Removing A Selected Area Of Dye?

[Mojo66]

I recently made a belt for someone and stamped it with their name. They weren't sure about what they wanted so said they'd leave it to me. I added a few carvings at their request and dyed the letters of their name with Eco Flo leather dye. I took a deposit to cover costs, but not my time, which was about 2 days. I sealed the dye with Super Sheen, then stained it with Eco Flo leather stain, then coated it with Resolene and finally I polished it with Kiwi shoe polish. I sent them pictures of the finished belt and they said they don't like the coloured lettering and can I remove it? Is this possible without affecting the tooling and surface of the leather? What kind of result am I likely to get, bearing in mind this whole project has been a bit of a nightmare from start to finish and the customer seems quite picky. If it turns out blotchy it's bound to be pointed out. If I'm going to have to go the chemical route it needs to be something that's readily available in the UK. I'd like to sort this out for the customer, and because it's highly personalised and not something I could ever sell to anyone else. I'm happy to remove the colour altogether and go back to bare leather as long as it won't damage the leather or tooling in any way. Apart from the time it's a waste of nice leather. Thanks.

[terrymac]

About the only way I can think of is using a Dremel with a fine sanding drum and sanding away the paint. Problem is going to be is how rough the surface is after sanding. If you could figure out how to "slick' the surface, it may work. I'm afraid you may be the owner of a belt you can't use.

Sorry,

Terry

[Northmount]

Dye penetrates into the leather so you would have to grind a lot away. I think a better approach is to clean the surface of the letters with a suitable thinner, then dye with a brown dye to cover the original. Or get Cova color (or any craft acrylic paint) that is close to the color you want, then thin it and keep adding a thin wash to build the color depth you want. Paint does hide the subtle shades of tooling and fills in cuts. Won't ever get you back to natural.

Good luck.

[Mojo66]

Hi, thanks for the replies, I did offer to try and dye over it, but fortunately he decided to have it, it must have grown on him, didn't fancy getting the sander out!