R Petersen

Thank you very much for the help! I appreciate you taking your time to check it - I'll bookmark that site for future use.

Hi all, I have a quick question which I hope you can help me with. I have a bottle of Fiebings institutional leather dye, blue: The tests I have done shows that it is very dark in colour, so I'd like to dilute it. The problem is that my leather shop (pretty much the only leather shop in the country, so I can't just find another) only has one diluting product, which is of their own brand, and I can understand from searching that you use different diluters for different kinds of dye. Now, they don't have a description of this product, only a picture, where you can just make out the text. It's in danish, so I'll try and translate: "Leather dye diluter: Fast to light. For all colouring methods. Can be polished blank. Recommendated for colouring of natural leather, shoes etc. Good for recolouring" Does anyone have a clue whether this is useable with the institutional brand of dye? I'd guess yes, but I'm very unsure, and I don't want to risk using the wrong product. I have written to the shop and asked, but they're a tad slow to answer, and I need to order soon if I want it before the weekend.

Hi again all. I'm the original poster, and as I just noticed that there's still a bit of life in this thread, I decided to post an update. I have had to take a long break from leatherworking, and have only just started up again, but I have just dyed for the first time, and I must say that I am very pleased with the result. For those who were worried, I can say that I used nothing but water and the dye itself - I might use oxalic acid if I ever need to dye something really evenly(sp?), but I like the (very) minor variations that were left after dying with no cleaning beforehand. However, the reason that I'm updating is also that I were in a leather shop the other day, and had a strange experience. The shop is one of those old, dedicated, 'existed since 18xx' shops, so they know what they're doing, or so you'd think. Anyway, I bought some dye and the lady at the desk asked me if I had everything else needed for dying. I asked her to clarify, thinking that she might have a tip or two, and the first thing she mentioned was acetone for cleaning... I didn't buy any, but still, I were surprised after what I have read here. Maybe it's just some regional thing?

Thank you both. That is very good to hear . I really don't like using dangerous chemicals, but both my leather books mention acetone, so I assumed that it must be used.

Hello all. This is my first time posting here, though I have been following for a while. I have a few questions which I hope you can help me with. I am quite concerned with the use of acetone, which I have read must be used for cleaning leather before dying. This is because I use my living room as workroom, so the furniture and air would/could both be affected. I'm not sure how much, but I have read that acetone is a quite noxious chemical, so I don't want to take any risk. What I wonder is, are there any other chemicals/cleaners which could be used instead of acetone? Even if it isn't be as good at cleaning as acetone, I'd still be interested, as I am still very much at the practicing phase. Secondly, my father has a large workroom, where I could use acetone without any worries, but it's rare that I visit him. I'm thinking that I could bring cut leather pieces to him and clean there, then do edges, tooling, stitching, dying etc. afterward. Would the acetone affect the ability of the leather to take the later treatments? Or would the effect be canceled anyway during my handling of the leather, as it'd probably get more or less dirty? English is not my native language, so there may be some creative grammar in my posts.