Birch Wood Oil on Leather?

[Artificer]

After looking up Russia Leather again, I ran across a number of references to the pleasant smell and the fact the leather was resistant to insects. Both of these qualities were mentioned as having come from the use of Birch Wood Oil on the leather.

So I am wondering if anyone on the forum has tried Birch Wood Oil on their leather goods?

Gus

 

[Rifleman1776]

Never heard of it.
FWIW, on my leather items I just use whatever conditioning product happens to be closest to hand at the moment. That could be Neatsfoot oil, pure or with silly cone, beeswax/peanut oil or whale oil mix or mink oil. All seem to work just fine. I have a couple knife sheaths I made as a child. They are over 70 years old and still in excellent condition.

 

[tenngun]

I bought a fringed split cowhide dark yellow-orange back in the ”˜70s. I was out in the back country of new Mexico when I got caught in one of the high desert thunderstorms. There was no shelter and all I could do was pull my army blanket over my head. I put my gun in that cover and waited it out. After a bit I saw this boxy boat full of animals go floating past my little high spot.
My riflegun was soaked.
So I thought why not a good coat of oil on that cover. I put it on with a brush. It darkened it a lot, and spraining water on it beaded up all over it. It did turn it hard as a rock. It had to fold and didn’t roll well to pack. All and all I wasn’t too happy with the results, but the leather did get pretty water resistant.

 

[Artificer]

I had never heard of using birch wood oil either, before I looked up Russia leather again.

Gus

 

[Zonie]

Are you talking about Birchwood Casey Oil, like "Tru-Oil" ® ?

Tru-Oil is a linseed based oil used for finishing gun stocks. It drys to a rather hard coating and IMO would not be suitable for leather.

Birch Wood Oil seems to be a therapeutic oil used in "aromatherapy" to treat aches and pains.
I don't know what using it on leather would do but after rubbing a bottle of it into some it might make your arm feel better if you take a few sniff's of it? :hmm: :grin:

 

[Stophel]

It wouldn't surprise me to find that birch wood oil is good for leather. I have put cedar wood oil on leather (along with neatsfoot oil), which is supposedly a very good leather treatment. I will say, though, that when applying such an oil, be aware that it will "off gas" for a while, and leave a white residue on the surface of the leather and whatever else may be in close proximity. I would bet that birch oil is nearly as volatile as cedar oil, and may produce a similar result. The white residue can simply be wiped away, or at most, wiped off with some neatsfoot oil. If the treated leather is left in the open for a while, it can aerate itself out and the residue is minimal. The smell goes away though, dangit.

 

[Artificer]

Hi Zonie,

No, I'm not referring to Birchwood Casey's Tru Oil because as you mentioned, it isn't Oil from Birch Wood.

The Russia Leather that was so highly prized world wide in the 17th/18th through 19th centuries had Birch wood oil used as one of the oils in the tanning/preservative process, though no one knows exactly how it was done. They have some information, but not enough to reproduce the process, at least at the current time.

It seems that during the Bolshevik Revolution, the Russia Leather making knowledge and workers were lost because it was seen as something only for the rich. Of course, they could have used the MONEY Russia had made off the leather for many, many decades; but that wasn't important to the Communists at the time.

Gus

 

[Artificer]

Thanks Stophel,

That was interesting information on using Cedar Wood Oil and how Birch Wood Oil may react similarly.

Gus

 

[Zonie]

I guess I should have looked up Russian Leather before I posted my last answer.

A link to what Wikipedia says about it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_leather

VEEERY INTERESTING!, as Sgt. Schultz would say. :grin: