Could anyone tell me just what is it that MRL uses to colour their scabbards? I was cleaning the chape of a MRL scabbard with some metho to get some old light oil and dust off. I accidently spilt a drop of metho on the "leather" part of the scabbard and immediately wiped it off and was horrified to see that it took the black colouring with it revealing the neutral coloured leather below. I now have a bare patch on an otherwise black scabbard. Can anyone tell me just what that stuff is and how i can restore the scabbard's appearance?

Christopher

"One sword keeps another in the sheath. "
George Herbert

Windlass does not really dye their scabbards. They just use a black wax-based polishing paste that does not penetrate the leather, it just colors the surface like a paint. Most of the time, you can just scrape/wipe it off. The advice given for redying it is sound, that is what I'd recommend as well.

I think I've heard that you can use shoe polish for this, so if you just have a small patch to fix I would try that first.

Thanks for that guys, very helpful. Ok, so my options appear to be either stripping back the whole scabbard and re-colouring it or attempting to patch it with some boot polish? Well, i'll start with the minimalist approach first and see how that turns out. If that doesn't do the trick then i'll strip the whole thing back. Sorry about the colloquialism about metho; didn't even occur to me that it wouldn't be called metho everywhere else. I've got a very old bottle of "raven's oil" leather stain that might be worth a try?