Several years I purchased a heavy duty German motorcycle jacket from a forum menber.
Lately several of the "POLICIA" letters are delaminating from the leather surface.
Any suggestions on how to remove the remains letters?
Tia

Would it be easier to re-attach the letters? Probably have to do them all I suppose.

Think I used a hairdryer or a heat gun initially. I used fingernail polish remover on the glue. Not as aggressive as straight Acetone. Followed it up with Harley Davidson Leather treatment.

If I remember back when I got mine I pretty much peeled them off and maybe used a little acetone for the stubborn little pieces. Love the jacket though, nice and heavy, and about 70.00 iirc?

quote:

Originally posted by msfzoe:
Several years I purchased a heavy duty German motorcycle jacket from a forum menber.
Lately several of the "POLICIA" letters are delaminating from the leather surface.
Any suggestions on how to remove the remains letters?
Tia

Your jacket must be displaying an unusually severe case of delamination as your 'German' Police Motorcycle Jacket would originally displayed 'Polizei' on the back...Either that or it now identifies as a 'Spanish/Portuguese' Police Jacket! Just Sayin'

That said, 'shovelhead' has direct experience here and provides good advice on removing the remaining letters from your jacket.

I stand corrected.
Jacket now says"POLIZE"
The "I" is gone.
Think I paid around $70.00.
Great value.

Surplus German police jackets? I bought several of those when Midway was blowing them out. Really nice jackets. I can’t guarantee this will work and not wreck the jacket, but I took the lettering off the back of two of them with acetone. Tried it on the roughest of the bunch first. No visible damage to the jacket. Did it again in a nicer sample and again no visible damage. I wiped the letters down with a cloth dampened with acetone and the letters peeled right off. I went back later and used some mink oil on the jacket. Can’t even see there they were. There was some black dye transfer to the cloth, but there no visible difference on the jacket itself between where the letters were and the rest. That’s only going off my sample size of two though.

If they’re already peeling, a heat gun might work, but I think the odds of the heat gun damaging the leather may be as high as the acetone damaging it unless you absolutely soak it.