Restoring a leather Filofax

One of the many things to get 'rediscovered' when we moved house recently was my wife Alison's 1980's Filofax. Alison (the hand of Philofaxy!) last used it about three years ago, it still contains her notes from her MA History studies, it travelled around with her to the British Library, Kent University and many other OU tutorials.

When I set eyes on it, it was looking a little tired and worst for wear. It once again got put on the shelf, until today that is.. I decided to use it as a typical model that someone might have been using for some time, or may be you have bought off of Ebay and you want to bring it back to its original condition or as close to that sort of condition.

As has been commented on before, the late 1980's Filofax organisers are well made and quite tough, just take the usual precautions of only using the tabs at the end of the ring to open the rings, don't just pull them apart, otherwise you strain the mechanism and they won't meet properly in the centre. They last for a lifetime almost and should with care continue to provide service for many years. 

Before I started I wanted to take as many photos as possible of the Filofax organiser to show the true state of the wear and tear on this organiser and also to show the 'before' and 'after' otherwise you might think I just got a new one out of a box in true Blue Peter style 'And here's one we prepared earlier' !!! Not that I would cheat!

Taking the photos was a challenge in itself, black small shiny things are quite hard to photograph, but after a few different attempts I think I did a reasonable job, but like all my photography I learn a bit more each time!

So here is the organiser as it came out of the cupboard. Click on the photos to see a larger version.

The outside had suffered normal wear and tear I suppose over a 20 odd year period, the inside is mainly just dusty. So out came all the pages, being careful to keep them in the same order, not wanting to get in to trouble with 'the boss' !

The first thing I did was to clean the inside with just a slightly damp cloth to remove the worse of the dust and soiling. Then I dried off the inside and outside and left it to dry naturally.  Normally I just use a light silicon polish to maintain the leather on my organisers, but I thought this one needed a bit more treatment of the leather to bring it back to life again and to remove some of the scuff marks.

For this I used a wax shoe polish in black. I used an old soft cloth bunched up the cloth to form a soft pad to coat the outside in wax putting a small amount of wax polish on each time, then gently rubbing it in in a circular motion, taking time to make sure it was well worked in to the leather. The surface now looked dull and matt. I then left the polish on for about 5 minutes to let the wax penetrate the surface scuff marks.

Then using a clean soft cloth I then rubbed off the wax and brought the leather back to a full shine, frequently turning the cloth to make sure I wasn't rubbing the wax back on to the leather. Again taking time to go over the whole surface to ensure no wax was left behind which will only attract dust and dirt.

I was unable to find a suitable press stud cap, which is missing. My own 1980's Winchester has suffered a similar loss. I am going to try sowing some leather over the press stud to cover it like current day Filofax organisers have.  But overall I think you will be able to see the difference. Again click on the photos to see the full size version.

I think the pair of photos that show the before and after best are these two:

Before

After

Now I realise that some of you might like the 'worn' and tired' look, it's a personal taste thing I suppose. But for those of you that like your Filofax looking like new, then as you can see it is possible with a bit of effort and time to get the leather looking like new again.

What next for this organiser... well I think I will have some of the plain ruled paper out of it for starters!
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