Ideally I would have had a new section of leather let in to repair this. But Oregon leather is not available new and I had no suitable donor leather.
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So I figured I had nothing to lose by giving a repair a go.
First of all I cut a piece of backing mesh to reinforce and underpin the whole repair. At this point I had also trimmed a fractional amount off the edge of the hole to remove the ragged leather.
I then glued one side and let it dry.
And then the other so I had an opportunity to tension the mesh to close up the hole as naturally as possible.
Weighing it down with a heavy weight to help.
Resulting in this. Which already looks a lot less daunting to fill now it's been closed back up into a more natural position.
Then the surface is built up slowly with Heavy Filler. You can't do any repair with one layer. The product shrinks considerably when it drys and the repair is stronger from several thinner layers too.
All the products I use are from Furniture Clinic.
Once the heavy filler is built up to just below the surface it gets a coat of Flexifil. This is a sandable product so I prefer it to get a final finish. It has to be dabbed/chopped on with the edge of a sharp blade. And feathered out over the edge of the Heavy Filler.
Once it's dried the filler will self-level and it does also shrink. So some judgement is required as this will be the surface you'll be looking at when the repair is completed.
The finished repair after sanding. Which at this stage looks pretty ugly. But the only aim to this point is to get a smooth surface.
Now the Oregon leather has a 'pimple' effect embossed onto it. It does wear out in high traffic areas with time and the effect had already been lost in the larger area around the hole. If it was a smaller hole in an area otherwise still showing the effect I could recreate the grain with another product. I've done this before and it looks great. But it would be pointless and weird just recreating the grain on the repair area and an enormous job to recreate in the wider area. It comes in gel form and has to be dabbed on with a cocktail stick one pimple at a time! And then the area has to be blotted to flatten the pimples.
So it will stay as is. But replacing the grain would take the repair to a different level of invisibility as it disguises the different texture of the filler. So we are going to have to accept neat rather than invisible here.
The whole seat is going to get re-coloured. But for now I want to spray the local area to see how it looks.
This isn't a How To on colouring leather so I've omitted the prep stages and won't go into detail with the spraying. But suffice to say you start off with a sponged wash coat.
And start building up the layers with a spray coat.
About 6 coats in total and we are there. If it was a straight recolour on real leather (as opposed to white filler) we might have only used 3 coats. And of course the repair area will get a further 3 coats when the whole seat is re-coloured.
We knew the repair wouldn't be invisible. But I'm very happy with the result.
And when we're jumping in and out the car we'll only be looking from a distance, not with our nose pressed up against it so it looks pretty good from a distance.
Note someone had attempted a repair on this area previously (badly) and used the wrong shade of blue on the base which looked almost black. Remembering also that I'm only spraying the repair area and that's why you are looking at different colours.
So the seat will now get a full recolour and hopefully be good for another 20 years!
So I figured I had nothing to lose by giving a repair a go.
First of all I cut a piece of backing mesh to reinforce and underpin the whole repair. At this point I had also trimmed a fractional amount off the edge of the hole to remove the ragged leather.
I then glued one side and let it dry.
And then the other so I had an opportunity to tension the mesh to close up the hole as naturally as possible.
Weighing it down with a heavy weight to help.
Resulting in this. Which already looks a lot less daunting to fill now it's been closed back up into a more natural position.
Then the surface is built up slowly with Heavy Filler. You can't do any repair with one layer. The product shrinks considerably when it drys and the repair is stronger from several thinner layers too.
All the products I use are from Furniture Clinic.
Once the heavy filler is built up to just below the surface it gets a coat of Flexifil. This is a sandable product so I prefer it to get a final finish. It has to be dabbed/chopped on with the edge of a sharp blade. And feathered out over the edge of the Heavy Filler.
Once it's dried the filler will self-level and it does also shrink. So some judgement is required as this will be the surface you'll be looking at when the repair is completed.
The finished repair after sanding. Which at this stage looks pretty ugly. But the only aim to this point is to get a smooth surface.
Now the Oregon leather has a 'pimple' effect embossed onto it. It does wear out in high traffic areas with time and the effect had already been lost in the larger area around the hole. If it was a smaller hole in an area otherwise still showing the effect I could recreate the grain with another product. I've done this before and it looks great. But it would be pointless and weird just recreating the grain on the repair area and an enormous job to recreate in the wider area. It comes in gel form and has to be dabbed on with a cocktail stick one pimple at a time! And then the area has to be blotted to flatten the pimples.
So it will stay as is. But replacing the grain would take the repair to a different level of invisibility as it disguises the different texture of the filler. So we are going to have to accept neat rather than invisible here.
The whole seat is going to get re-coloured. But for now I want to spray the local area to see how it looks.
This isn't a How To on colouring leather so I've omitted the prep stages and won't go into detail with the spraying. But suffice to say you start off with a sponged wash coat.
And start building up the layers with a spray coat.
About 6 coats in total and we are there. If it was a straight recolour on real leather (as opposed to white filler) we might have only used 3 coats. And of course the repair area will get a further 3 coats when the whole seat is re-coloured.
We knew the repair wouldn't be invisible. But I'm very happy with the result.
And when we're jumping in and out the car we'll only be looking from a distance, not with our nose pressed up against it so it looks pretty good from a distance.
Note someone had attempted a repair on this area previously (badly) and used the wrong shade of blue on the base which looked almost black. Remembering also that I'm only spraying the repair area and that's why you are looking at different colours.
So the seat will now get a full recolour and hopefully be good for another 20 years!
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