The appropriate cleaning method (and results) will depend on the identification of the the leather you have. This is always crucial before beginning any cleaning, repair or restoration work. Training is vital as mistakes can be costly.
If you want to check on the leather type you can get a good idea from this flow chart:
http://www.lttsolutions.net/whattypeofleather.asp
Once you know the type of leather you are dealing with the cleaning processes are fairly straightforward. Anything that will not clean becomes a 'technical' job rather than a 'cleaning' one.
Checking the leather with a 5 step process will give you the best idea of leather type and also what the likely results will be of your cleaning process.
The 5 steps are:
Visual
Touch
Scratch
Moisture
Microscope
These simple steps (it will only take you 1 minute to do all of them) will give you so much informatioin which then puts you in a much better place for beginning your clean. You will also be able to discuss likely outcomes and problem areas with your customer. What you can see with the naked eye is not always a true indicator of what is actually happening to the leather finish. We have seen countless cases of people trying to clean leather which looks diry but is in fact caused by micro cracking in the pigment, which cannot be 'cleaned' better!! Checking with a microscope will give you all this type of information.
Let us know if we can be of any further help.
Cheers
