simo289

Late to the party, but i stumbled on this looking for something else. You might have already found your answer but here's me 2 pence anyway... If you like the colour of undyed antiqued leather, then no, there's no need or reason to dye first. The only reasons to dye before antiquing would be to get a differnt colour (most antiques are shades of brown) or to get a different shade/tone of brown. Worth noting that antiquing will darken the dyed colour some, how much depeneds on the shade of antique you're using

I had a play with some 2-3 oz that I have, but it's far too thin to take a good tooling impression, my swivel knife cuts almost all the way through! Obviously, that isn't how maps were done, but I like the idea of it having a bit more tactility than ink.

Thanks for all your input folks! For context, I am making fantasty style maps and I want them to be nice and supple so they can easily be rolled up etc. I'm using 2mm (5-6 oz) veg tan. I tried rubbing both the lanolin and vaseline into the flesh side of my test pieces and it made a huge difference! The lanolin definitely made for a better surface texture and suppleness than the straight vaseline or the mixtures I've tried. @Tugadude that's interesting! I'm now wondering if I can jury rig something similar, maybe without the heat... It may well come to having to buy more leather (oh no...) specifically for this project @TomE I've read/heard a lot about oiling for tack etc, but I'm trying to avoid too much colour change or darkening that seems to come with those techniques and products

I am experimenting with different way of softening veg tan leather, hopefully to a nice floppiness, mainly using vaseline and lanolin (seperately and in mixtures). Having read around about various different leather conditoners, commercial and homemade, I'm having a really hard time knowing whether I should try applying it to the flesh side of the leather. It soaks quite nicely into the top grain, espcially with a little heat persuasion, but would it do the same on the flesh side? WIll it make any difference? Will it ruin the leather? I'll probably try on one of the scrap pieces I'm already working with, but wondered if anyone had any words of wisdon to share...

Thank you both! I've just run out and bought some shoe polish, and it seems to work well enough for what I need. @TomE That sounds like a very good plan! I'll definitely try that incase I run into a similar problem in the future. As long as I can get the surface layer of wax off, the pigment should take enough

I recently finished an armour project for a customer who wanted it wax hardening. I submerged the pieces on ~125C wax for 3ish minutes to harden. He is now asking if it would be possible for the leather (which was originally undyed pre waxing) to be a dark shade of brown. As far as I'm aware no dye or paint is going to take because of the wax, but I'm desperately hoping one of you lovely folk is going to tell me otherwise, before I rip the things apart and start again. I had considered trying shoe polish, but I'm doubtful that will work ofr the ame reasons as wax or paint.

Hadn't thought of using transparent acrylics, good idea!

I have a somewhat two fold question.....issue....topic.....thing..... 1. Does anyone have a proven method for making water-based dye? I'm seeing a lot of good things about it vs alcohol-based but want o be able to mix my own colours/shades 2. Has anyone ued pigment/mica powder (or similar) to make dyes? I've seen various recipes for using RIT dye in denatured alcohol but wondered if there was an alternative that might give greater control on what colours and shades can be made without relying on the ones sold by RIT