Lets talk washing a Jacket

[rbxb]

Lets talk soaking or washing
wear dry? dry low? hang dry??
Did it shrink????
Of course one would have to lexol (conditioner) the heck out of it .
But what are your results???
Shrinkage ? better drape??

[Charybdis]

Drying in a dryer is not a good idea, no?

[Indiana Jeff]

You have to be careful with the dryer. Lots of stories here of jackets loosing a whole size or inches off the arms.

That being said, plenty of stories here of members who have done all sorts of washing/drying to jackets with outstanding results.

Of all the questions posted the one I would caution most against is hanging to dry. The weight of the jacket could very easily stretch out the shoulders leaving permanent hanger 'bumps'.

Best results I've seen have been from members who didn't try to do too much too fast. We all wants jackets to look like one that's been worn through all manners of weather conditions and environments so simulating those will give the best results.

Most jackets will end up going through a rain storm, but very few will get a total immersion in water. So hit the jacket in the shower with some water and wear it to dry is more 'natural' than running it through a wash cycle where the jacket is soaking underwater for up to 30 minutes and then going into a heated dryer.

Easiest to start small/slow.



Regards,

Indiana Jeff

[Texan Scott]

The thought of it makes me cringe to be honest with you, due to the fact that leather is organic material, animal skin. Like Jeff was eluding to, the jacket looked lived in but not run through the washer in.

[Kt Templar]

Well I have washed a couple of jackets over the years, sometimes with good results, sometimes not.

In my experience they don't all shrink, (washed goat) but some will shrink hugely (lambtouch cow) and some will shrink unevenly (lamb). Jackets that are not stitched at the hems are glued and the glue may give out when washed. I do not recommend it!

For giving your jacket that aged and worn in look fast, I prefer to shower the outside of the jacket in hot water then scrunch it and wear it to mould it and give it the arm wrinkles.

[zeus36]

Instead of washing it in a machine, I wore my lamb LC in a warm shower. Once it was fully saturated, I pushed up the sleeves to my elbows and slipped out of the jacket, laid it outside on table in the shade for a day. The sleeves had been a bit long without any character. Allowing them to dry in the pushed-up position put in a nice texture and the length was perfect.

[CouldnaeDecide]

I was brave and went whole hog. I washed it warm and then slung it in the dryer with a pair of old leather shoes (I call em my beatin shoes, cause i use them to bash denim soft etc etc).

I would test fit every 10 minutes to check for shrinking. Rolled up the sleeves just as it was almost dry and worn it till it was. My wife thought i was nucking futs. She said "okay fine it looks better" eventually....any married man knows that's a serious win.

[Texan Scott]

The extent of my washing was to get the surface wet and wear until dry.

[Indiana Croft]

I bought a US Wings size M, was to big, not a lot but just enough so the bottom of the sleeve was past the first knuckle, so I ended up soaking in the bath tub total emersion. Let it dry some, wrung it out and into the dryer.

When it came out it could stand on it's own.

Heavey does of picards, wore it a lot and it was perfect, even came through with some nice distressing all on it's own.

But my feeling was go big and didn't care the out come, the leather on this jacket is to thick to wear any time other than fall/winter.

Good luck to all who tempt this, as you my not like the out come.
Before
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After
[URL=http://s193.photobucket.com/user/i ... .jpg[/img][/url]
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Croft
sorry for the extra pics, but...............................

[cjchiu]

So I have a horsehide Wested jacket I recently recieved 2nd hand. Anyone know how it would react to washing?

[The Character]

Gotta be honest i have done this and had mixed results ... one jacket the arms shrunk back badly and had to have the arms replaced ... one i've documented on another forum and i repost it here as a warning to 'Unbeleewers!' lol

Title - The Death of a jacket... Or 'I've losht it Marcush!'

So ... Here is a tale of woe to fill your hearts with dread. A comedy of errors one might almost say, and being a seasoned 'distressing' monkey I should have known better.... And chosen much more wisely!

I got (had!) a lovely custom Wested Last Crusade a year or three back in standard lamb skin and went through the usual moves of distressing it to my taste .. It's probably the best LC distressing I've ever done ... I showered it off with hot water .. Let it dry then lightly knocked back the relevant LC pattern of distressed areas with wet n dry paper etc .. To be fair it had been a bit neglected as I'm more fond of my TOD's but it got a good few outings under its belt.

Flash forward said couple of years and what follows is a catalogue of woes

Mistake No 1
I decide in my wisdom that I'd like to give it a slightly darker under pallete colour so I get some oil based leather dye and set to it .. End result it's okay-ish but it's knocked the distressing look back almost instantly AND completely and makes it look a bit shiny into the bargain.


Mistake No 2
I then decide I'd rather go back to how it was before so I set at it with some leather cleaner PLUS Hot water etc ...and then go over the distressed areas lightly again to try and bring those back at the very least. Result ... Not much difference.


Mistake(s) No 3 *this is the relevant part!!!!!! The fatal one ....
I make two .. no 3 horrible errors
1/ .. Wash it in the washing machine. Having done this before I know although it works it's not right for an LC as the LC is s distinctly uncrumpled looking jacket with good clean lines and just the distinctive surface distressing. When washed all leather gets mangled and lose their shape to a degree .. that might suit the Raiders or TOD but not an LC or Crystal Skull.
2/ I wash it at 60 degrees ... If you wash a jacket never do it above 30 or on cold ... Disastrous Schoolboy error
3/ The worst.... because the dye is oil based I decide that I need to use detergent! *yep ... i know what you're thinking here


Now given this series of unfortunate events, and knowing what I know ... at this point alarm bells should have been going off Whereas my brain was saying 'what's the worst that can happen?

End result removing the jacket from the machine I knew immediately it was battered VERY BADLY .. I tried to hang it up and it was horribly out of shape .. I lay it flat to pull it back into shape .. It would not go.


Mistake No 4... yes it gets worse!
I hang it up to dry ... Lose patience and put it into the dryer for 30 mins thinking that will help pull it back into shape.
It's still damp. Still horribly distorted and pulled out of shape.
So not able to hang it up due to the extra pulling on already mangled shoulders It gets left laid out on a table in the sun to dry ...

The next day I have a cardboard jacket ... It's not fully dry and already it weighs less than any other jacket I have. Basically the heat and detergent have stunk the life from it .... You know that Star Trek episode with the monster that ***** the salt out of its victims and leaves a husk!


Mistake 5
Ah hah .. Solution ... Re-wet it!!! So it's showered and hung up. Nope ... That fails to do anything .. It's now just DAMP AND THIN ... And out of shape


Mistake 6
The steam iron .... I've used this before to flatten out and reshape leather but in my final moment of stupidity I press the steam button ... The arm of the jacket visibly shrinks under the onslaught ..
So I now have a thin, dry ghastly looking thing with a burnt and mangled arm in place of a once perfect LC...


My next thought takes me to dark territory ..'pecards! .. Pecards ... Now you need to know I hate that stuff. I'll use it on a whip but never on a jacket .. It's just greasy horrible nasty stuff .. It will waterproof your seams but does nothing for leather in my opinion. Several deep slatherings later ....
So now I now have a thin, dry ghastly looking thing with a burnt and mangled arm slathered in grease in place of a once perfect LC.


In the end I wore it to the local Park when I took my son Harrison out. En route I saw the burn on the arm had split showing the lining in several areas ... I poked a finger through ... The sleeve literally peeled apart like paper ... I then put my hand in the right hand pocket and the pocket peeled off the jacket and tore the main jacket panel with it ... On closer examination I realised the entire jacket was able to be peeled apart like wet cardboard ... It's too short life was ended by being dispatched into the park trash ...


So there we are folks ... A lesson in what not to do to a jacket and making a series of drastic moves in an effort to undo ONE poorly thought out action. Let's change the colour a bit ...


It was perfect as it was ... I just wanted to post this here to say even us seasoned jacket wearers do dumb as #### stuff ... For the best of intentions. I know washing jackets is not the thing to do ..

as KT says any glue on seams detaches as does the tape inside the pockets ..
it misshapes the leather
it dries it out.
it invariably screws the lining resulting in that needing repaired or replaced ..

In summary i know this wasn't a case of just washing .. it was a series of errors BUT the fundamental life ending decision was to wash the jacket, and my experience of using it previously and this last factor, would seriously make me shy away from anything as harsh as thrashing any jacket in a machine .. detergent or no detergent .. it just screws it .. I've got four very nice jackets .. two wested and two S&J's and all have had water treatment BUT ... i will never put a jacket in a washing machine again ... EVER! .

I am i might add I'm a big fan of the soaking ..wearing .. soaking again wear while damp .. i think all that really does add to the look but washing in my opinion is just too harsh on the jacket no matter what the hide.

[Glenville86]

I washed three jackets and to be honest, it ruined 2 of them. One was an expensive one and I could never get rid of the white lines and spotting no matter how many coats of pecards I applied. Cold and gentle short cycles was all I used.

After that, I just wear them without trying to wash or age them.

[distantpeople]

Have had good results without any water at all. Simply worn it to bed over the course of a few weeks and then worn as often as possible.

[Cajunkraut]

You guys are brave. I can't even think about it.

Not that I want my jackets to remain looking new, mind you. I've worn mine to bed several times (which makes for a lousy night's sleep FYI) and store it crumpled different ways in a pillowcase. That's about as far as I'll go.

Besides, chrome tanned goat never really acquires the natural distressing variances of a veg tanned hide. More just "age wrinkling" like vintage Navy G-1 jackets.

[cjchiu]

Hmm... Guess that I'll settle for just wearing my jacket everyday and breaking it in naturally.

[Michaelson]

[Clipper]

Michaelson was kind enough to point me to this thread after posting some of my distressing results for my Todd's Raiders jacket here viewtopic.php?f=2&t=39074&p=894389#p894389" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

You can look there to see my before shots.

After reading this thread, I thought I'd take things one step further and give washing a try.

First I ran the jacket under the bath tub faucet until totally soaked through and rang it out a bit. Only a little brown color rung out. I then put it in the dryer on medium heat for 15 minute increments so I could check to make sure no shrinking or bad things were happening. I did this two or three times, but since it was still pretty wet I did a hot final dry where it came out 85% dry. At that point I put it on and wore it for an hour or so trying to move around in it and mold it back to my body and let it dry on a hanger.

After drying over night here are my results:




I have somewhat mixed emotions over the results. I think you can definitely see that it added a some more wrinkles and grain to the leather which is great. However, it seemed to almost completely wash away my light brown dyeing treatment which is a bit of a bummer since I thought that added a LOT to the look. Once dry it was also very stiff and again some stitching came undone (which has been a constant problem with this jacket and I've had to restitch it many times now. Especially the pockets). So I crumpled it up and tried to massage it to loosen it back up.

Since these pics I've also given it another light brown dye treatment and then a luxol leather rub down to try and soften and moisturize the leather without adding the shine that pecards gave earlier, but I hardly notice a difference.

At this point I'm thinking I may need to use acetone or something on the distressed areas to remove the dark brown color again and try one last light brown dye treatment on those areas... but as of now I'm going to leave it alone! It looks pretty good and no shrinkage at all from the wash. For anyone with a brand new jacket I think this is a very quick way to add a lot of character to your jacket.

What do you think? Does the raiders jacket even have much light brown come through or does this pull it off already?

Thanks!
Tom

[Cajunkraut]

I think it looks fine as is. My concern is that further attempts to artificially distress it will just create more damage control for ya. See The Character's post in this thread. Just my $.02.

[Marv]

The easiest way is to use a spray bottle, fill it up with hot tap water, hang the jacket on a hanger over the bath.

Set the nozzle for a fine mist and then soak the jacket until very wet, put it straight on and wear until dry.

This method really works wonders for the less adventurous buts pays dividends in return as the is less chance of ruining the jacket.

I have done this on many a time with my A2s, G1s and my Wested Raiders without any damage.

[Marv]

The easiest way is to use a spray bottle, fill it up with hot tap water, hang the jacket on a hanger over the bath.

Set the nozzle for a fine mist and then soak the jacket until very wet, put it straight on and wear until dry.

This method really works wonders for the less adventurous buts pays dividends in return as the is less chance of ruining the jacket.

I have done this on many a time with my A2s, G1s and my Wested Raiders without any damage.

Here's the after effect of the above process, works very well in my opinion......

[Dangerfreak]

I've got a Wested Raiders in goat. It was beautifully smooth and a little shiny when it arrived, but also a bit long in the back which bothered me. I was immediately given some very sound tips for distressing my jacket gently by some of our wisest and most learned members. Namely, a cold splash in the shower and dry flat naturally should remove the shine. Also rolling it up will help to soften the leather and add creases.
I cycle to work and it being winter at the time, I wore my new jacket. A bit of light rain got it wet, so I rolled it up and put it in my work locker. Halfway through the day I rolled it up the other way. By the end of the day it was dry and had much more character. However, a couple of days later I took a serious risk!
I got caught in a heavy downpour and my Raiders jacket was drenched. When I got home I was impatient to dry the jacket, and that back length was still bothering me. I decided to chuck it in the tumble dryer for 30 minutes to see if it might shrink a bit. After the 30 minutes I checked it. It seemed fine, but was still pretty damp, so I chucked it in for another 30 minutes.
My jacket had shrunk, but just enough. The textural qualities of the leather had been exaggerated and the dye had faded slightly, but mainly along the seams. However, when looking at the textural qualities of the leather, I realized that certain parts of the leather were really quite different from each other. I realized I was lucky the jacket didn't shrink unevenly. When I posted the results almost everyone in the know said I had been VERY LUCKY with my results. There are plenty of horror stories of jackets shrinking unevenly and distorting. Tumble dryers aren't recommended! Also, I was told that the length may return a little, which it now has, so I was lucky not to have ruined my jacket for practically nothing!

[Marv]

I've got a Wested Raiders in goat. It was beautifully smooth and a little shiny when it arrived, but also a bit long in the back which bothered me. I was immediately given some very sound tips for distressing my jacket gently by some of our wisest and most learned members. Namely, a cold splash in the shower and dry flat naturally should remove the shine. Also rolling it up will help to soften the leather and add creases.
I cycle to work and it being winter at the time, I wore my new jacket. A bit of light rain got it wet, so I rolled it up and put it in my work locker. Halfway through the day I rolled it up the other way. By the end of the day it was dry and had much more character. However, a couple of days later I took a serious risk!
I got caught in a heavy downpour and my Raiders jacket was drenched. When I got home I was impatient to dry the jacket, and that back length was still bothering me. I decided to chuck it in the tumble dryer for 30 minutes to see if it might shrink a bit. After the 30 minutes I checked it. It seemed fine, but was still pretty damp, so I chucked it in for another 30 minutes.
My jacket had shrunk, but just enough. The textural qualities of the leather had been exaggerated and the dye had faded slightly, but mainly along the seams. However, when looking at the textural qualities of the leather, I realized that certain parts of the leather were really quite different from each other. I realized I was lucky the jacket didn't shrink unevenly. When I posted the results almost everyone in the know said I had been VERY LUCKY with my results. There are plenty of horror stories of jackets shrinking unevenly and distorting. Tumble dryers aren't recommended! Also, I was told that the length may return a little, which it now has, so I was lucky not to have ruined my jacket for practically nothing!

I have to agree, I have never put any of my leather jackets in the tumble dryer for just that reason.

If I decide to actually totaly immerse a jacket in hot water in the bath, once I have removed it I would dry off the excess water with towels and then hang it on a electric clothes maiden for a while to let the leather start to dry then wear it until nearly completely dry.

Take of the jacket carefully so that the all the creasing remains then hang on a good size hanger over a raidiator to finished off the drying process.

Works really well and end up with great results and no risk of major shrinkage.

[Thunderspy]

I've read about the washing quite a bit, but what is it actually that it's supposed to do? Is the idea to remove the 'new' shine or does it affect the grain in some way?

[IJJTM]

Are you supposed to dry clean your leather jacket?

[The Character]

You're not supposed to Dry Clean leathers ... basically dry cleaning is a chemical process thats more likely to damage the leathery pulling all the oils etc out .. even if you could find someone to do it for you as I'm pretty sure most would refuse .. or should as it would be an odd choice. Leather cleaning however is a different process that can be done professionally.

wetting is purely and simply to:

- Remove some of the shine and surface finishing
- Relax the leather a little and allow reshaping of collars, sleeves (to get wrinkles etc)
- To 'pop' or bring up the grain/texture of the leather (though depending on the hide type that doesn't always work)

How to
1/ To remove shine - Zip it up and give a quick all over warm shower while trying NOT to get the interior wet but just wet the surface.
2/ To relax and reshape - Zip it up and give it a good long shower .. you will eventually 'feel' the leather start to pick up/retain the water .. it will get heavy! Allow to drip dry then reshape and wear it damp in the sun or on a dry day till it feels lighter and dryer ... or simply lay it out flat and zipped up.

NOTES:
- Ideally you never really want to totally immerse a jacket ... you can .. but it would seem a tad OTT as lifting a fully soaked jacket would in and of itself potentially pull and distort the leather.
- Don't Wet/soak and just leave the jacket .. hang it up (on a shaped or padded hanger (not wire) .. OR better still drip dry and then wear it damp till its dry or at least dryer.
- Worst case .. lay it out on towels to dry and spend time to reshape the zipped up jacket by hand back into some kind of 'original shape' (do the back first then turn over carefully keeping seams and flaps flat/together.
- *IMO - Never wash in a washing machine with detergent .. i hesitate to suggest even wetting it in a machine as ive never had a good result ...

with any of the options id say do it on a day you have time to either wear it in the house or outside while its drying or shaping .. put the movies on .. put the music on .. spend the time and do it properly and it will pay dividends .. if you rush it it would be a shame.

[Thunderspy]

Thanks, that's great. I was curious as my Wested -which I wore almost every day to work, carrying my heavy rucksack, for a couple of years (back when we left the house!)- is well and truly broken in but still a bit featureless in terms of texture. I've had a Striated Lamb Bill Kelso for a year or so now and the appearance of the leather almost doesn't compare it's so characterful and sumptuous and was just wondering if there's anything I could do to make the Wested a bit more interesting. I don't think I'll risk the washing machine though.