Dyeing Techniques?

[Chavez]

A couple of tricks from a newbie that I picked up on this forum:

For dyeing I use wool daubers and apply as follows: 1 coat horizontal, 1 coat vertical, 1 coat diagonal. Apply another diagonal coat (perpendicular to coat 3) if needed. Make sure to keep the dauber wet with dye, don't let them dry out. The result is not perfectly even, but it is even enough to look great and the very slight difference in the colour depth gives leather a very nice "live" look.

For finishing, hot waxing and resolene seem to crack when flexed (at least I couldn't get a consistent result that wouldn't crack). Leather sheen seems alright for tooled leather, though it darkens it quite a bit. I've tried Aussie recently and it will most likely become my favourite. Just need to test it a bit more. A 33-33-33 mix of resolene, atom wax and water is my choice for the edges, however, it seems to perform pretty well if used on carved grain side too. Just make sure you don't overapply it if its gonna be flexed.

For smooth leather carnauba+mink oil seem to do the job quite well. Atom wax & Aussie can also be used here.

I'm still to try bag kote.

[GimcrackLloyd]

A couple of tricks from a newbie that I picked up on this forum:

For dyeing I use wool daubers and apply as follows: 1 coat horizontal, 1 coat vertical, 1 coat diagonal. Apply another diagonal coat (perpendicular to coat 3) if needed. Make sure to keep the dauber wet with dye, don't let them dry out. The result is not perfectly even, but it is even enough to look great and the very slight difference in the colour depth gives leather a very nice "live" look.

For finishing, hot waxing and resolene seem to crack when flexed (at least I couldn't get a consistent result that wouldn't crack). Leather sheen seems alright for tooled leather, though it darkens it quite a bit. I've tried Aussie recently and it will most likely become my favourite. Just need to test it a bit more. A 33-33-33 mix of resolene, atom wax and water is my choice for the edges, however, it seems to perform pretty well if used on carved grain side too. Just make sure you don't overapply it if its gonna be flexed.

For smooth leather carnauba+mink oil seem to do the job quite well. Atom wax & Aussie can also be used here.

I'm still to try bag kote.

I bought bag kote and tried it on some 3-4oz bracelets I made. It has made them a little stiff but I think that is mostly due to how thin this leather is. No cracking and a nice finish.

I'll test with some acrlic resoline when my local shop unpacks their truck.

For those of you who dye using sponges or daubers; do you dye the grain side of the leather, too?