3M Leather and Vinyl Repair Kit, 08579

The flat blade screwdriver in my back pocket ripped my grey leather car seat when I sat down. Listen to your Mom when she says don’t put tools in your back pocket. I practiced this repair on an old leather ottoman with a couple of long rips. Was very pleased. The repair on my leather car seat was very good, and is better than the rip. It’s not perfect, but this is a repair kit, not a magic kit, and results were very good. Practice brings good luck. MY EXPERENCE and RESULTS follow:TIPS from my experience:The mystery repair compound is heat curing. It will not cure properly without substantial heat. Also, if left in the open air, it will start to solidify. After 24 hours it will start to become a sticky, clumpy, lumpy mess, so don’t leave the compound out in the open air. The compound is not paint or “color”- it is a heat curing “polymer”. It had the consistency of really thick honey out of the container. It is very prone to stringing, so be careful not to drag strings of compound over the good part of your repair piece. The uncured compound can be wiped off with a paper towel. I suspect that if left on long enough, the wet compound will permanently stain due to the color in it, so be careful. If there are voids/ pits, crevices after the first repair, you can add more compound and heat cure it right over cured compound.THE HEAT DISK:The heat disk will hold heat but will rapidly cool if you are using it outside with a breeze. If you wait too long to apply the heat disk, the disk will cool to the point of not being hot enough to cure the compound. So, have your heat source next to your repair. Pictures and reviews from unsuccessful repairs clearly showed that the material was not sufficiently heated with the heat disk. A hair dryer is not sufficient! The compound needs some concentrated heat to cure. I heated with the disk several times before removing the graining paper with great results.COLOR MIXING:The most challenging part. I placed a piece of clear box tape over the good part of my repair piece. I then applied my color-mixed candidates onto the clear tape to evaluate the color match. Both repairs I made (light grey and dark brown) had a pretty close color match in the end.GRAINING:To get a proper grain, the graining paper has to be LIGHTLY PRESSED into the WET compound before applying the heat. If disk is too hot when placed on vinyl, it will iron out the vinyl grain of your item and it will appear smooth. Practice with small spots of wet compound on the vinyl sample supplied!MIXING THE COMPOUND for REPAIR:I mixed my compound on a paper plate. The paper plate provided a nice surface where I could mix different color palates (different shades) on. I could easily pull a small amount aside and lighten or darken it, or tint it with other colors. I could then put a dab of several candidates onto the clear tape, placed over the good part, to see how good the match was.APPLYING the HEAT WITH THE DISKI applied heat to the disk and then applied the hot disk to the graining paper, constantly moving the disk over the repair area for about a minute. My best result was with applying the heat several times, letting the paper cool then removing the paper. Use a light moderate pressure to get a good feathered edge around the compound. Too much pressure and you’ll squish the material out past the repair. Too little pressure and too much heat and you will get a lump of cured material without graining: not too hot, not too light, not too heavy: PRACTICE A COUPLE OF TIMES TO NAIL THE HEAT AND PRESSURE.I used a propane torch to heat the disk. I got best results with heating the disk a COUPLE OF TIMES for maybe 5 seconds each, allowing the heat to distribute for 10 seconds in between, before applying to the graining fabric (first try, disk was way too hot and burned the graining paper and the material cured in a lump). To gauge the heat, I used a clean paper plate, with my heat-sensing-thumb under it, and quickly pressed the disk on the paper plate, over my thumb. If the disk is too hot, it will burn your thumb, and the paper plate/ graining paper. If the paper plate turns brown, it’s too hot: wait a couple of seconds and apply it again, then place onto the repair. Too hot and you’ll iron out the graining from your vinyl. Not hot enough and the compound will be sticky. If the heat wasn’t suffient, just apply heat again. Practice on the sample!VOIDS AFTER CURING? On the brown leather ottoman with rips, the ends of the torn leather were curled, and would not lay perfectly flat. After my first heating session, there were voids. I re-applied wet compound to the voids and re-applied the heat disk. I had to fill voids in the cured compound several times because I couldn’t get the leather flat. It worked like a charm, you can’t tell I applied compound multiple times. The repair built up very well (I didn’t use the adhesive to fill the voids).SHEEN:If the finished, fully cured repair is too shiny, use a pencil eraser to dull the shine. If it is not shiny enough, apply a tiny amount of paste wax or clear shoe polish and buff.Practice on the sample and you will see exactly what I described, and you’ll be able to nail your actual repair. I would highly recommend this kit to my rowdy back-pocket-tool-toting friends. Good luck….

I got this because I have a compact backhoe with a black vinyl seat that had a tear, and another one that had formed in the vinyl-covered seat of my ride-em Husqvarna mower. The backhoe seat is a roughly textured black vinyl, and the mower, a light gray smooth surface.You get two small containers of the glue you need to fill the split or crack, and a number of other colors, with a color guide to mixing custom colors.Because both our pieces of equipment sit out in the weather, the sun had eaten away some of the foam behind the splits in the seats. They say you can just fill these with layers of glue until even, but they were quite deep -- maybe a quarter of an inch. Instead, I took some spun "cotton" -- the stuff they pack in the top of pill bottles to keep the contents from rattling around in shipment. It used to actually be cotton, sometimes called "cotton wool," but it is now some sort of spun plastic and non-absorbent. I packed the cracks with this. Then I took the single small piece of "repair cloth" that comes with the kit, and cut pieces slightly bigger than the splits they were going to repair. This piece of cloth, by the way, is not high quality and somewhat disappointing; the edges shred and threads hang off, which makes it hard to tuck it all away beneath the split. I took a star off for that.In fact, I believe you could use any scrap of textured cloth to make your repairs. It should not be nylon or anything too thin. Probably cotton or some blend would be best, with a textured surface to absorb and hold the glue -- and better something that doesn't fray around the edges!Once I had my "cotton" wool in place, I took the the wooden spatula in the kit -- even a clean flat-head screwdriver would work -- coated the end with glue, and pushed it under the split, about a quarter-inch in all around, and then coated the stuffing material as well. Then I placed the repair top cloth and tucked it in. This can get a little messy and you just get one edge in place and another pulls out. Persist! Then I coated the cloth with glue as well. You have to allow 12 hours for the glue to fully dry, by the way, which is one reason I didn't fill the holes with layer after layer of it, as it would have taken days to set up and re-apply. I allowed the glue to dry overnight, and then reapplied until it was almost even with the rest of the surface and waited another day.As they explain in the kit, the glue shrinks as it dries, so there is a "void" -- a dip in the surface -- which you will fill with the matching color to make it even.There are several squares of textured, slippery material, which you are going to match to the vinyl or leather texture of the item you are repairing. I chose one heavily textured piece to match the backhoe seat, and another that was virtually smooth for the mower.The backhoe repair was dead simple. The seat is black, and one of the tiny tubs of color is black, so I simply scooped some out and smoothed it over the repair. They say to use a pen or pencil and somehow sketch the split on the back, so you know what part you're going to heat after that to cure it, but I found that cumbersome and hard to do. Most people say the little heating tool you're supposed to warm up with your iron on high doesn't work. My wife had an old hair curling iron, so I got it very hot, held the square of textured material over the repair with two of the edges near the crack so I knew what I was heating, then began to roll the curling iron back and forth over the vinyl repair. The first time, I didn't do it long enough -- probably 4 or 5 minutes -- and when I lifted the texture paper off, most of the black filler came with it. You can use a finger to rub and peel off this stuff from the "slippery" paper, by the way, so it is reusable and I cleaned it up. I let the repair dry again for several hours, just to be on the safe side, then used the black material to fill it flush again.This time, I rolled the hot iron over the texture paper a good 8 to 10 minutes, just to be safe. This time when I carefully peeled off the paper, the repair material stayed put. It was done. It looked great -- almost invisible! At a certain angle, you can't see it at all, but if you change your position, you can see a difference in the surface: the original seat is somewhat shiny and the repair is matte. However, overall, I'd give this repair 5 stars.The Husqvarna was a different story. The split is on the rounded part of the seat near the front, so it takes stress and is very obvious. The color is a light dove gray, so I had to custom mix the color. I tried black and white and spread a little on the underside of the seat where it wouldn't be seen and let it dry. Not even close! I tried again, three or four times, and had to let it dry each time to see the result. Finally, I got it pretty close and added a little brown, and that was as good as I could do. As above, I did the repair. The final result is, the crack is more or less sealed (it's an area that gets pulled when you sit on it, so a fine crack has formed where the much bigger split used to be). The color is close, but fairly obviously a "fix." I'd give it a 3.SO the success of your particular project is going to depend on an number of things. One is where the split is, and what color it is. The more "custom color" you have the mix, the less likely it is that you're going to get it exactly right. If it happens that you have a primary color vinyl (or leather) item that is very close to the various colors provided, your chances of success are higher.It's most likely that someone will be able to see your repair when you're done, but let's face it; it's probably, in most cases, going to look better than the ugly crack you're covering.Overall...Recommended.