Reingrassante di COLOURLOCK

Re-greasing leather with COLOURLOCK before applying filler and colour

What does a re-greaser do to leather? It replenishes the fat between the dried-out fibres that the tannery originally put there, making brittle leather supple again. COLOURLOCK "Licker Oil" is water-soluble — it is a preparatory step for adhesive, filler, and leather colour, not a subsequent care product.

COLOURLOCK re-greasers are part of leather repair, not leather care: they restore the greasing that every piece of leather receives at the tannery and loses over the years. COLOURLOCK "Licker Oil" makes hard, dry leather flexible again so that it can withstand treatment and so that adhesive, filler, and colour will adhere to it. The brand is backed by a leather specialist that has been supplying saddlers and detailers since 1995 as Lederzentrum and is now part of Koch-Chemie.

• Re-greasing is tannery work, not maintenance. In the tannery, the greasing process puts a wafer-thin film of fat around every collagen fibre so that the fibres do not stick together when drying. It is precisely this film that migrates out of the leather over the years. The re-greaser puts it back; for very dry leather, this is done in two to three thin applications.
• Water-soluble so that the colour sticks later. COLOURLOCK "Licker Oil" is formulated to be water-soluble and is explicitly designed for subsequent dyeing. Conversely, care and waterproofing oils build up a water-repellent layer that would cause water-based leather colour to slip off. This means for you: after re-greasing, nothing stands in the way of priming and colour application.
• Two containers for two ways of working. The 250 ml size is sufficient for a single classic car seat, a saddle surface, or a sofa panel that you are working on over several evenings. The 1000 ml / 1 litre size is intended for detailers and saddlers who are preparing a complete set of seats in one go.

Practical tip from Detailing1: The most common mistake when re-greasing is reaching for home remedies. Coconut oil, Ballistol, and WD-40 appear in every second forum thread, and during consultations, we regularly receive photos of classic car seats that have been treated with them: the fats are absorbed unevenly, darken in patches, and leave behind a film that neither adhesion promoters nor leather colour can bridge later on. Such a seat first becomes a case for degreasing before the actual repair can even begin. Instead, work in this order: clean, let it dry completely, then apply a few drops of re-greaser to a soft cloth and distribute it in circular motions over the entire area — not just on the hard spot.

Re-greasing restores what the tannery put into the leather

Leather is soft because a film of grease is applied around every single fibre in the tannery. Re-greasing means nothing more than renewing this film on aged leather.

In leather production, this step is called greasing. The greasing agents coat the collagen fibres with a thin film of fat so that they do not stick together when drying but remain shiftable against each other — you can think of it like oil between two components that would otherwise seize up. In other words: without this step, the result from the tannery would not be soft skin, but a hard plate. This is precisely why suppleness in leather is not a result of maintenance, but a material property that can be preserved or restored.

In the leather industry, the technical term for a water-dilutable greasing agent is "liquor". Hence the product name: COLOURLOCK "Licker Oil" is not a care oil with a fancy name, but a product derived from the logic of leather manufacturing, performing the same task in a detailing workshop as the greasing bath in a tannery.

The film does not disappear in a single day. Sun, heating air, air conditioning, and any cleaner not followed by re-greasing draw it out piece by piece. In a car, the areas with the most heat and friction are affected first: driver's seat bolsters, entry edges, steering wheel rims, armrests. On furniture, it is the armrests and front edges; on saddles, it is the seat area. The leather there first becomes dull, then stiff, then it cracks when bent.

As its own product category, the re-greaser is therefore deliberately positioned before repair and not alongside maintenance. It does not beautify anything; it restores a mechanical property — flexibility. Everything that comes after requires this flexibility.

Brittle leather cannot support a repair

A filler remains elastic, an adhesive remains flexible, and a leather colour remains stretchable. If the leather underneath is hard, only one side is doing the work.

The process is always the same. You get in, the seat bolster is compressed, the repair material yields — but the brittle fibre structure next to it does not. The movement collects at the edge between old and new, and that is where it tears open. Not at the filler, but at the transition. If you re-grease the fibres beforehand, you distribute the movement back over the entire area instead of concentrating it at a seam.

This is exactly the pattern that people describe in the relevant forums without identifying the cause: the seat bolster was chemically treated and recoloured, but after a few weeks of getting in and out, everything peeled off again. During consultations at Detailing1, we see the same sequence time and again — the repair was done carefully, but there was no preparation at all.

Then there is the damage that occurs during the work. Brittle leather tears when aligning, when pressing down a sub-patch, or when sanding the dried filler. A three-centimetre crack can turn into a six-centimetre one when stretched. Re-greasing reduces this risk before you pick up the first tool.

And it determines the point at which repair is even sensible. As long as the fibres are only dry, they can be brought back. If they are broken, the leather is mechanically finished at that spot — then it is no longer about pre-treatment, but about replacement by a saddler. The re-greaser works in the window before that, and this window closes a little further with every dry summer.

Water-soluble is the difference between re-greaser and leather oil

Re-greaser, softener, and care oil all grease the fibre. Only one of the three is designed so that primer and leather colour can be applied afterwards.

COLOURLOCK "Licker Oil" is formulated to be water-soluble and is therefore suitable for subsequent dyeing. This is not a subtlety, but the crucial point: the leather colours and adhesion promoters in this system world are water-based dispersions. They need a substrate that water can still wet. A fat- or wax-based oil builds up exactly the water-repellent layer that would cause such colour to bead, slip, or remain sticky after drying.

A care oil therefore pursues a different goal. The care for hardened leather with COLOURLOCK "Elephant Leather Oil" makes dry leather supple that is meant to remain just as it is: a motorcycle saddle, a belt, an old bag. There, the greasy finish is desired because nothing follows it. Before dyeing, it would be an obstacle.

The softener COLOURLOCK "Old Leather Softener", in turn, reaches deeper and works more slowly than the re-greaser. It is the answer for rock-hard classic car seats, which need to be left to soak for hours and require several applications at intervals of around 24 hours until the leather can be bent without cracking. We regularly receive enquiries from people who are facing exactly this extreme and want to reach for the re-greaser — in that case, the softener is the first step and the re-greaser is the second.

As an "if-then" logic: if the leather is dry and stiff and is to be dyed or filled afterwards, use the re-greaser. If it is rock-hard and can hardly be bent, start with the softener. If you have no intention other than to make dry leather supple again, the care oil is sufficient.

First degrease, then re-grease, then prime

The sequence sounds contradictory, but it is not: the surface is degreased, the fibre underneath is re-greased — two different levels in the same piece of leather.

At the beginning is cleaning. Skin oils, cosmetics, denim abrasion, and old care residues lie as a film on the finish, and every product you apply over it works against this film rather than against the leather. For pigmented smooth leather, a leather cleaner in the appropriate strength for the level of soiling handles this.

This is followed by degreasing. COLOURLOCK "Degreaser" from the degreaser category removes what a cleaner leaves behind: absorbed silicones, waxes, and residues of old care products. In the community, this effect is known in its negative form — anyone who does not thoroughly degrease before recolouring will get a surface that is sticky and on which the colour migrates. Only when the surface is grease-free does the re-greaser even know where it should be absorbed.

Now COLOURLOCK "Licker Oil" is applied to the dry, clean surface. It penetrates into the fibre gaps, not the top layer. The leather becomes noticeably softer, the surface remains receptive. For heavily dried-out leather, repeat the application instead of using more product the first time.

Only then does the actual structure begin. The leather primer with COLOURLOCK "Leather Primer" creates the adhesion bridge between the substrate and colour, the fillers and spatula close cracks and defects into a level surface, and at the very end, the leather colours cover the transition. Each of these steps assumes that the leather underneath goes along with it.

Apply thinly, give it time, and know where the re-greaser ends

A few drops on a soft cloth, work it in evenly in circular motions over the entire area, let it absorb, and repeat if the leather is very dry. That's all there is to it.

Two things are regularly done incorrectly here. The first is point application only on the hard spot: this creates a visible border because the treated area reflects light differently than the untreated one. Always work up to the next seam, treating the leather panel as a whole. The second is application on damp leather — after wet cleaning, water sits in the fibres, which will then absorb water instead of fat. Let the surface dry completely beforehand; when in doubt, leave it overnight.

Before the first area, a test belongs in a hidden spot, such as under the seat or on the back of a sofa backrest. The re-greaser darkens less than classic oils, but it is not entirely colour-neutral. On light beige leather, we have already seen a visible tonal difference precisely for this reason — it is worth treating the entire area evenly rather than just the dry corner.

The clear boundary is the substrate. The re-greaser belongs on pigmented, surface-dyed smooth leather and many saddle and furniture leathers. Open-pored aniline leather, nubuck, and suede are explicitly not an area of application: they soak up any greasing unchecked. We tested this on a piece of aniline scrap — the spot immediately turned dark and stayed that way. For open-pored leather, the path leads through a dedicated, film-free care product rather than re-greasing.

And the re-greaser is not a repair agent. It does not fill a crack, replace a backing, cover a colour defect, or stop a worn seat bolster. It also does not prevent new wear at the entry edge — the stress there is simply too high. What it does is one thing: it brings the leather into a state in which everything else is worth the effort.

When your leather needs a re-greaser and when it doesn't

The test takes five seconds. Press into an inconspicuous spot with your thumb, let go, and observe how quickly the leather returns.

If it springs back softly and does not form permanent creases, the greasing is intact — then you do not need a re-greaser, but cleaning and maintenance at a normal rhythm. If sharp creases remain, the surface feels paper-like, or it cracks when bent, the fibres are dry. This is exactly where COLOURLOCK "Licker Oil" comes in. If it cracks loudly and the leather can hardly be moved, start one step earlier with the softener.

The second question is what happens next. If you want to repair or dye, the re-greaser is a mandatory programme and the leather primer is the next step. If you just want to save dry leather without touching it, a care oil is the simpler answer. Both are legitimate, just not the same product.

For detailers, saddlers, and upholstery shops, the question is answered anyway by the quantity. Anyone who regularly refurbishes leather interiors works with the 1000 ml / 1 litre size and thus has the pre-treatment in stock before the first customer arrives. For your own vehicle, the classic car in winter storage, or the leather sofa, the 250 ml lasts for years.

The thought that carries the whole category: a leather repair rarely fails due to a lack of skill and almost always due to the preparation. The re-greaser costs you half an hour and a night of drying time — and determines whether your work survives the next winter or tears open again at the same edge the next time you get in.

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