My vinagaroon effort

[rdb]

Now you tell us!!!!....lol

One question re: the smell - are you sealing your bottles tight or letting them "breath"? If you are not letting them breath (i.e. cracking the lid enought for the mix to off gas) then the odor will linger much longer - once my mix has dissolved all of the iron there is little smell when I open the bottle.....

[sodapop]

well i tried the vinagroon...it works like a charm!!...and this was just the 2nd day of letting the mixture sit...i used railroad spikes, which were already coated with rust...i dipped in a piece of natural hide for about 10 seconds...& let it dry...turned jet black

its just the coolest thing to see it work like that

darryl

p.s thanks chuck for the destinker tip!!

Edited May 12, 2008 by sodapop

[fishguy]

I have used vinegaroon quite a bit on hunting pouches, holsters, etc. and it is pretty cool. All you need is vinegar and some form of iron or steel (smaller pieces make a good dye faster), usually it needs to soak at least overnight. The dissolved iron reacts with the tannins in the leather (so it only works on veg-tanned leather) to make a black compound. This compound is actually similar to old fashioned oak-gall ink (a good source of tannins that actually has been used in the past for tanning leather) which was made by mixing crushed oak galls with iron salts. If the vinegaroon gets old, with lots of rust, it becomes weak. I think you can just pour the old vinegar off and add new (if you can get rid of the rust scum when you pour off the old vinegar, all the better). How dark the leather will get will vary a bit between batches of leather. Sometimes you can only get a dark, kind of cloudy gray (which actually looks pretty cool), but don't worry, when you oil it up it will darken to black. I use a baking soda rinse and then hang the stuff up to dry. It still has a bit of a vinegar smell, but that is the smell of authenticity. At least it is not as bad as in the old days when they used stale piss to set indigo dye, that was a bit less pleasant smell of authenticity.