Vinegaroon Success!

[Bryan]

This stuff is freakin amazing! Pardon my excitement; I'm just blown away after seeing it work!

So here's how it went: After spending hours upon hours reading up on the subject here, I got my vinegar & steel wool & started. I brewed mine for 4-5 weeks before the steel was completely dissolved & I was happy with the appearance. Here's what I learned: 2 factors that would have sped up the process are fineness of the steel wool & letting the stuff breath. For the first 2 weeks there was almost no change in appearance, even with agitating every 2 days. I brewed in a 5 gal. bucket & noticed a large amount of condensation every time I lifted the lid to agitate. So, instead of leaving the lid partially closed, I tried just resting it gently on top of the bucket, allowing it to breathe better. Once I did this, the process advanced dramatically. Well, this morning I finally filtered it & gave it a shot. Man, does this stuff work! Black as black can be!

I do still have one concern & it's about the rinsing. I tooled my leather first, & the impressions seem to have held up well. Just wondering if it may be a better practice to tool after the process or if that would even work as the vinegaroon seems to have repelled the water.

Edited November 7, 2009 by Bryan

[MADMAX22]

I have tooled after and before and there are drawbacks to both.

Tooling before I think works better and is easier since you either gotta wait till its dried and rewet or wait for the proper moisture content which is hard to do once the leather is black. However from time to time the tooling where beveled and such wont allow the vinee to penetrate the leather, same with wet molding. However this can be fixed with a quick touch up of black dye.

Your tooling should hold up fine just dont play with the leather until its pretty dry.

Looks good though.

ChuckBorrows is the man with this stuff, hes been using it for years so look back at some of his posts on the subject.

Edited November 7, 2009 by MADMAX22

[Bryan]

Thanks very much for the info. Can't wait to do some serious work with this stuff.

[JohnBarton]

I agree. I decided yesterday to play with it and today bought a bottle of rice vinegar and some steel wool. I didn't burn the steel wool - just threw it in the vinegar this afternoon and let it sit in the sun.

Just now, about four hours later I dipped some leather in it and the leather turned dark grey. Dipped it again and the leather turned black.

I can only imagine how well this stuff works when the mixture is cured and strong.