[Cameramakers] keeping old leather Bellows soft

[SOEL96]

hello folks--
as both a budding cameramaker/tinker and learning book & paper arts @ columbia college chicago, i have come across some useful things, among them what to do with old/badly damaged leather in bindings. to prevent the evil things that oxidation and just plain drying out can do, a thin layer of Neat's foot oil is good, also a wee bit of glycerin keeps things good, too.
If you have bellows which have cracked, etc., you can repair them with japanese paper (much like what is used with an old page that has been torn), usually using the inside as your glue-to side. If your leather has red powdery stuff on it, chances are it is a wash-- this is called red rot, and is usually seen in 19th early 20th century bindings when productions weren't exactly archivally minded. the rot spreads, there isn't any way to treat it, washing it out won't work-- it will just spread the spores. I would suggest before slathering your bellows with the above mentioned oils to put some on a small area, as you might upset the adhesion properties of these old things...
of course, the leather in bellows and the leather on bindings have most likely been treated differently-- bellows leather probably has been calendared-- running it through a press that may or may not have been  heated, or mixed with some other varnishes, formaldehyde...
So the leather is really not leather so much anymore, and acts like patent leather, etc.
for more info, there is a vast store of info that is archived on the book arts list serve (do you really need to subscribe to another list!? of course you do!!)
at
http://palimpsest.stanford.edu

joel