It Is Time For Some Conditioning

Well, riding season has come and gone and its time to consider storing your tack for the winter. There are several important things to remember when storing your tack items for a period of time. The most important is cleaning and conditioning.

What is the proper way to clean and condition for storage?

During the riding season most people clean their items in a rush and sometimes never condition their tack properly. Its a busy time and on some occasions, if you admit it, you simply spray a little cleaner on and give it a rub. It looks good at the moment and you give it a thumbs up and hit the trail.

Today I would like to talk about strap items such as halters, leads, reins, bridles, etc.......

The biggest misconception is the use of soap type cleaners to "clean" the leather. The best way to properly clean your strap items is to soak a terry cloth rag or towel in warm water and squeeze out thoroughly. Allow the rag or towel to dry out a bit until the cloth feels damp. Position your strap items between your thumb and forefinger with the towel completely around the strap. Give brisk pulls from top to bottom applying moderate pressure. NO SOAPS or CLEANERS USED

( I would recommend using a white or light colored towel so that you can see the amount of dirt being removed. )

It may take several repetitions of this procedure to get your leather item completely cleaned and ready for conditioning.

Use a dry terry cloth towel to dry and rub briskly after you are through cleaning with the damp towel. Allow to completely dry which should take about 30 minutes. Be sure to lay your tack out in a dry well ventilated area when drying.

Now you are ready to conditon your items.

You may use your drying cloth or get a fresh terry cloth rag or towel. Apply a moderate amount of high quality blended conditioning oil of your choice to the rag. (more on this later). Using the same technique as you did when cleaning, rub the oil into the strap with brisk firm pulls. As you pull you can feel the warmth of the friction which allows the oil to penetrate quickly. Repeat this two or three times, or more if your leather has a stiff dry feel. The important thing in this step is to make sure the oil covers the strap from top to bottom equally. Do not over oil and leave your strap items with oily residue.

After applying oil allow the items to saturate the oil by laying them out again like when you allowed them to dry after cleaning. Usually an hour will get the job done. If any oily spots remain, rub them off with a clean dry cloth. Your items are ready to store for the winter.

Taking the time to clean and condition your strap tack items will extend the life of these products tremendously.

Saddle conditioning is a completely different process and we will address that in a different discussion.

We recommend the following High Quality Blended Oils for all of your leather strap items.
http://www.nationalbridle.com/leather-care-s/37.htm