff over there (lol).

Show us some pictures of your helmet, maybe we can provide some insight for you.

Adam
 
Its actually in reasonable shape , my concern is keeping it that way . Do you think I am best leaving it alone then ? :)
 
Pontiac9999 said:
Lexol on liners and chinstraps is a very touchy subject for me. One you Lexol it, you can't go back. Lexol will darken all leathers.

And most of the time the helmet ends up looking like a greasy old catchers glove. Ebay UK is full of greased up helmets, I don't know, maybe they like the stuff over there (lol).

Show us some pictures of your helmet, maybe we can provide some insight for you.

Adam
Click to expand...

I agree with Adam, and to be even more plain-spoken, I would say never, ever use any oily conditioner on liners and chinstraps. Disaster guaranteed, especially on light brown liners found on later models. The farthest I have ever been, on a thick black leather liner in an older Kurassier helmet that was superficially stained with mold, was to use a minuscule amount of neutral shoe polish on a rag.
Bruno
 
If it is a choice between oiling the leather and have it darken, or leaving it and have it fall apart, I go with the oil. No matter what product you use it will darken the the leather.
 
I asked the same question and got the same answers :wink:
I decided to invest in an Air-Humidifyer. A good humidity for Leather is around 50%. If you keep the humidity constant and if you put the Haubes not into the direct sun, you will have fun with your Pickelhaubes for a long time and no oil is necessary :thumb up:
 
Thanks for that tip , they are out the sun in a glass case . I will invest in a humidifier then . Thank you everyone for your input . :bravo:
 
There is an excellent article on The Kaiser’s Bunker about care and preservation written by our member Tony Schnurr. His site is also the best on line Haube reference in English that I know of.
 
I've used a couple of things over the years with some success. The first thing I every used was my mother's face cream, I had a steel helmet whose chin strap was dried out, stiff, and ready to break. I use the cream and the strap became soft and flexible again. The cream cost more than the helmet so I never used it again. BTW this was over 50 years ago.
 
Living in the UK I have never heard of Lexol but there is something else available here which members might like to consider to soften and protect fine leather.
It is called British Museum Leather Dressing and is used by the British Museum and other conservators to preserve antique leather book bindings. I have used it on a thin leather liner and it stopped red rot in its tracks.
If you Google it there is plenty of detail and also where it can be purchased.
Regards
Peter
 
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