Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Rope
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Fuzzies
Well, I mean the often fuzzy 'under' side, or flesh side, of veg tan leather......
There is some people who think that a smooth backside to the leather means a higher quality. A smooth back (flesh) side of leather is merely achieved in the tanneries when they split the hides to get them an even thickness.
However, often it is nice to have the back of your project nice and smooth, a belt, for example.
There are a few ways of doing this - here are the two methods I use most often.
If you use Eco-Flo Water Stain (the one in the square bottle) on a belt or project, use the stain on the back as well - it will slick down the flesh side beautifully and should not bleed off on clothes after you have sealed it with a finish. I have carried a piece of leather with this Pro Stain on both sides - no finish - in my pants pockets for a year and there was no bleeding at all.
Second method:
Get hold of Gum Tragacanth. You can apply that a little at a time and rub down the back of the leather with an old spoon. To smooth it down even more permanently, you can then cover the back of the leather with Super Sheen - an acrylic product that will effectively seal off the back of the leather.
Both these products are available at your local leather supply store or they should be able to order it for you.
The belt piece before anything is done to it - you can see the typical loose fuzzies on the back.
After the gum has dried on the leather you can see the difference between the covered part and the untreated part.
This is a very upclose of the treated back side of the piece of belt.
This post from August 2007 has been updated. The gentleman in the videos is my long time friend and mentor, Larry Moskiewicz
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Resist
[Block-out is unfortunately no longer available - the new water-based Neatlac is most definitely the best and even better than Block-out used to be]
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Uneven dyeing
The dye is the new Eco-Flo Cranberry Red dye. It is water-based.
I start off with diluting the dye a lot with water and I just cover the whole area with a thin color.
Then I use less diluted dye and only work around the edges, so that the area is dyed darker around the edge and lighter in the center.
REMEMBER: The dye causes the leather to be WET and therefor darker, so it is not immediately clear what the project will look like when the leather dries out. The dye will get lighter as it dries.
This little video shows the final step with undiluted dye.
The dye came out the way I wanted it, and I then applied X1 dressing to bring out the tooling in sharp definition. X1 only accentuates the tooling in a very non-obtrusive way.
The chair complete.
If you want to know where to get the legs, contact Dan at Logo's Leather: Logo's Leather
In the next technique Tom Evans uses a rag to "dry brush" alcohol based dye to give a two tone effect.
(Updated 22 October 2019)