hey guys so today I'm just doing a short video on how to darken leather and how I did that on my new western saddle so here is all the supplies you'll need I use the hydro Fane leather darkening oil from SmartPak a cup to pour it into because you probably will spill it over some rags and some cleaning cloths in case accidents happen because they probably will I think I spilled it like twice so here's just a shot of the before saddle I got this saddle on eBay it was I think about 500 bucks including free shipping which was awesome and this is the headstall I had and the leather as you can see was more of like a chestnut e color versus the light brown so I was trying to get them to be closer matched so that it all looks good so here's the oil in the little cup that I used just so you can see that I poured it into there not only does it save you some oil but then it also makes sure that you don't knock the can over and have an oil spill all over your four so starting on the panel I actually did a test strip which I didn't film here underneath I'm just to make sure as you can see it takes pretty well it darkens immediately and I put it on pretty pretty heavily here to get really into all the little spaces you do want to be careful when you're going along the seat area because the seat is swayed you could probably use like a little sort of toothbrush or something smaller to get in between those little sort of triangles if you wanted to but I didn't really mind because this battle wasn't super expensive so I was happy with them with just using my finger so you want to kind of take a look back and make sure that you're applying it evenly to all parts and really try to work it into all the little nooks and crannies on there because there are a lot with these tools leather saddles which I'm not as used to being an English writer I also got this little sort of dauber thing like a little foam stick and I use that for like stenciling stuff doing crafts but it works pretty good to get into all the groups of the tooled areas especially like on the front year and in the panels because it sort of soaks up all the oil so that's what I was doing here and you're able to get a pretty good even coverage I wasn't too careful here about like the leather pieces you do want to make sure you get all the all the weather that is showing that you don't need to worry too much about like the the metal pieces and the front you don't want to make sure that you don't have it touch the wool underside but the most part it's pretty pretty simple here you can really see the difference in color but it makes immediately and the rag works really well for just large surfaces and just really working it in and what's nice with doing this whole process is that it started to soften up the leather because it was quite stiff so here's the finished product as you can see it is quite considerably darker it matches my head still quite a lot better I'm really happy with the results here again is the before and here is the after I've ridden in a couple times and I would recommend just maybe doing it another time around just to make it last one