Review: LeatherBurnishers.com Cocobolo Edge Burnisher

Upon returning home this afternoon I was pleasantly surprised to find my LeatherBurnishers.com Cocobolo Edge Burnisher (dremel version) sitting in my mailbox. I have heard great things about this product and thought it would be fun to take you through the un-boxing and some usage in different case scenarios.

Ordering Experience

Before diving into burnishing I will note my ordering experience. After deciding on which edge burnisher(s) you would like you need to e-mail Beary (the head honcho at Leatherburnishers) and request a Paypal invoice for your order total. Beary replied promptly with the invoice. After I sent payment I realized I entered my address wrong and contacted him to fix it. Again he replied very promptly and corrected the mistake. All in all it was 15 days from order placement until my I received my package. Not bad at all for a specialty tool.

Un-boxing the Burnisher

The burnisher was well packaged so no worries on that front. Holding this thing up to the light you realize how awesome the wood colors look. OK, lets get down to business.

Time to Experiment

Up until this point I have only ever burnished items by hand using a canvas cloth or wood slicker. I decided to set up a little experiment with the “control” group being my usual hand burnishing and the “experimental” being the dremel burnisher. I prepared a few different types of leather noted in the photo below. A 4-5oz brown Chromexcel, a 12-13oz natural Saddle Skirting, a 5-6oz burgundy Latigo, and a 2-3oz natural veg tan. The Chromexcel and natural veg tan are 2-pieces to simulate a finished carry good and the Saddle skirting is single piece to simulate a finished belt. The Latigo piece was later omitted from the experiment. It was a poor cut and very difficult to get a good burnish by hand or cocobolo bit.

All pieces were sanded and edged. I decided to go with the burnishing compound of water and saddle soap as suggested by the instructions on Leatherburnishers.com. Each piece was given a two minute long burnish by hand and by cocobolo bit. Here were the results:

Hand Burnished Saddle Skirting

Cocobolo Burnished Saddle Skirting

Hand Burnished Chromexcel

Cocobolo Burnished Chromexcel

Hand Burnished Veg Tan

Cocobolo Burnished Veg Tan

Conclusions

Overall the cocobolo bit made a great first impression on me. While purchasing the bit I assumed at most it would just speed up my burnishing but it has exceeded my expectations. The edges are as smooth or smoother than my hand burnished equivalents and began to form at a fraction of the time. The biggest stand out experiment of the day was burnishing the Chromexcel. Chromexcel is notoriously laborious and time consuming to get a nice uniform smooth edge. In two minutes the cocobolo bit achieved what would normally take me 5-10 minutes by hand.

At a very reasonable $15 I would absolutely recommend purchasing one (or more) of these bad boys. Even if you are a die-hard hand burnisher you can’t scoff at the time you will save burnishing large items like belts and bag edges or dealing with tough-to-burnish leathers. I doubt I’ll utilize this too much on my card holders and wallets but anything larger I wouldn’t hesitate.