Clyde's Leather Recoloring Balm - Update

Despite having dyed my dressage saddle in 2018, by last summer, it looked worse than it had before. I decided to take a chance on Clyde's Leather Recoloring Balm, a product I had seen on Facebook. It was easy to do, and my saddle came out looking pretty good. You can read about the process here, here, and here. My plan was to do an annual touch up beginning this summer. 

Dusty and dirty.

After my ride on Saturday morning, I put my saddle on a stand, gave it a good cleaning with a damp rag, and then gave it a light coat of Effax Leder-Balsam. That stuff is awesome by the way. It smells good, and it leaves tack clean and smooth without feeling oily. When I was satisfied that the saddle was clean and well-conditioned, I stepped back to have a look at it.

It looks cleaner in person.

To my complete surprise, my saddle is as black as it was last summer. There has been zero fading. In fact, it looks better than it did last summer because the shiny Tan-Kote has nearly worn off. I will definitely NEVER use that stuff again. There are still parts that don't look so great, but those parts came from using a deglazer which stripped whatever finish the saddle still had. Besides the uneven shine caused by the Tan-Kote, the leather is uniformly black.

If you have a black saddle that has seen better days, I would definitely recommend Clyde's Recoloring Balm. And since my saddle is still evenly black, I am going to skip the touch up for now. I'll reevaluate at the end of the summer.

​Isn't it great when a product does what it says it will?