Yukonrookie

Yup, sounds logical. These spots look “embedded” into the leather. The supplier, who is also the tannery, are actually going to do some tests at the warehouse. Spot testing this whole batch that my double butts came from. At least thats how I understood them. All this makes me feel pretty good about them. It sounds like they’re doing due diligence and don’t want to replace my leather with still contaminated stuff. Or send it to anyone else. I will reveal their name after they finished things on their end. This is my first time ordering from them and I don’t want to give them a bad rep. Especially not until they did their thing with this. Also they claim this has never happened to them before and I believe them, as I don’t know of anything to think otherwise. My first complaint with this leather, before I noticed the first spots, was how dry it was and how difficult it carved. It felt almost like my swivel knife was going through tough rubber. And yeah, it was super dry. Needed more water than anything I had used before. Which, to be fair, isn’t a lot. But I have tried stuff from Tandy stuff through a few Italian tanneries to Hermann oak and nothing carved or stamped even nearly this bad. Plus it deforms horribly. A couple layers of blue masking tape and a layer of good packing tape and it still deformed quite a bit. This is 9/10oz mins you

Yup, for sure. I think a good company is willing to make things right if they know about it. These days I feel people sometimes give a bad review without giving the business a chance to make things right. Mistakes or accidents happen and to me a good business is the one that is willing to fix it. All that within reason, of course. Also, not always a bad review is warranted. I remember reading a bad review where the fault lies with the customer not using the product correctly, for example. Obviously oftentimes a bad review was definitely the way to go, in order to warn other potential customers. Anyway, thanks for your replies. I will follow up with how this turned out with the supplier. I was able to rule that out. After I used tap water I the then ended up using distilled water.

Yeah, I like his stamps. I only got one of his Stainless stamps and the rest are brass though. Better price tag. Will hopefully last me a while anyway. The Hi-Liter only comes in dark brown as far as I know. I wish it came in different colours. Which is why I want to try out some of Fiebings Antique stains. I find the Hi-Liter is harder to resist than the paste though.

Yeah, I like his stamps. Although I only got his Stainless stamps and the rest are brass. The Hi-Liter only comes in dark brown as far as I know. I wish it came in different colours. Which is why I want to try out some of Fiebings Antique stains. I find the Hi-Liter is harder to resist than the paste though.

Well, in that case….. So I got a few Sergey Neskromniy Stamps just recently and just to check out that look of one of them I stamped up a little test piece. Just for the heck of it I threw some Hi-Liter Antique on it. I didn’t do the edges or anything else mind you. Just the Hi-Liter. Here it is…..

Looks awesome! I’ve used the paste too and after experimenting I eventually got decent enough results. I tend to get better results with the highlighter antique. My stamping and carving isn’t up to snuff enough yet for posting pictures though

Thanks for the reply. I guess I’m the opposite a bit. I tend to overuse antiques lately. I’m still fairly green mind you, but I like to stamp and carve and chase that antique look. Well it doesn’t always look the way I had hoped and I wish I had used less antique lol. I’ve used the paste and Fiebings Hi-Liter and like both. I actually prefer Hi-Liter a bimore but after some experimenting been getting decent enough results with the paste too. Gonna try the gel and stains next, I think. This acrylic antique from Angelus sounds intriguing too, though.

So far I have only used the paste and Fiebings Hi-Liter. I like both actually. I’m thinking of ordering some of the Fiebings vintage gel and or antique stain. Do you use the stains or the vintage gel? I have been wanting to try the gel for a while now but what kept me from doing that was that I thought it was more for giving a vintage look and not so much for highlighting carving and stamping. Was I wrong to think that?

By the looks of it not many people used theirs Antique finish.

I heard back from the supplier and they said they’d send me a new piece. So it seems that, I’ll be able to report back on a company that takes care of their customers and I will very happily do so. Thanks for your reply.

@chuck123wapati @TonyV @AlZilla @Northmount Thanks for all the replies, guys. This means a lot! Yeah, those spots are all over the whole piece of double butts. They seem to be imbedded right into it. I’ll give the supplier a call in the morning. Let’s see what they gotta say. As it is I can’t use it. If it was the odd spot here and there, I wouldn’t mind much, but all over the place isn’t a good look. Not even for hobby work, imo. @DieselTech I dyed a little piece with pro dye saddle tan and once it dried those spots were still visible some. Was worth a try though. Thank you. Btw was there any particular reason you asked to try dyeing it? Just curious. Anyway, thanks again everyone. Greatly appreciated.

Thanks for the reply. Hmm, no I keep my leather area free from any iron/metal work. I also just got the leather that same day and got to work on a test piece right away. What you say sounds plausible though. Do you think there’s any way it got contaminated during or after the tanning process? There’s a very strange smell to it as well. Not sure if this warrants me contacting the supplier and ask some questions? The last thing I want to do is complain about something that’s my own fault, but I just can’t see what I did wrong. As I had mentioned before this leather is different in other ways as well. Would sure love to get to the bottom of this. Even if just so I understand.

Thanks. I’ll try that out.

@Mulesaw I will give that a try. It almost looks like some sort of oxidation but not sure how that’s possible though. This leather sure dries out super fast too. I’ll give a back piece a try. Thanks again

Well, thank you kindly sir. Still heck of a lot of practice needed though. The spots disappear a little when dry but not fully. The only times they’re not there is before I start casing for the first time. Now, this is only my second practice piece and the first one was even smaller so I’m not sure if all of it will have those spots but it sure is a disappointment. It’s not the leather from laederiet btw. That stuff looks great and is a joy to carve and stamp too. So thank you for the recommendation!