Leather University™
How to Use Lexol Cleaner & Conditioner Wipes on Leather
by Dan Concord
Author, speaker, teacher, and educator on leather working tools and techniques.
Leather University™
Author, speaker, teacher, and educator on leather working tools and techniques.
Lexol Leather Quick Care All-in-One Formula is a three-in-one leather care product intended to clean, condition, and protect leather with a UV-protection formula. We’ll review its history, the company, and the ingredients, followed by a step-by-step demonstration so you can see exactly how it works.
So, with that, let’s dive right in.
The Lexol company began around 1933 in New Jersey, USA, where they made an incredible leather conditioner that became very popular. Its success grew, and in 1977, Summit Industries, a company based in Georgia, USA, purchased the brand. Then, in 1984, they introduced the Lexol Leather Cleaner. Like the conditioner, this cleaner became popular too.
On May 11, 2015, Summit Industries sold the brand to American Covers, Inc., based in Utah, USA. Then, on May 24, 2016, American Covers was bought by Energizer Holdings, a very large battery and auto products company based in Missouri, USA. Energizer Holdings is a publicly owned company whose biggest shareholders are large asset management companies also based in the USA.
This is a 3-in-1 leather care product intended to clean, condition, and protect leather with a UV protection formula.
Lexol leather cleaner and conditioner wipes key ingredients include:
The packaging states that it’s made in China and designed and formulated in the USA.
As with any leather care product, there’s always a balance between effort and convenience. So, usually, cleaning, conditioning, and protecting are three separate steps. Cleaning removes dirt and soiled things we don’t want, conditioning restores oils, fats, and other substances that will maintain leather’s flexibility, and protecting adds protective properties, such as water resistance, UV resistance, and other such properties.
Most often, those will be beneficial if they’re each done as separate steps. However, there are cases and uses where having them all in one can be really convenient and just get the job done. So, it’s up to you to determine if that’s a good approach for you. Second, you’ll need to decide if the ingredients in the product will work for what you’re trying to do and if they’re going to be something that you want to include in your leather. So, do your research and make the choice that works best for you.
Let’s see it in action. First, we’ll put down a black mat to protect our workspace and gather supplies. Along with the leather cleaning wipes, we have a soiled leather sample and an original, clean one, so we should be able to compare them later.
The next ting we’re going to do is read the instructions, which state:
Sounds easy enough. Let’s give it a try. So, here’s our container. We open it up. Here’s the wipe. Pull one out. Make sure we don’t pull too many. Close the container to keep the wipes from drying out. And here’s the wipe. It’s relatively large and has a pretty cool texture to it.
Next, we’re going to start working the wipe in circles. This sample was pretty dirty. You could see we’re already picking up a lot of that red dirt off it. Then, we want to reposition our wipe, so we’re not rubbing that dirt back in while trying to clean the other areas. So, we’ll periodically do that as we go around.
We ultimately want to get the wipe so it’s coming up white, which means we’ve got all the soiling and dirt from our leather surface. So, when the first wipe is thoroughly soiled, we’ll grab a second wipe and repeat the process, picking up more dirt each time. The sample was intentionally very dirty, so we could see the wipe picking the dirt up, but you should start to notice less of that coming up. And now that we’ve got almost nothing coming up let’s make one more pass to be sure.
Now, we have some excess cleaner sitting on top. So, based on the recommendation, we’ll use a soft, lint-free cotton cloth to wipe off what’s there on the surface. That way, it won’t scratch the leather and will absorb some of the cleaner. Also, whatever is remaining will be evenly dispersed across the surface and be able to dry evenly.
So here’s our cleaned, conditioned, and protected leather sample. When we compare that to our original sample, it’s clearly going to be darker. Anytime we add conditioning to leather, it will darken a bit, although it will lighten when it dries.
Give it a little while, and the darker leather from freshly applied conditioner will lighten up a lot. Once it’s done drying, it’ll probably be darker than the original, but not as dark as when just applied.
So that is the Lexol Leather Quick Care All-in-One Formula applied to leather. If you have any questions, let us know. If you have experience with this product or tips to share, we’d love to hear them.
And there you have it. Until next time.
Dan Concord is a professional leather crafter with 15 years of design experience and expertise. He is founder of the successful Liberty Leather Goods studio, and also a published author, speaker, teacher, and educator on leather working tools and techniques. He lives in the USA.
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