Hey guys, any comments would be great ;D.
I've never worked with leather before, and decided to have a go at making my own belt. I ordered 2 belts worth of materials from Tandy Leather factory, along with some fudge brown dye. I dyed my first belt brown, and it ended up looking pretty cool. It wasn't exactly even in all spots, and kind of reminded me of patterns made by wood, but in the end I liked it. I decided it would be silly to make another 'fudge brown' belt, so instead I decided to 'dye' it a bit with Mink Oil. It didn't look brown enough for me, leaving it the way it was.
So any who, I did a little research. Apparently Mink Oil works best when the leather is warmed up first. I put the belt in the over for a bit, and then started rubbing in the Mink Oil. The leather seemed to just suck up the Mink Oil on the first couple places I put it, but this seemed to stop pretty fast (my guess was that the belt was cooling?). This made it so the first areas I applied it too were pretty brown whereas the second areas were much lighter. I decided to pop it back in the over to try to heat it up a little again. When I removed it there were a bunch of craazy patterns on the belt. I can't take a picture of it at the moment, but I guess you guys have some kind of idea what it looked like. In some areas it was quite even, but in others it was just weird. Swirly patterns, spotted patters, all sorts of strange stuff. After I pulled it out the second time, I really put some muscle into trying to work the oil into the leather, but it didn't seem to do much. I don't understand why some areas were so much darker than others. Was it because I put more muscle into those areas?
So I'm deciding whether to do more coats (I've only done one, and I've heard that its better to do more coats if I want it browner), and how best to go about doing this.. The belt kinda looks silly at the moment.
So yea, any advice would be appreciated .
thanks.
-Adam
