Nightwolf

The technique I use to get a truly amazingly even color from dyes is to spray them with an air brush. Once you get the basics of working the air gun you can get amazing solid colors, not to mention it is much easier to spray lighter then a brush can ever apply thereby increasing your color spectrum. It also makes blended two tones super easy. Can be a bit pricey on setup about $300-500 depending on make, model and compressor

Welcome Tim.....always nice to meet a brother wolf

Thank you very much TheBroke, was able to get them without any problems.

I used fiebings red and green dyes. The process was easy, but time consuming. I thinned the dye down to 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4 strength. (each in their own sealed jar) Then I started with the lightest color (yellow for leaves, not green) Next step was to apply each progressively darker dye in smaller areas to give it a natural/realistic look of highlights ajnd shadows. So the darker areas were dyed 4 times.

Thank you for the input, the bracers dont extend far enough to hinder wrist or elbow movement. I have the pattern laid out now, just need to order the hardware, and cut out the leather. Perhaps I should post the pattern up here first for input.

Thank you Jason, I will make that modification to use buckles instead. My wife is more about comfort, and you know if she isnt happy, it wont be a fun day. Other than Tandy, any online stores (or ones in Austin, since I am in San Antonio) that sell decorative rivets that you have used, or would recommend?

Working on making my first set of Leather armor for my wife to wear at Renfest this year. I have started drawing out the patterns and cutting paper replicas to double check sizing but I have a few questions of anyone knowledgable on armor making. None of the armor is hardened. The bracers will be in 3 over lapping sections (its not meant to bend at segments), and will lace up. - Any advice on what size rivets to use, or how far to overlap the leather? - How far apart do you recommend spacing the grommets? (down the side of the leather, every 3/4 inch? every inch?) What do you use to lace up your bracers? Shoestring? 550 Paracord? something else entirely? The same question will apply for the leather corsette. Has anyone worked with attaching fur trim to leather? Any advice, pointing towards books, videos or how too would be greatly appreciated! Thank you for your assitance.

I have been away from the bench waaaay too long working on my Masters Degree. Finally had some time off this summer to finish this belt for my wife, who has been beyond patient and understanding in waiting. Critique is welcome, this was my first attempt dying the leather this way, and I am very happy with how it came out.

I was inspired a couple months back by Mareen who showed some very nicely done martingale dog collars. http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=29849&st=0&p=186973&hl=+martingale%20+collar&fromsearch=1entry186973 After locating some hardware I decided to make one for my own puppy, so he could attend training sessions in style! His name is Chewie (mostly because everything, including the other animals ends up in his mouth). Except for the chain hardware everything is all me, natural leather color, hand painted, hand sewn, rivets to hold the hardware. I did make the mistake of letting him wear the collar for a week before I was able to take some photos. The collar Chewie styling his new collar

If I read correctly your looking for something like this (only railroad not celtic) This is a bracelet I made for my wife, the background is all hand dyed by painting with a good quality red sable brush as mentioned above, and the knotwork left the natural color of the leather after neatsfoot oil, you can also leave it in the sun a bit if you want to darken the leather, but you need to do that before you apply the finishes, since the the finish will protect the leather. Simply follow the basics of leather dying, no magic secrets to speak of. 1. I do case the leather before dying (not wet, but properly cased) I found this helps to the dye to not over spread when painting in those small areas. 2. In this instance I used fiebiengs oil based black dye. Dip the brush about 3/4 of the way into the dye to "load" the brush. NEVER dip the whole brush in the metal part (I think its called the ferrel) should never directly contact the dye. 3. Practice this part!!!! When you first touch the tip of the brush to the leather the dye will flow out into the leather, so its important to start in the middle of an area to be dyed, never near your toolwork! 4. I let the extra ink bleed out from the brush in the center area, then slowly (and very cafrefully) work towards my tooling, bevel line etc. You are only going to get about 1/4 to 1/2 along the toolwork done before you repeat the process. dont rush it, thats how mistakes are made! If you would like to use a resist, I would actually go ahead and use Tan Kote on the area you want left natural (this also makes it possible if you get a small spot on while doing the background you can just wipe it off if you catch it quickly. Would love to see a picture of your belt when your done!

I am having the same problem. I recently bought the ecoflow book on dying leather, and was following their instructions on dying an oak leaf. I applied the base coat of Sunshine Yellow, only to find green spots on the leather (it seems the heavier tooled areas turned green) Did I miss a step or do something wrong? Its not a huge issue since this is a practice piece, and the next step is to put an actual green dye on the leaf, there a way to prevent/fix this? In case it makes a difference, I opened a new bottle of Ecoflow sunshine yellow, it was applied to the leather using a new artists red sable brush from a local Hobby Lobby. The green patches showed up pretty much as soon as the dye was applied. I saw a note in the back of the book (under problems) where it said this could happen with Bison Brown (for the previous poster). Is this an issue with ecoflow products? I would hate to finish tooling am entire piece only to have the dye demand a last minute color change. Here is a picture of the practice piece, so far the only thing applied to the leather has been an initial coat of ecoflow sunshine yellow.

Might be a little late but DO NOT USE DEFT if you need a flexible finish. Deft is a wood laquer. I use it on coasters I make to waterproof them, but it also stiffens the leather a lot. Not a big issue on coasters, not so great on a bracelet.

I concur with serrated scissors, Tandy sells a blue handled pair (about a 5" blade) that either are on sale, or were just on sale. Tandy sells 2 pairs, look for the blue coated handled ones with the serrated blade which helps grab the hide to keep it from moving around.

This is my first complete belt from start to finish, cut the strap from a double shoulder and everything. This will hopefully be my last unlined piece of work....my antique singer 201-2 showed up earlier, just need to set it up this weekend. Constructive critism is always welcome (I'll post if over on that forum too) Up close shot of the tooling I will admit this was a big learning experience for me. I didnt fully understand the importance of knowing the pattern flow when I started, and it didnt become apparent to me until I was using the swivel knife....not certain if that will show without seeing the whole belt at one time, but I will not make that mistake again.

For simple outlines that I plan to use repeatedly, I will make a template from Styrene, its fairly easy to use, inexpensive and has a great durabilty. I use it alot for airbrush templates since I can use spray adhesive on it, and then wipe the adhesive back off easily for storage, and being plastic like, I dont have to worry about the paint making the template wet or mushy. The patterns for belt ends, and ranger belt straps I made from mat board, which is still relatively inexpensive, and is much thicker than manila folders, so has been more durable for me....though I tend to be hard on things at times.

thank you for the explantion, I was going to ask about the collars as well. They look very nice.

Hellfire and Ruehl, thank you very much for those methods. I stopped by tandy earlier and bought the cowboy cuff pattern mentioned above. Hopefully between all this great advice I can come up with something awesome. It may be a few weeks, but I will certainly post pics when I get one done!

So 7 months ago, I took up leatherworking to make a set of barbarian/viking fantasy leather armor for renfest. I have spent a small fortune on tools and classes, gotten very into sheridan tooling, made belts and braceltes. But I have yet to make anything even closely resembling armor. I think I understand enough of the basics to at least get started. Does anyone have any good ideas of where to start? Tutorials? I found an leatherworkers guild in Austin, Tx and they had a design for some bracers on the website. It looks like a great fantasy engraved piece, but the sizing seems very small too me. (I am a big guy, and this piece would cover only roughly the top 1/2 of my arm, so the bottom 50% would be lacing. Anyone have any quick and dirty rules on measuringan arm to get a good fit? how much room do you leave to lace the ends together? I assume you would measure wrist and mid forearm to get the sizes needed there? I appreciate any help.

if its not too late to save your project, this is what my instructor has taught us to use. Unfortunetly I dont know the name of this stuff, but he said he got ifrom a cobbler, its yellow and spongy (but like its made out of rubber). It seems the be the stuff that rubber soles are made out of (the real spongy cushiony material. He has shown us in class to just rub it on the spot like an eraser, and he takes the glue off, you should even be able to dye normally afterwards. I hope this helps.

indeed, thank you for sharing that, I can use that in my classroom too.

I am not certain if this is 100% applicable, but I will share it anyway. I just brought an air gun and compressor this past week, and in playing aorund I found one of the neatest things to use to make templates used for spraying was a plain white sheet of styrene. I was able to find it at a local hobby town in the model railroad section. A 12" x 36" sheet was about $3.25. I found it rather fun to work with, just scratch it with a blade (I used an exacto knife set) and then you can bend it and it snaps making a very nice straight line (assuming you cut a straight line) I was also surprised by how well I was able to curves to add detail. I'll include a couple pictures of what I sprayed using the template. I plan to use this to experiment with dying designs on leather with the air gun. I personally just really like the stiff plastic feel of styrene for holding a pattern. This is the Horde symbol form Warcraft I used to make a shirt My wife's design sprayed on her shirt.....she has a thing for angry koalas

Same pattern, just different finishes as requested by the people who wanted them. I would appreciate any feedback on the tooling, or finishing.

Looks very nice, an oak leaf pattern is next on my list of belts to make. Any suggestions or tips from someone who's completed one? Also, how did you do your background? I just did a small celtic knotwork bracelet with that color scheme and it took forever doing only 9 inches long.

I would say add a redhead