This was a fun one….Actually it didn’t give me to much of a fit. The leather laid just right, I was able to pull it together quite nicely.

I first cleaned the leather seat thoroughly with my prepping solution, I know I always say this, but I can’t stress prepping enough, it is the only way to a top notch job.

Next I inserted an under patch with a pair of needle nosed tweezers. This step is crucial, this is what will hold the gap together. I use a cloth under patch that has a heat sensitive glue applied to one side of it. I cut it just right so that the patch covers the inside of the cut about a 1/4″ all the way around. When you put your patch in, put the patch in your tweezers so that the edge of the patch is at the tip of the tweezers and the rest is inside the tweezers, then slide it in, keeping in mind not to stretch the leather and adhesive side towards you. Then smooth it out so there are no wrinkles in the patch. Now I know there is an adhesive on the patch but I use a little leather glue to help a little more too. Spread the glue on the patch and the underside of the leather with a pallet knife or your finger. Pull the cut leather together by holding each end of the cut with you finger and thumb, then pull you fingers away from the cut, this will close the gap, then dry with a hair dryer.

The next step is applying your compound. I use a special compound that I get from my supplier that works really well. It’s a low heat compound that is sand-able and grain-able. I love it, but we all have our favorites. I first sand the area with a heavy grit sandpaper to give the compound something to adhere to, and again clean with your prepping solution. I then applied a layer of grip base for the water based leather dye and to give a little more sticky stuff for the compound. Now I start applying the compound. I apply thin layers with my pallet knife making sure the compound is smooth and fills the cut completely, feathering it out with my finger. When heating the compound be careful not to heat it to much, if you do the edges of the leather will curl, then your going to have a harder time hiding the leather repair, so low heat. Press your grain mold into the repair with your palm, not to much pressure or you’ll put an indention in the repair area. I put about two thin layers of compound then apply a layer of grip base then a layer of leather dye. I do this to give me an idea of where I’m at in the repair. You need to this for a couple of reasons, one to see if your done or to see if you need to add more compound, and the other is to get color in your compound, basically your sandwiching the leather dye with the compound.

When done your repair should be level, smooth, and blended with rest of the panel. Your color is a major thing when doing a spot repair, make sure it is spot on. Your repair may be level, smooth, and blended but if your color is off, your repair will show. If it’s close it won’t work……spot on.

Here’s the finished product, whew…. this one I was really proud of, you couldn’t even tell there was a cut when I was done. Now they don’t always mend this nicely. Every vehicle is different in so many ways. Your repairs will differ in many different ways, don’t be afraid to experiment a little, different under patches can be used, different compounds can be used to get the effect you need to achieve, and different techniques can be used to get that perfect repair.

If you have any questions with how to repair cut leather, leave me a comment or join my forum.

Talk to ya soon – Mike ” TIG”

The process of resurfacing leather takes certain steps to follow, which if not followed correctly, will cause the dye to lift and peel from the seat. As I have always stressed in all my articles is the prepping process. The only way to make a dye job on a leather seat look, feel, and last is to clean it thoroughly and prep the surface for maximum adhesion of the dye. Let the leather dye do what it is designed to do, don’t cover up dirt.

The way to to do this is to clean the leather seat with a scrub brush, a mild soap, and warm water to start. Scrub the seat from top to bottom, paying close attention to the creases and crevices in the seat, these are places for the dye to lift if dirt and goo is there. Wipe it down with a clean towel, again getting down in the creases.

Now the prepping process goes on. In a spray bottle mix in equal parts, water, rubbing alcohol, acetone, ammonia, and TSP substitute. Spray the seat in sections starting at the lean back, and scrub the leather with a scotch brite pad to scuff the leather just enough for the dye to adhere and to remove any more goo hiding out on the leather wiping clean as you go with your towel. This solution will also open the pours to leather and soften up the original dye for better adhesion promotion.

Once clean and scuffed apply a thin coat of grip base or sticky primer to the seat with a damp Bounty paper towel. Apply a thin coat to whole surface of the seat, basically where your going to dye is where the primer will go. Dry it with your hair dryer. This will give you a good sticky base for the dye to adhere to and make your job last.

Dyeing the leather seat takes finesse and good gun control, the dye needs to be applied in thin coats drying between coats or the dye will not adhere properly. One way you can tell if your applying the dye to thick is when you spray you water borne dye on the seat and it “fish eyes”. What this means is you will see little bubble like places in the dye when you spray it on. So thin coats and dry between each coat. Start your dyeing process on the lean back furthest from you and work your way towards you, down, and out. This helps to keep from dragging your hoses and cords over your freshly dyed seat.

Paint gun choice is up to you, but I will say a small detail gun is choice. I have tried the airbrush, I have tried the Prevals, and I’ve tried the siphon feed guns, and the best gun in my eyes for dyeing a leather seat is a gravity feed touch-up gun. They are small enough to maneuver around in the vehicle and hold just the right amount of dye to finish the job. I use the Sharpe 7040 HVLP a small very reliable gun, in fact I bought 2, one for back up. It sprays a small enough pattern to control, but not to small like an airbrush, and lays the leather dye nicely onto the seat. Paint gun choice to me is pretty crucial to making your job a success, so make the right choice when you pick your paint gun for maximum results.

Once the leather seat is dyed, top coat with your water borne clear. I always like to add a little slip additive to the top coat to give it a soft feel. Don’t forget to crosslink the topcoat, this will help to give you more chemical resistance. This process helps to seal the dye and give you a longer lasting leather resurfacing job.

After the topcoat is dry, apply your conditioner and stand back an drool over how nice that seat looks.

Now you have the confidence to stand back and know your dye will stay and your job was done right. I have been dyeing leather seats for a long time and I would love to hear your input on Leather Resurfacing. There are so many different things you will run into when dyeing a leather seat, so drop me a question or 2.

Now when I say small this can apply for a tear up to 1 1/2″ to 2″, probably might go a little bigger, but lets not push it, if it needs to go to the upholstery shop for an insert then that would be better then a crappy looking leather repair on something that probably wouldn’t hold anyways. When in doubt, insert it.

Prepping a seat is the key to success in any leather repair, and a lasting leather dye job. So, prep the whole lean back, and while your at it just clean the whole seat, why not, but you don’t have to, with your prepping solution removing all grease, dirt, and grime. You need a clean surface and a well prepped area to work with. When I prep, I use a solution of rubbing alcohol, acetone, ammonia, and a small amount of TSP substitute, with water in a spray bottle. Spray the seat with the solution and scrub with a scotch brite pad to scuff the leather seat for leather dye adhesion and remove any grime that’s on the seat, then wipe clean with a clean lint free towel. Once your clean, apply a grip base primer to the seat, I usually in most cases will dye the entire lean back when I do a repair or the entire seat, but sometimes it’s not necessary, so you may not need to prime the whole seat, but do clean the seat good this cuts down on the amount of leather dye used and the ending result will be a premium leather repair.

Now to the hole. Lets say it’s in a V shape, just for example. Like where you’ve gott’n out of the seat with something in your back pocket, ouch! I know the feeling, back in college I had a 1986 Mustang SVO, very rare and nice car (man I miss that car) and I got out to go to class with a pen in my back pocket and ripped about a 2″ V shape in the seat, I about puked right there, and of course at the time I didn’t know anything about leather repair. But now I do and here it is.

Sand the area around the tear with a 240 grit sandpaper, this gives a little more for the low heat compound to grip to. Take a piece of underpatch material and slide the under patch under the tear with a pair of tweezers, allowing about a 1/2″ on the inside all the way around. I usually cut my patches in a circular shape, it makes it a little easier to slide under. You can use different types of under patches, I like the kind that is coated on one side with a heat activated glue.

Now take a drop of leather glue and spread a thin coat on the patch on the underside of the leather repair area. If the leather will lay down smoothly and match up then great, but sometimes it just won’t. In this case we will use combo of the glue and your low cure leather repair compound and smooth a small amount over the patch then lay the leather down. Spread a small amount of low heat compound over the area and smooth it out with your pallet knife, remembering to keeping your area as small as possible, the smaller the better. Now heat the area with your heat gun, hold the heat gun out away from the leather repair and slowly move it into the repair area, this will give you just a little more control of the heat, you don’t want to burn and shrink the leather. The idea is to cure the compound and get it to adhere before you cook the leather, it’s a skill thing, practice makes perfect. Once the compound is cured immediately press the grain pad in your palm onto the repair, don’t press to hard, but firm.

At this time using a wet paper towel apply a small amount of grip base to the repair area and dye with your color matched water based leather dye. With your paint gun spray dry thin coats of dye, not wet. Then reapply and smooth out another thin coat of compound. Heat again and grain then dye, get the idea, what you are doing is building the repair up. Thin coats of compound applied and cured then reapplied, are much better then one thick coat. Once you have it built up and looking nice, blend the repair into the rest of the seat if needed, by applying thin wet coats of leather dye to finish it off. Drying between coats of dye with a hairdryer, and one great tip is rubbing the leather dye with your hands to force the dye into the creases of the leather helps a ton, don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty. I say that but I’m allergic to rubber gloves, it bites, so I come home every day with leather dye all over my hands, it’s a pain, but I love the work and the job looks better with a little bit of love rubbed on those leather seat repairs. After the dye is cured, apply a top coat of satin or dull leather clear top coat mixed with a bit of slip additive added for the soft feel. Dry the seat thoroughly, then apply your leather conditioner to finish and give the seat the juice it needs and a great feel and look for you.

Now there are so many other variations to this fix, sometimes I will have to use an air dry leather repair compound over the top of the low heat compound to smooth out the leather repair. Sanding it with a 400 grit sandpaper until it looks right. You can also turn your air down on your paint gun until little droplets are coming out to give it a textured look, drying between coats. Texture coatings, can be used, but if you do it right the gun effect works great. When I do a leather repair I won’t give up until it looks perfect. Patience is a virtue, right. Don’t get in a hurry, this will only frustrate you more and then you really got issues.

Leather repair is a craft and profession. The dyes and compounds I use are top quality and are made to last. Giving you a lasting leather seat repair, and comfort knowing you have a leather repair that will last and look great for years to come.

I hope this was some help to you, in the coming months there will be more articles like this one but on different situations on leather repair, liked I talked about in the first. There are so many different ways that a leather seat can be damaged, we spend a lot of time in our cars and well “sh$$ happens”, right. So check back to see my next article on automotive leather seat repairs. If you have anything you would like to ask feel free to shoot me some comments on Leather Repair – How To Repair Torn Leather Seat.

Good lighting does help and pretty much a necessity. Natural lighting is better but in the garages we get stuck in the winter months it doesn’t help much, but what do you do, you improvise as my wife says. I use a dent light, which works pretty good, but I have also have used a under the hood light bar then hooking inside the car that stretches the width of the car and hooks on the door jams, they work great. Shorter light bars are great for light in a small places. Be careful with using florescence they sometimes throw your tinting off, if you can get some natural light to your project then great. The customer sees the the car in natural light mostly anyways so your color needs to be spot on.

Test a spot with a dab of leather dye on your finger, wipe a spot in the area to be repaired, dry it, and if it disappears, bingo. Otherwise tint it.

Most of the colors we encounter in todays cars are tans, grays, blacks of course, some blues, burgundy, not many reds, but I have seen on Mustangs red bolsters, whites in some, and in the custom world, Wow look out. A lot of tricks I would love to learn in doing real custom work like custom airbrushing in the interiors of vehicles, anyways..

The colors I use the most in my leather repair dyes are Black, White, Yellow oxide, Red oxide, and Brown. I also use on occasion Green, Blue, and Purple, rarely Yellow and Red, Silver and Gold for metallics with Pearl white to offset the side tones, and growing everyday, with the growing automotive industry. Colors and more colors, fun, fun, fun…

Of course white and black make gray, and brown and white make tan, so, add a little black to go grayer with tan or darker with both, white to lighten, yellow oxide or red oxide to richen the color or to give the yellow or red tints you see in todays autos, brown works good sometimes but the browns seem to be on the red side, if it’s too red add green to tone it down. BMWs have a blueish tint to their dyes add a little blue or purple to the grays, Dodge add a little red oxide to the dye to give a reddish tone, Infinity’s light tan has just a hint of green to it, Chevy’s have a little bit more of a yellow-brown look to them in the darker dashes adding a little yellow oxide gives you that tone. Ford has a pretty true grey with a little yellow oxide though in some cases even add a little brown, this is for both the dark and light. Ford trucks tan has kinda a pink look to it, in some older models, add red oxide but they do have a lot of yellow to them too. Cadillac is pretty easy white and brown with a hint of yellow oxide and a bit if black, just a little though. With black tone it down for a duller look with a little bit of white, add your duller and you have flat black sometimes a little brown too for and older Dodge steering wheel but eliminate the duller save that for like BMW dash pieces. Dodge light gray seats add a little purple. Whew..that wore me out. You get the picture I hope, colors are just one of those things either you get it or you don’t.

Just test each time you add a color and look at it and see what color it’s missing. I use my pigments sometimes to get there a little faster. If it looks like it needs a color…add it a little at a time and dab another spot, dry it, then check again. You want it to disappear. If it does then your ready to go. Add your flex, cross-linker, strain your paint with a paper paint strainer into the cup and spray away with your leather dyes on you leather repair. If I left something out and your having problems with a color let me know maybe I can help you figure it out.

I’ve never really sat down and counted the amount of cars that I have done in my 10 years in the automotive reconditioning business so theres been a lot of colors fly in front of my face, the only one that has ever kicked my butt was teal, wow I spent all day when I first started on a boat seat that was teal, holy crap, that was back when I used the lacquer based systems, bad move, I had to give up. With the water based it is so much better. I found with the water based mix that green, blue and a touch of white, I got it, I think I added a little yellow too, I try not to do to many teals, that color and me just don’t get along.

Thats kinda the way I look at it when I go to mixing colors, which I do all by eye, God help me if I go color blind. I just look at the work and see the colors. It’s pretty cool. Each and every car is different no matter if they are the same identical vehicles, each one as been exposed to completely different elements. Every color is different I promise you, premixed dyes are fine to get you there quicker, but check a spot first before you go hog wild and just start dyeing. So tint your dyes, tweak them until they disappear. The color wheel does help, I find myself every once in a while having a brain fart and can’t get a color right so I pull out the old stand by, if it’s the color your trying to get rid of use it’s opposite to get rid of it. Look on the wheel and the color on the opposite side of the wheel, thats it’s opposite. I know that’s not the correct word for that but it sounds good. But I never start my repair until my color matching is right. If you don’t think you can match it, don’t do it. The customer will respect you more for your honesty. If your color doesn’t match then the ending result won’t be perfect, and that’s what the customer wants is perfection in leather repair, or any repair…Right.

Make sure to apply your conditioner after your repair is done on your leather repairs. It will make your ending result look and feel better. Top coat all your repairs with a clear topcoat, it only adds more resistance to the wear and tear and abuse that the vehicles will encounter instead of just the dye.

If you have anything to add to this article I would love to hear from you, these tips can be used with all your color matching needs not just dyeing leather. So please jump on board and lets help all the techs out there and lend a helping hand so that we can ALL get one more step closer to perfection in our leather and vinyl repairs, plastic repairs, velour repairs, and carpet dyeing.

There are a few downfalls, one the curing time. 48 hours, maybe for an individual but not for a tech in the field. The compounds I know of are quick and easy…And work. But if there is the repair that will hold up like that and then I’m all for to checking it out, looks. The other concern I have is dye, dying onto a wet surface…HMMMM. Don’t know. Well I’ll make a check into this and see.

Leather repair is a craft and not all products will work on everything. Trial and error to extent, but cleaning and prepping your area extensively, before you start any project will make your ending result a success.

Hope you like this it is pretty wild stuff.

If you got any comments on this one let me know, I’m really curious to see what everyone thinks on Leather Magic.

So, with that said I’m going to give you what I call the “quick fix”. A temporary fix to get you by until the car is sold or you get enough money to do it right. Now I’m not going to give you some substandard way of fixing your leather seat, remember I do this for a living and from time to time I have been asked to do the “quick fix” to get someone by. Although I don’t like doing that for the people I do work for. To me thats my name and reputation that is on that repair, but when someones in a pinch you got to help them out.

This is a seat in a 2003 Ford F-350 from a customer of mine that I fixed. If your seat looks like this it’s not gonna take much to make it look a lot better then that.

Supplies…. you will need some stuff before you start this project and most of them you can get from your automotive paint store.

• Denatured alcohol – used for prep
• sandpaper – used for prep and sanding of cracks in leather 240 grit and 400 grit a couple of sheets of each will be good.
• 1 aerosol can of Sem Plastic and Leather Prep - if not available not really necessary but nice to have. helps to open the pores of the leather to help the adhesion of the dye.
• 1 aerosol can of Sem Classic Coat or Sem Sure Coat leather dyes (if you get the sure coat, it’s waterborne and is a lot more flexible and more like the finish already on the leather and will not dry the leather out). But most auto stores only carry the Classic Coat which will work, just don’t load the dye on, the more chance for it crack later. Now take the vehicle with you or something to match the color, if you ask the guys at the auto paint store they can probably find the right color for you.
• A sealer of some sort is needed to seal the raw leather before you dye it but not always necessary. If available Thompson Water Seal will work, or a leather sealer like Leather Tac this will help the dye adhere to the raw leather and help to smooth out some of the rough leather. Another trick is glue, but it needs to be a flexible glue and one that does not contain silicone. If you can get leather glue from your local craft store that would be perfect. Glue will seal the leather and lay down the rough leather.
• 1 can of a plastic adhesion promoter, I like Bulldog easy to use and it works
• terry cloth towels
• paper towels
• soft scrub brush
• Scotch Brite pad – green one is fine
• latex gloves
• hair dryer – helps speed things up a little

Clean the seat thoroughly before you start. Mix a small amount of mild soap ( Dawn dish soap ) and warm water in a small bucket. Dip your scrub brush in the solution of cleaner and scrub the seat from top to bottom, making sure to get down in all the crevices of the seat, wipe the seat clean with the terry cloth towel. Now take the Scotch Brite pad and dip it in the solution and scrub the seat again, this time scrub in small circular motions, this step not only finalizes the cleaning process it also scuffs the dye on the seat to give the new dye something to adhere to. In some instance dye will come up when this step is done, don’t worry because your going to dye it anyway. Wipe the seat clean with a towel. Next, wipe the seat down with the denatured alcohol on a paper towel, while the alcohol is wet wipe behind it with a clean paper towel, to remove all the goo and silicon that will keep the dye from sticking to the seat,

Once you have cleaned the seat thoroughly, it’s time to work on the cracked or worn area. Take a strip of your 240 grit sand paper and dip in the cleaning solution and wet sand the area where the cracks are, you will see the dye start to lift and move around while you are sanding this is a good thing, move that dye into the cracks and use it as a filler. Wipe the area with your towel and see if the area is smoother, in cases where there are cracks is where I use leather fillers to fill in the cracks, but this is the “quick fix”. Now dry the area with a hair dryer if available. Getting the cracked area as smooth as you can get it will help to hide the worn area and make your repair look better.

Now if you the Sems Leather Prep use it now, follow the directions on the back, pretty simple, wipe on wipe off. If the area is still a little rough use the glue with your figure and rub it onto the rough area and smooth it out, let dry and sand it smooth. Seal the area if you can by wiping the sealer with a paper towel on the area.

Time to dye. Use a small piece of cardboard to use as a blocking card for the over spray. You will have some over spray so cover the areas with an old sheet, like the console and seat belts. Spray the seat with the dye holding the can 12 to 18 inches from the seat, using short swooping burst, don’t just start spraying away. Spray light coats, letting them dry between (use the hair dryer). You can sand between coats, if there are still some rough areas. In some cases if the cracks aren’t filling in, you can spray a heavier coat over the cracked area and rub it into the cracks with you hand. Two to three coats of dye should be sufficient. Spray the whole face of the seat to blend the color and make it look more uniform, remember short bursts and light coats. Now hopefully at this point you should be seeing a good looking seat.

This is what your seat should look when your done, granted I am a professional and I use all of the top of the line products, so yours may not look this good but it should be close.

Let dry for a few hours before you drive, but be careful, only sit on them if you have to. Optimal drying time is 8-10 hours for the dye to cure out totally.

The last step is to condition, I can’t stress this enough. Leather needs to be conditioned to keep it soft and flexible. There are several types of conditioners that are great to use, one I recommend to all my customers is Lexol, it’s created by a company that deals in just leather products. Just pick a good one and make sure you put it on, it will finish your job and make your seats feel and look great.

Hopefully this helps you in you leather repair adventure. If you have any questions about your leather repairs don’t hesitate to contact me, there are so many different situations that have so many different ways to fix them. It’s really hard to put it all in one article. So join my forum or email me with your questions on how to fix cracked leather.

Products to use, this is the magic question. There are so many out there. Lexol is one that I do recommend to all my customers, due to the fact that no petroleum solvents or silicone is used. But really theres one thing to keep in mind, as long as it is a conditioner for leather and not tire shine, or vinyl dressing, your good. Leather is skin, like your hands you wouldn’t put tire shine on your hands to make them soft now would you. Leather has microscopic fibers, under a microscope it looks like a mess of rope, that need oils to keep them flexible not brittle. These oils evaporate over time and need to be replaced. Conditioning keeps these fibers soft, allowing them to bend and flex not crack and break. The product you choose should be one that doesn’t contain neats foot oil, lanolin, mink oil, or any other lard based ingredient, although these are good conditioners, they will have undesirable effects. The animal based products leave your seats feeling greasy and can get on your clothing. So leave the mink oil for the boots. Some people have asked me about saddle soap, well if your trying to soften the leather for tanning, then maybe, but the leather is already tanned, all we are trying to do is replace the oils lost from evaporation not tan the leather. Always remember what you put on the leather stays in the leather.

Conditioning a leather interior of a car is really not rocket science but there is a trick so not to waste your money and effort.

Apply conditioner every 60-90 days depending on the weather in your area, hotter dryer climates need more conditioning. Using a damp microfiber cloth or terry cloth, making it damp keeps to much of the conditioner from soaking into the cloth, or just use your bare hand, it’s conditioner. Start by spraying the cloth or your hand with the conditioner, rub the seat in small circular motions. Start at the top and work your way down. Now depending on the vehicle, the face of seat is the only part you will need to condition. Most leather seats are a combination of leather and vinyl, the face is leather and the sides and back are vinyl, usually you can feel the difference, (but if not, BMW, Lexus, Porsche, most of your luxury vehicles, use leather over the entire seat) so heres where the saving money part comes in, you don’t have to put it all over the seat, just the face. Now after you have applied the conditioner to the face of the seat, wait….. usually about 20 minutes, about as long as it takes to wash the outside, this gives the oils time to be absorbed by the leather, then buff with a clean dry cloth to remove any excess. Keep the cloth you used to condition with, seal it in a plastic baggy, and use it over and over, conserve the oils still in the rag. Keep it in the glove box for touch ups.

Your done, easy huh?

By replacing the oils lost by the elements your keeping the leather soft and more flexible which can keep your seats from showing wear and can even save you from accidental punctures, the leather will flex and give more easily if its conditioned. So don’t forget every 60-90 days conditioning leather seats to keep them looking new for years to come.