Spraying oil dye

[CulturalWoodsman]

Hi all. I plan to use Fieblings oil based dyes on my sheaths...has anyone used the disposable spray units by Tandy? Do you reccomend speaying dye if you just want one uniforn color for everything on the project?

Thanks

[whinewine]

I've used them, and they're quite 'ok' for general spray dyeing. Definitely not for fine work, but perfectly fine for general dyeing. I've sprayed everything from spirit dyes up to and including neatlac & supershene. (make sure you clean them very well after using supershene & neatlac- otherwise they'll clog). They also use a lot less dye than using daubers. Tandy's prices are a bit on the steep side for these units. I buy mine at automotive supply houses. Google 'Preval': you can contact the company to find out where the nearest supplier is to you. Where I buy mine, I can get an entire cartridge & glass unit for less than Tandy's charge for just the cartridge alone. Also a suggestion: buy a bunch of cartridges- they go dead when you least want them to.

Harbor Freight Tools also sells a refillable cartridge/sprayer that you refill from an air compressor. I have one, but I haven't used it yet, so I can't say how well these work.

Edited January 27, 2007 by whinewine

[Tree Reaper]

I bought two disposable spray units and couldn't get either one to spray even after thinning the water based dye.

[Scary Leatherworks]

Hi all. I plan to use Fieblings oil based dyes on my sheaths...has anyone used the disposable spray units by Tandy? Do you reccomend speaying dye if you just want one uniforn color for everything on the project?

Thanks

you can get a fairly inexpensive airbrush and compressor to do that. I use my air-nailer compressor for my airbrush but the smaller ones work fine too. I spent $60 on my air-brush 5 yrs ago an it still works great and you can find them cheaper than that.

just an example http://www.tcpglobal.com/airbrushdepot/9169.aspx

[Andrew Chee]

Spraying a sheath should be pretty easy with a preval. They're pretty nice. The dye goes on much more evenly then I could do with daubers. The downside of them is that they run out. I was just dyeing about half a side worth of leather. I had the dye thinned out a lot (alcohol based dye) and took about three coats to get the depth I wanted. I was also spraying mink oil on the leather between coats of dye. With that said, I went through about 3 or 4 power units for just that half a side. I suppose if you are gonna dye a lot, it may be worth your money to look into an airbrush setup. I'm thinking about that now.

Andrew

[Cat Balou]

I've used them with the oil dyes and others and have had no issues with how they work.