Tattooing On Leather

[Cmoore]

Hey everyone! My husband has been seeing a lot of tattooing on leather and was curious about it. He has all the equipement and was wondering what he needs to put on the leather to stop the ink from smearing into the leather. Is it just vasoline? Is there a forum on this? I looked and couldn't find any. Feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

[Jimbob]

most likly just a few thin layers of leather laquer, so it will act as layers of skin....the ink will penetrate the leather but will not submege to the surface to smear,,,,!!!

[Willbury]

One of my friends tattooed this natural veg tan Brooks saddle a few months back. Turned out pretty well.

I believe he was using pen inks, rather than the standard tattoo ink to help reduce smearing. Hope this helps.

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Edited May 29, 2013 by Willbury

[Cmoore]

Thank you!!

[yourmessagesir]

You should check out this thread

http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=19050&st=45

I have sorted out how to tattoo it properly and got it working just fine

Most the info on this thread helped me sort it out

[Benjamin P]

I have been playing around with this idea. I realize that this is an old thread but here is my method works well. With better machine control I would eliminate indentation by the needle. But it was pretty simple. I finished the leather first. Dyed it brown and put a finish coat on it. I used fiebings tan-kote. I stencilled the tattoo using the method for transferring a pattern for regular cutting and stamping. I put a heavy layer of vasoline and tattooed. Wiped with damp rag applied more vasoline. Continued. After I was done I scrubbed the vasoline off. Applied a second coat of the tan-kote.