Repairing a Schoenhut animal's leather bits

 

This Schoenhut goat was poorly packed for shipping and arrived with one ear and one horn broken off.These bits are original to him so it will be nice to save them.

The horns are made of leather but the leather has become brittle over the years. Both horns show evidence of 'red rot'. That is a degredation process common to old vegetable-tanned leathers.

The horns were inserted and glued into a hole drilled into the head, then painted.

How does one piece together 2 bits of old degenerating leather?

First, the deteriorating leather is treated with a leather consolidator. I treated both bits of the broken horn and also his intact horn as it was brittle and starting to flake.

Once I had sturdier leather bits, I could fasten them together.

Because of the shape of the horn and some missing leather at the break, just gluing the bits together would not last long.

So the broken horn will get internally fixated with a wire.

Here the broken off bit has had a wire installed. A hole was pre-drilled and acid free glue was used to secure the wire.

Drill a hole on the other side of the break to receive the wire and glue the bits together.

Success!

I glued his ear back on without support. It seems to work.

Keen eyes might notice his beard looks odd at the top? 

It apparently broke off in the past and someone taped it on with a little bit of white cloth tape. But now the tape is starting to peel away.

Time to fix his beard!

Here is how the last person fixed his beard.

Getting the tape off of aging leather will be a delicate process.

This is his beard finally extracted from the tape and the hole it was glued into.

The brittle leather has been consolidated and treated with a leather conditioner.

Then the bits have been glued on a piece of Japanese paper for support.

Here is his beard after being stabilized and reinstalled without the tape.